Maintaining a Internet Connection

If you are doing any online business or even just email, having a solid DSL or Cable connection is paramount.  Over 2 weeks ago my DSL modem went down.  I had the modem box for about 9 months before it fried itself.  I was even able to pull out the receipt where that charge was billed to me, so I thought I would be able to give AT&T a call and get a new one from one of their stores.  Well, it turns out they couldn’t even verify they had sold me one to begin with.  After talking to 3 different “support” people in 3 different divisions and 3 different phone numbers I finally got the response of “those are only warranteed for 3 months, so even if we could confirm that we sold it to you, it would be way out of warrantee anyway”.  Great.  She then gave me the number to their store.  I called it, and the ONLY thing he was able to do would be to order a new modem.  Right, like I want to be without internet service for a week.  So I asked him where the nearest physical store to me was.  “I don’t have that information.”  So I ask him what types of modems I could buy from say Best Buy that would work with AT&T.  “I don’t have that information”.  Wow, thanks for wasting my time.  I end up using another computer with a connection to look up the locations of the stores and give the only one near me a call.  It was 9:59 am and they didn’t open until 10.  Arg. 

So, I go to Best Buy.  The last thing I want to do is buy another modem from AT&T for petes sake, as nobody there seems to be able to help you if it dies.  The Best Buy near us is fairly new and everytime I go in they are very helpful.  My wife and I go in and go to the computer area and are immediately asked if we would like some help.  I say sure, I need a new modem that will work with AT&T, and I would prefer not to have another Motorola since that is the one that died and I saw nothing but bad news about those machines online.  He brought me over to the modem section and unfortunately the modems were all gone.  There is another Best Buy within about 10 miles so I asked if that one would have one.  He went and checked and said the closest store that had one was about 30 miles away.  That isn’t too bad, but I didn’t really feel like driving to that other town.  He then suggested maybe a modem/router unit by NetGear.

At first I didn’t want a modem/router since I already had a wireless router & range extender set up.  The one I was already using was a “B/G” router, and this NetGear one was a “N” router.  I pretty much assumed that since it was an “N” and NetGear that it would not be compatible with my LinkSys “G” extender (and so far I have been correct).  But he then told me that the “N” goes so much further that I might not even need the extender.  I have yet to test that out though.  I ended up purtchasing the modem/router and set it all up.  The first week wasn’t so great.  I was about to return it to the store, but decided to call tech support first. 

After explaining the situation to the tech support person he walked me through some setting changes on the wireless.  I was basically losing a wireless signal frequently, and pretty much had to have my desktop on and running in order to maintain a wireless connection on my laptop.  For some reason I was also losing the DSL connection when I was on the desktop at least once a day.  The tech support from NetGear was able to troubleshoot the wireless signal easily enough, but had never heard of the dropping the connection problem so we just hoped it would correct itself with these setting changes.  The wireless now works well and I have no complaints, but the modem will still drop the signal often.

I now have taken to turning off the modem at night and then turning it on first thing in the morning hoping that this reset will maintain the connection all day long.  I am probably going to have to call NetGear again to trouble shoot the connection problem though.

Bottom line - make sure you maintain your hardware and connection.  I have seen the same things from the cable internet provider here in town.  My father-in-law has cable internet and for the first month had to reset the modem and router every morning and then several times a day.  He called them and they tweaked their line and replaced the modem and router and all seems to work pretty well now.  If you are working online or maintaining a business online, the connection is paramount.

I started writing this post soon after getting the new modem/router, but with having to troubleshoot it, not having connection sometimes, and losing a lot of time getting it set up correctly I haven’t been able to finish the post.  I am going to try the tech support one more time to see if I can’t get the dropping of the connection fixed.  All of that time could have been spent writing great content for my readers.

Johnny Optimist
The other half is full of opportunity!