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Tag Archives: technology
Modem Replacement Part Four
Also see parts one, two, and three.
I intentionally waited two days to write this. Let’s pick up the story from Monday.
Monday afternoon
The second technician arrived at my house and ended up replacing ALL the cabling between the utility pole and the (new) modem. Among other issues, there was water in the cable. And I don’t need to be a coaxial product marketing expert to know that water in a cable is not a good thing.
Oh yeah: coaxial. Because my internet network is NOT a fiber network. It’s a hybrid network that starts as fiber, but then becomes coaxial for “the last mile.”
And this is relevant, because even after he re-cabled everything, he said there was an amplifier issue down the street. If I had been on fiber, there would be no need for a nearby amplifier.
And no, he wasn’t talking about a Spinal Tap amplifier.
I prompted Google Gemini for an explanation of network amplifiers, but I’m not going to reprint it here. Suffice it to say that the ISP needed to perform some work, but it wasn’t customer-facing work, was apparently super-secret work, and I would never be informed when the work was done. I was then told that if I still had problems on Friday (4 days later) NOT to contact the ISP’s regular support line, but to instead call his boss directly.
The tech restarted the modem at 2:55 pm.
He left at 3:13 pm.
My wi-fi went down at 3:29 pm.
Tuesday
It had been a week since my wi-fi started failing, And since the second technician had left on Monday afternoon, the wi-fi hadn’t stayed up for more than 45 minutes at a time. I finally gave up trying.
Then I disobeyed instructions.
- Early Tuesday morning I texted “the boss.” No answer.
- Then I called the boss. No answer.
- By early afternoon I contacted my ISP, but not for customer support. I called the “Retention Department.” Yeah, the department that you call to cancel your service.
The man I spoke to had no visibility into the scheduling of our local amplifier repair, but he promised someone would call me back within the hour.
A woman called me 20 minutes later. She had no visibility into the super-secret amplifier repair schedule either.
She asked if the second technician had reported the issue to maintenance or construction. I didn’t know. Turns out this is critical information; if construction had to get involved, city permits would be required before construction could even begin. Who knows how long that would take.
But she had a solution.
- Send a third technician out.
- Have the third technician tell me whether they would report the issue to maintenance or construction.
- If it was maintenance, then the super-secret group would perform maintenance. Maybe by Friday. Maybe later.
I kept my mouth shut, but this sounded like a colossal waste of time. As you will see, it wasn’t.
After I got off the phone I made a decision. Since this problem was going to persist until the ISP fixed it—or I got a new ISP—I was going to have to work around it. So I set up a TV table in front of the love seat next to the modem, then moved my laptop to the TV table. That way if my laptop lost wi-fi I could immediately restart the modem, and hopefully my laptop soul reconnect to wi-fi and I wouldn’t lose anything.
So here’s how THAT worked out:
- Tuesday afternoon 2:01 pm: Set up laptop near the modem.
- 2:21 pm: I lost wi-fi while submitting an online form.
- 2:26 pm: After a modem restart, successfully submitted the online form.
- 2:44 pm: I lost wi-fi while in mail.
- 2:50 pm: After a modem restart, I refreshed my mail tab and everything appeared.
- 5:30 pm: By this point I had enjoyed uninterrupted wi-fi for over two hours. I had stopped working on my laptop and was writing a Bredemarket blog post on my phone (like I am doing right now).
- 5:50 pm: I lost wi-fi and restarted the modem.
- 6:03 pm: There was an election in the city of Ontario that day, so I left the house to vote.
- 6:30 pm: By the time I returned, the wi-fi was down.
A pain, but I could limp along. But by that time I was done working for the night.
Wednesday morning
After a few modem restarts during the night, I restarted it at 7:11 am and started working at 7:29. (Incidentally, I highly recommend Toggl Track.)
I got a lot of work done until 10:00 am, when I lost wi-fi while working on a file in OneDrive.
I restarted the modem and made sure OneDrive synced, then worked merrily along until losing wi-fi at 10:22 while working on a Bredemarket client PowerPoint.
I lost wi-fi again at 10:28.
And 11:09.
And 11:26.
But by that time the third technician was on his way.
Wednesday afternoon
I was under the impression that the third technician would climb the utility pole, check the signal-to-noise ratio issue on the amplifier (but he called it a node rather than an amplifier), and go from there.
But that isn’t what he did. He brought his test equipment into the house and started running the (new) modem and (new) router signals through the test equipment.
But he had some news for me.
“The node has improved already, so someone has been here.”
So the super-secret people had completed their mission. Now what?
The technician kept testing. 20 minutes later:
“Coax looking good.”
He was mostly testing in the house, but also testing in the backyard and running to his truck. Ten minutes later:
“The signal’s good.”
Eventually I noticed that he had grabbed a new modem from his truck, but I assumed it was only for testing.
By 12:59 he had to leave for his state-mandated lunch break, but before he left he restarted the modem one more time. He said he’d check it when he returned from lunch.
So I ate lunch myself, although Bredemarket is not subject to state work break requirements.
When he returned at 2 the wi-fi was still up. That’s when he told me that he HAD replaced my new modem (which the ISP store gave me a week ago) with an even newer modem (from his truck). Apparently the connection from the utility pole to the coax cable end was fine, and the connection from the Ethernet cable end to the router was fine, but the new modem itself had issues that the even newer modem didn’t have.
He left, and the wi-fi went down…
…actually it didn’t. As I write this I have enjoyed wi-fi for over 50 hours without interruption.
I even moved my laptop back to the Bredemarket world headquarters.
And if you’ve read all the way to the end of this post, this is actually the SHORT version. Trust me.
The really short version
My summary of what happened between Tuesday March 17 and Wednesday March 25 between two ISP store visits, three technician visits, and countless support chats and calls:
- 2 modem replacements 3/18 (new modem), 3/25 (even newer modem).
- 1 router replacement 3/20 (not counting my second Google router 3/19).
- 2 cable replacements 3/23 (black cable from pole to southeast corner of house, white cable from there to modem in northeast corner of house).
- 1 apparent node fix (date unknown, maybe 3/24 or 3/25) to fix signal to noise ratio SNR issue.
And yes, this started with a modem replacement and ended (hopefully) with a modem re-replacement.
You CAN Modernize…But Should You?
In the past, I have said:
“[T]he technology is easy. The business part is the difficult part.”
But Chris Burt of Biometric Update phrased it more succinctly:
“[P]olicy chases modernization”
As Burt notes, examples of policy chasing modernization include:
- Digital sovereignty, a topic of discussion with everyone from ID4Africa to an organization called the World Ethical Data Foundation. (As an aside, a Bredemarket client and I were recently discussing the pros and cons of managing digital identities in the cloud vs. peer-to-peer synchronization.)
- Cybersecurity and digital identity, a topic of discussion in government (the White House, NIST) and industry (Jordan Burris of Socure).
- Other topics, including police facial recognition policy. (Hmm…I recall that both government and vendor biometric policies were the topic of a Biometric Update guest article last year.)
All of you recall Pandora’s Box. I’ve used the story multiple times, including when discussing my creation of Bredebot and its nearly-instantaneous hallucinations. Yes, I do have “policies” regarding this “modernization,” including full disclosure.
But are policies enough?
Modem Replacement Part Three
March 27 update here.
Also see part one and part two.
For a day and a half my home Internet worked great.
Sunday morning my wi-fi started failing again, and my ISP is sending a second technician out to work on “signal issues.”
The remainder of this post is written by Google Gemini (but not as Bredebot).
- I do not have the knowledge to detect if Gemini is hallucinating, so if anything seems off please comment.
- Note how Gemini adopts a reassuring tone at the beginning of this passage, having been trained to know that someone asking such a technical question may be frustrated. It fakes emotion well.
Google Gemini on fiber network “signal issues”
(Written by Google Gemini)
It can be incredibly frustrating when your internet isn’t working and the fix feels like it’s being kicked down the road. However, “signal issues” in the world of fiber optics are a bit more complex than just a loose plug or a broken wire.
Here is the breakdown of what is happening behind the scenes and why a “balance” is necessary.
What are “Signal Issues”?
In a fiber network, data is transmitted as pulses of light through thin strands of glass. A “signal issue” occurs when that light doesn’t reach your router with the correct intensity or clarity.
Think of it like trying to read a book by flashlight from across a dark room. If the light is too dim (loss), too bright (saturation), or flickering (interference), you can’t read the words.
Common causes for signal degradation:
- Micro-bends: A fiber cable that is pinched or bent too sharply.
- Contamination: A single microscopic speck of dust on a connector can block the light path.
- Attenuation: The natural loss of light intensity as it travels over long distances or through splitters.
- Splice Failures: Where two fibers are fused together, a “cold” or imperfect weld can cause light to scatter.
Why does the line need to be “Balanced”?
Fiber networks (specifically GPON or Passive Optical Networks) are shared. One main fiber from the provider’s hub is split into many smaller branches that go to different houses.
“Balancing” is the process of ensuring that the light levels across these branches are within a specific “sweet spot.”
- Signal too weak: The light is too faint for your ONT (Optical Network Terminal) to distinguish data from background noise.
- Signal too strong: The light “blinds” the receiver (saturation), much like a camera flash being too close to your eyes.
The “Second Technician” logic
The first technician usually checks the “drop” (the line from the street to your house). If they find the signal is bad before it even hits your property, the issue is further “upstream”—likely at a splitter cabinet or a main distribution frame.
Balancing requires looking at the whole neighborhood’s light levels to ensure that fixing your signal doesn’t accidentally “starve” your neighbor’s connection or blow out their receiver.
Why it takes two visits
Often, the first tech is a residential installer who handles home wiring. The second tech is usually a network or “outside plant” technician. They have specialized equipment (like an OTDR—Optical Time-Domain Reflectometer) to “see” miles down the glass and pinpoint exactly where the light is leaking.
Modem Replacement…Didn’t Do the Trick
March 22 update here.
Sometimes tech is hell, and Tuesday to Friday were excruciatingly hellish. But if I hadn’t followed the “golden rule” on router replacement, it would have been Armageddon.
On Wednesday I wrote a post entitled “Modem Replacement” that began as follows:
“I’ve been quiet online because I haven’t been online, because of a flaky modem.”
Or so I thought.
Tuesday and Wednesday
Before I wrote the Wednesday post, my network configuration consisted of:
- A 7 year old modem provided by my Internet Service Provider (ISP).
- A 5 year old third-party router.
Wednesday’s post mentioned that I upgraded my old modem to a new one, also from my ISP.
“So hopefully I am back online.”
Nope. My problem—losing Wi-Fi after an hour and having to manually restart my modem to get it back—continued.
I tried factory resetting my router and reconfiguring it. Still lost Wi-Fi.
So I went through other steps.
Thursday and Friday morning
On Thursday morning I bought a new third-party router to replace my older one. Still didn’t work.
Then on Friday morning a tech from my ISP made a service call because the ISP detected “signal issues.”
- The tech checked my outside Internet cable and performed some fixes, including securing the cable to the house at one point. The tech also performed “balancing.”
- Then the tech asked for my ORIGINAL 7 year old ISP-provided router.
- Luckily I could find the dusty thing. However, I couldn’t remember the network password I was using 5 years ago.
- So the tech handed my third-party router back to me—which had been factory reset at some point in the process—and basically said I was on my own.
The “Golden Rule” on router replacement
So by this point I had in effect used four different routers:
- My original 5 year old third-party router.
- The same router after a factory reset.
- The new router I bought Thursday.
- The new router again, after Friday morning’s factory reset.
So how did I maintain what little was left of my sanity after all these router changes?
Simple.
Whenever I started with a new router, my first step was to change the network name and password to the ones that I had used before.
Or as Google Gemini (which I used extensively this week) phrased it:
However, there is a “Golden Rule” that will save you from having to manually reconnect every light bulb, camera, and TV in your house.
The “Golden Rule” for a Stress-Free Migration
Use the exact same Network Name (SSID) and Password as your old network.
If you do this, your devices will “see” the new router, think it’s the old one, and reconnect automatically.
This saved me a lot of time…and stress. I was stressed enough.
Later Friday morning
So let’s review what I had at this point (Friday morning).
- A brand new ISP modem, obtained Wednesday.
- A brand new third-party router, purchased Thursday and factory reset Friday morning.
- A secured and balanced outside internet cable.
- A new (Wednesday) Ethernet cable between the modem and the router.
- Very little patience.
So I got the router going, changed my SSID and password for compatibility with my devices…
…and lost Wi-Fi half an hour later.
The first thing I did was to pack up my laptop and head to my father-in-law’s house to use his Wi-Fi for three hours. I had fallen behind in my Bredemarket client work and other things, so I caught up. One of my client’s web pages needs new text, so I submitted the second draft. I also moved the onboarding process forward for a new client.
The second thing I did was to schedule a Friday afternoon appointment at my ISP’s “store.”
Friday afternoon
This was my second visit to the ISP store. My first visit was on Wednesday when I exchanged my old modem for a new one. I was a walk-in and had to wait an hour to see someone.
So for this visit I reserved the first available appointment time: 3:30.
I performed the exchange, received three conflicting answers on how to activate my new router, and headed home.
I then turned on my modem, plugged my now-ancient Ethernet cable (two days old!) into the router, turned on the router, connected to Wi-Fi via the default SSID/password, followed one of the three activation options, and changed my SSID/password (the Golden Rule!).
I then verified that I was getting expected download/upload speeds and that all my devices were connected to the new router.
30 minutes later…
…the Wi-Fi was still working.
And it was still working an hour later.
And 12 hours later.
I still have no idea why I couldn’t get things working with a new ISP modem and new third-party router. After all, the old ISP modem and old third-party router worked fine for years.
But the new ISP modem, new ISP router, and various new and balanced cables work.
Now I just have to return the new router I bought Thursday.
Oh, and my ISP offered me a better router if I changed my plan…but I’m not tackling that today. My brain needs a break.
Modem Replacement
March 21 update here.
I’ve been quiet online because I haven’t been online, because of a flaky modem.
When I hear the word “modem” I still think of screeching noises to get kilobits per second speeds. Those days are long gone, and today’s modems run quietly at hundreds of megabits per second.
Except when they don’t.
Yesterday afternoon I found myself manually restarting my modem every hour, which is not desirable. After a support call I learned that the modem was 7 years old and I could pick up a replacement.
I got the new modem early this afternoon.
Which worked…at 1 Mbps. Not as bad as the 1990s, but close enough.
Turns out I needed to activate it to get advertised speeds.
So hopefully I am back online.
What If All The Bots Suddenly Disappeared?
As technology ages it sometimes becomes less essential.
Sometimes not. A wheel is just as useful as it has ever been.
And a few people still find punch cards and floppies useful.
But some technologies are simply gone and forgotten.
But what if the technology’s disappearance is not due to age, but to simple unavailability?
For economic, political, or cultural reasons, we could wake up one morning and an entire technology could no longer exist.
How would we adjust?
New Town Road
I won’t say who said this, but I know for a fact the person believes it.
“I think too much knowledge is actually bad in tech: you’re biased.”
And this view is widely held.
“Proactive” is a Pro
Maybe this happened to you recently…say, within the last two hours.
You join a webinar that you’ve long anticipated. The host introduces the webinar, then introduces his first guest.
The first guest introduces herself.
Then…nothing.
The first guest remains on screen, smiling but not saying a thing.
We expect the host to reappear on screen to introduce the second guest, but he doesn’t.
The screen remains silent for a few more seconds.
Finally, the second guest introduces himself, and proceeds with the webinar by asking a question of the first guest.
The two guests move the webinar forward for the next few minutes, until the host reappears.
As you probably guessed, the host had technical difficulties, was booted from the webinar, and had to rejoin.
But his guests were proactive and proceeded with the webinar without a host.
Don’t wait. Act.
Don’t Pivot to Trending Topics
Don’t pivot to trending topics.
As I suspected, my “finger stop” post did not go viral.
But it’s a heck of a lot more interesting than commenting on most things.
Or writing about ANYTHING for pay.
Bredemarket doesn’t do resumes, even though people have tried to get me to do that.
Bredemarket doesn’t design websites, even though people have tried to get me to do that.
Bredemarket provides content, proposal, and analysis services to identity, biometric, and technology firms.
Not a trending sexy service.
But if you need it, you need it.
And should talk to me.
Bredemarket 