23 hours, 59 minutes and counting

This manufacturer needs to set up a remote office just to support the management of its inventory with a certain huge retailer, reports a pilot fish on the inside.

"DSL was set up in this office so they could use a VPN to access the corporate network," says fish. "However, after the equipment arrived, they called the help desk indicating that they could not reach the Internet."

Hours of over-the-phone troubleshooting later, it's clear that someone will have to fly across the country to find the problem. And the trip is booked so the tech will have a full day for troubleshooting before having to return home.

Tech flies out, arrives at the remote office and immediately asks the staff to show him the setup and what they've done with the equipment.

From that point, spotting and fixing the problem takes about 60 seconds.

Sighs fish, "The instructions that came with the modem indicated that a DSL filter should be used on all phone outlets. This happened to include the outlet that the DSL modem was plugged into.

"So the DSL service was being filtered out before it reached the modem."

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