Good things to know about cable modems

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

... and in other news, local auto dealers have instituted a
new  program,  in  which  they  send people to the homes of
customers whose cars' warranties  have  expired.   They  do
various  kinds of physical damage to the cars, and then the
dealer charges the customer for the repairs.

(If it's your own modem, I wonder how far you might get  if
you charge them with vandalism?  ;-)

| Since everyone loves to share cable modem stories, tonight AT&T felt the
| need to send a DOCSIS/firmware/whatever update down the line to my modem,
| and unforunately, it's didn't take.  Instead, it left the modem useless
| with the 5 lights flashing sequentially despite repeated powercycles and
| resets.  After scheduling to have a tech come out tomorrow morning at 9
| and being informed that if the problem was my equipment (a 5-month-old RCA
| cable modem), I would be charged 50 bucks in addition to the cost of
| paying for a leased modem.  Going back through the manual, I found the
| factory reset combination (hold reset while turning the power on and
| continue to hold for 5-6 seconds), and low and behold, it came back up
| connected, presumably with the new update in place.  In conclusion, the
| factory reset is cheaper than a new modem and a tech visit.  I suppose 15
| minutes of downtime since installation 143 days ago is acceptable, though.
|
| Brian J. Conway