Comcast problems again

Seems to me this came up before, but not recently that I can find 
anything in my mail archive.  The archive site doesn't seem to have a 
single list of titles, so I'd have to search each month separately .  I 
think I have a year's worth of luni mail on my PC, and checked the 
archive site back through 2009, but could not find anything except a 
discussion of cisco being blocked.

As of last friday, noon, I lost web and mail access, which goes through 
an IPCOP firewall.  Pings work, but email and web fails.

I was not home from 9:30 am till 3 PM, but by history, internet traffic 
cut off at noon.

I suppose I should reconnect my IPCOP machine.  In the past there have 
been issues where they denied a problem existed, but they fixed it after 
a few days.   Actually, EVERY problem they have caused they stonewalled, 
but did eventually fix.  That way they don't have to give a credit for a 
service outage, and can claim high uptime in their advertising.

Is there an issue with firewall computers like IPCOP or SMOOTHWALL?  
Should I set up an IP masquerade?  or will that have the same problems? 
   I have been worrying about backing up the IPCOP for a while, so I'd 
probably start all over with a different computer and partition the hard 
disk so I could back it up easily to a memory stick, and have it be a 
full time masquerade device, not originating any traffic.

Note that at this point, I can spell masquerade, but that is all.  I 
found one "how to" at tldp.org, but if somebody wants to recommend a 
better one, I would appreciate it.

The first level 1 at Comcast I talked to Friday asked if I had tried 
bypassing my router, but since pings worked, and I thought other low bit 
rate traffic, like IM was getting through, I didn't try connecting 
directly until Saturday, and it worked.  Perhaps he knew something?

Today, I have been on hold over 35 minutes so far, the level one assured 
me it would be free this time.  Friday I eventually gave up and dialed 
"1" for callback, which came almost immediately, but asked me to sign up 
for a paid "signature support" service.

Finally got through to level 2 support, they still won't talk to me 
unless I pay the for signature service.

Level 1 doesn't know anything but the mantras "shut off the modems for 
45 seconds" and "we didn't change anything"  though in the past they did 
change things, which help was ignorant of, or had outages they could not 
trace (my analog cable went out, they said that comcast had dropped  
analog, but I could pick up a free converter box...but no, it turns out 
that the signal was down for, and had been for 24 hours when I called).
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