the conclusion to the Comcast story

Yesterday the tech arrived quite on schedule, with his supervisor. Yup, they sent 2 people. This turned out to be a Good Thing, because what needed doing and testing required the supervisor's approval. I guess they knew this in advance. So after removing the "dory" (an all-in-one TV/Phone/Net modem thingy) they hooked up just a modem. Oh, hey, everything worked. The Supervisor said that "sometimes" this device doesn't work with VPN and some secure networks. It's in the firmware and they can't change the security settings. They have another way to do what this one device does, with 2 devices. He was calling it a "sidecar".  Today, the same tech arrived, installed the new equipment, and everything works. YAY! 

This possibly deserves it's own post, but collary to all of this, my bank, the wonderful Instustion for Savings in Newburyport called me today. The tech that I had spoken with back at the beginning of all this (like 2.5 weeks ago) noticed that I had a successfull login over the comcast net (as opposed to my work-around, Verizon) . He called to find out what fixed it. I told him. I love my bank.