Surfing Woes
Friday, January 11th, 2008. Afternoon.
Busy working on my website, suddenly all HTTP traffic on my Airtel Broadband Connection stopped. That is to say – I could download stuff from different protocols such as Bit Torrent and eMule, Chat on Messenegrs, even browse SSLed sites through the HTTPS protocol, but when it came to sites with the HTTP protocol (almost all of the web), Firefox said “Connection was reset”, while Internet Explorer said “Page cannot eb displayed”.
Flummoxed, I turned to my friends for help (through the messenger), to find a solution to the problem. Sexie, Sanjay and Dinku were prompt to rescue, followed by Ms Riti. By this time it was already 9PM and the only headway I had made was an assumption that somehow, something was blocking port 80 for my network connection (!!). (Note: This is how you get things wrong, for future reference) Since I had recently installed Windows Vista Updates, I started uninstalling them to undo any system changes they might have made. To no avail, offcourse.
And then I had the brilliant idea of migrating back to Windows XP, since I was facing many issues with my Vista Installation. So I commenced on the journey to revert from Vista to XP, which obviously meant I had to delete my system partition. After a long and agonising process where I jumped Vista > Ubuntu > Windows XP, I finally sat satisfied for I now ran Windows XP on my system and now was the magic moment to try and surf the net.
Bam! The realisation: All the pains taken in switching the OS were a waste. The problem persists. Repeat: The Problem Persists.
And now in the most blinding moments of illumination, I realised that the problem was at the backend. Something to do with the Airtel Connection and not my system.
Half crazy by anger, I called the Airtel Call Center, they walked me through – 5 minutes, problem solved. I stared blankly at my monitor, not believing the pains I had taken for such a simple problem.
So a post that was meant to abuse Microsoft for poor quality software ends with a self-lament of foolhardiness.
God Bless. Peace.
Comment by skaz on January 20th, 2008
Hi
I have the same prob. Can u pls wiet in detail as to how the problem was solved
Comment by kinshuksunil on January 22nd, 2008
Hey skaz,
Well it was some problem related to a bridge connection with my PPPoE connection.. contact your ISP and they’ll guide you through solving the issue… for me, it hardly took 5 minutes to solve it.