12-03-04 Below is the text of an email I just sent to Adelphia Powerlink (cablemodem) Tech Support. I just had an issue with my connectivity, and I went to them with probably the least supported configuration possible. Cablemodem to VLAN on a 24 port Switch, Switch to my Firewall, which is a RH8 server that has been running forever, back through the switch to my LAN. Coming from a Comcast customer background, I fully expected to hear "Call back when you're on a Windows PC or a Mac which is directly connected to the cablemodem with nothing in between, then we can talk". I was stunned to have the following conversation. In fact, moreso because I know all of the horror stories of Adelphia back in the day, when they barely gave ANY support at all, and what they did give was of, shall we say, poor quality. (Wack - adj "Of poor quality, bad"...Love that movie, dunno why). Anyway, on with the email: I cannot say how impressed I was with Adelphia's First Tier phone support. I am a professional network admin who is personally responsible for a $100M+ per year web network, and this evening I had a problem with my cable internet access. When asked the type of firewall I had, I reluctantly said "It's a Linux firewall I built myself", expecting to hear how unsupportable I was, I instead heard "Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE?". It was very refreshing to get support regardless of my configuration. I happened to mention that my modem and firewall were connected to each other by a switch. "Is it heavy-duty like Cisco or Nortel, or is it a Linksys or 3Com?". It seemed like no configuration option would faze the tech, and he quickly worked through my issue with me. I am not the type of customer who will assert myself as a "Professional Admin", I just act like a customer and follow the support tech's lead, and this support tech was a joy to deal with. In my past, I spent five years in Tech Support (which is why I don't assert myself as a "Professional Admin with X years experience and such and such knowledge of Everything", I have been spoken to by that type often enough to know that it's always annoying). I really appreciated the professional, Operating System independant support. It beat the heck out of Comcast, for instance. Thanks,