Beware, Tech Talk

Starting a few months back, I had been having some trouble with my cable modem. It would lose connectivity every 5 or 10 minutes, then it would come back online for 5 or 10 more, and so on. I called the cable company and they sent a guy out to fix me up. I thought he'd fixed my problem, but the next day it was back. I was looking online at my cable companys tech support site and saw a place to send in an email for help, so I did that. I even specified something like "please dont send me back generic tech support tips like unplugging the cable modem and plugging it back in because I've done all that, multiple times". And of course when I got there response back it was a big list of things like "try unplugging your cable modem and plugging it back in". Anyway I responded to that email, overflowing with sarcasm and frustration, and got a response back. "We've upgraded our equipment in your area. If you have an older cable modem it might not meet our standards anymore, and most have trouble staying connected". Ok now we're getting somewhere. Then a few days later, I found my cable companies tech support site also had one of those "chat with tech support live". So I did. And they gave me about the same response, try a new cable modem. So I bought a Motorola SB5120 Surfboard Cable Modem. I was excited to hook it up and be done with my connection problems. So I hooked it up, it came online...for about 5 minutes. Then it disconnected, and I was back to my offline/online scenario. And it did it for about 3 days. I was getting really frustrated and thinking of different scenarios to try, like moving my cable modem directly to where the cable comes into the house to bypass any of the splitting going on. But then it started working...and has worked ever since. Go figure.