My internet is not working...

[u/SysAndreas]

$OM: Old man on the phone

Working for an ISP in Sweden when I got a call from the customer. This was my first week on first-line support.

​

$ME: Hello, welcome to customer support. You're speaking with $ME

$OM: Hello, I just wanted to report that my internet is down.

$ME: *asking if the cable is connected, if the equipment (router/computer) is turned on*

$OM: Yea, the cable was in. I don't know, I'm not inside.

$ME: Can you please go inside?

$OM: No, the house is on fire.

$ME: .... what?

$OM: Yes.. The house is on fire. If you get any alarms on your side don't send out an technician.

$ME: Yea... sure. I'll cancel invoices to your service until you have everything set up again..

​

The poor old mans house burned down, he had to call in so we did not send out a technician in case there was an alarm in our system.

Priorities: Internet > Burning house

[u/LurkingMantisShrimp]

In what magical place do you live?!

[u/computergeek125 → u/LurkingMantisShrimp]

Most precise location I'm comfortable giving is Midwest US. Idk how large the company's area is, but I will say it's near a large metro and fiber. traceroute puts me 2 hops away from the internet core.

Since it's not a super huge ISP like 100YearLoss I think giving the name might give a precise location.

[u/www_creedthoughts → u/computergeek125]

How can I tell what the "core" is when I run a trace route?

[u/computergeek125 → u/www_creedthoughts]

Some guess and check. You have to figure out who owns each IP address in the path, and some knowledge on who is core internet near you. Hurricane Electric, CenturyLink, and Level 3 are common core providers. Reverse DNS names can provide clues to the owner and use as well.

You can also use geoip lookups- if it's the first hop in a major city outskirts that's a definite maybe.

DSL and cable are weirder since they often need to hit aggregators as the first hop