Saturday, December 13, 2008

Finally back on the Internet

About nine days ago, my home Internet access became erratic and unstable. At first, I thought this was because I was experimenting with new firmware (Tomato) on my wireless router. Unfortunately, the problem persisted even after I eliminated that piece of equipment from the situation.

After multiple support phone calls to my ISP, replacing the cable modem and the coaxial cable that connects the modem to the walljack, a technician discovered the problem was a bad filter in the locked cable box outside my house. I guess my old cable modem still works, but since my ISP tracks/blocks modems by hardware addresses, it's not like I can go back to using it.

It's been a little frustrating-- being sick & not having reliable web access.

The upside, at least, is with this new Motorola Surfboard modem I can access the logs, configuration, etc. and see things like my signal strength between the modem and my ISP. My previous modem was locked down (by my ISP) so you couldn't get access to that information.

I've got the wireless router (running Tomato) connected again, and it seems to be working like a champ. I'm planning to test the SSH feature out tonight.