Outsourced Call Center?

As it turns out, I ended up with a Cisco router, after all ... but it wasn't a used Cisco router; rather it's a Linksys EtherFast. Linksys is owned by Cisco. Small world, eh?

I had a bear of a time installing the router. I'm not sure if the problems were left over in the PC's system from the ICS settings with my old satellite Internet hookup. Back then, I had to use the PC as my router. It wasn't a pretty setup.

As it turns out, the system had to be configured manually. My cable ISP wasn't much help. Admittedly, when I dialed up their call center, it was late in the evening. I could hear the office cleaning crew in the background. They didn't want to deal with setting up the router ... which I can kindasorta understand.

Nonetheless, I believe that it should be the broadband providers responsibility to provide a firewall/router. They're charging a good price for their broadband access. Why can't they include a fifty dollar firewall/router? Sure seems like it would save everyone a whole lot of heartache, in oh so many ways.

It took a call into Linksys to get everything worked out. The technician was wonderful. She had a pretty strong accent, but I couldn't identify it. I'm not sure if she was working at a call center, outsourced overseas. I wanted to ask her where she was located, but I didn't want to seem too forward. I was just thankful for her kind help.

Once we were done, everything was fine. I'm sorry, in hindsight, that I didn't see the signs ... I hadn't manually configured a TCP/IP setting in years. Situations like this have me pondering the brouhaha over outsourcing call centers.