My ISP has been pestering me lately, claiming that my equipment is outdated, and I am not taking full advantage of the higher data rates available on my current Internet plan. I was skeptical, as always, that this was another ploy to sell me less for more – just how bad could my 14-year-old modem/router really be? I finally caved in, and on a recent Friday morning I told my wife that our Internet would be down for about an hour while I set about installing the new WiFi mesh system.
When I called the ISP’s 800 number to register the new equipment, I sent them a screen shot with Model, Serial Number and MAC address for the modem to avoid errors. It took several attempts before they claimed victory. They had found my box, the install would soon be complete, and we would be connected to the world once again. Except that we weren’t.
Assuming that the Internet coax was now live, I turned next to tech support for the new hardware. Those of us who have done these installs understand that each step begins with the warning “this process may take a while.” After a lengthy online session with hardware tech support, they finally concluded that the problem must be with the ISP. I was about to explain why that could not be true when the “outage” notice arrived on my phone. The estimated time to restore service was 4:20 pm – then 7:20 pm – then 11:20 pm. When I awoke the next morning, there was another message, confirmed by my neighbor, that the Internet service had been restored.
