Today’s essay is written by Mike Azzara (mike@azzara.com). I’ve known Mike for 18 years, during which time we both started numerous publications while at CMP Media. Despite his network industry expertise dating back to the mid-1980s, and the award-wining work for building Web media businesses, his greatest fear in life continues to be changing his home network — in particular, anything that might effect his wireless HP All-In-One printer, which takes approximately 36 hours to re-connect to the network whenever things go awry. (I can attest to this, being Mike’s go-to guy whenever he needs a network upgrade.) Having “left” CMP, Mike’s currently accepting consulting assignments in the areas he’s good at–online media business strategy and product development. Take it away, Mike.
I’ve been dreading replacing my cable modem with the latest model, because it requires two of the most painful types of activities that I’ve ever endured in my near half-century of life experience: making a change (any change!) to my home network and actually interacting with my cable company.
But the reason I’m writing this is that this particular experience was delightful – not exactly plug-and-play, which I hoped, but fast and easy. Here’s what happened:
I called Cablevision’s customer service line and after the usual automated attendant idiocy (why do the choices NEVER match what I need) I talked to a live person on the line that was very helpful. He assured me that yes, there was a newer cable modem, the Motorola SBV-5120, that would do a much faster and more reliable job than my original SBV-4200, and gosh, not only that but it would make me eligible for additional services that I could pay more money for! All I had to do was bring my old modem to the nearest Cablevision store and swap it for the new one. For no charge, yet.
I unplugged the four lines (VoIP phone, Ethernet to my router, cable in, power), and trucked it on over to the store where, sure enough, once they satisfied themselves as to my identity, they handed me an SBV- 5120 in a box for free. I got it home, plugged everything back into it in the basement, went upstairs and turned on the computer.
It was when I fired up my browser that I became really impressed. Instead of taking me to Google (my home page) I was presented with Cablevision’s Optimum Online page with the headline, “Please Register your Modem.” The page wanted me to use the installation CD that came in the box, but since I didn’t feel like getting up from my desk to get it I clicked in the place for people who didn’t have their installation CD. That brought me to a page where I filled in my account number from my bill, my last name, and the phone number associated with my account.
That brought me to a page that said “Please choose which service(s) you want to install now and click “yes” to proceed.” It offered just the one choice, “Swap Existing Modem?” so I clicked yes. The next page listed the MAC address of the new modem, and asked me to “choose from the list below” which old modem MAC address I was swapping out. Luckily, again, there was just the one choice, so I didn’t need to worry about what the actual MAC address was, and I clicked “Swap Modem.” The next page asked me to please wait while it registered the modem, and it chugged away at the problem for about 90 seconds before finishing by popping up a button labeled “Proceed.”
I was congratulated on the next page, which suggested I check for dial tone and then call a friend or family member. I did; two out of my three triplets picked up the phone in various other rooms of the house and chuckled when they realized it was Dad calling from the home office. Clicking “Proceed” there brought me to a page with the following content:
“You’re almost done! Just one more step to go! You will need to download and install Optimum Online netguide, an essential feature of your Optimum Online and Optimum Voice service. Netguide will help you fix connectivity problems, find indispensable tools to improve your online experience, and quickly access My Optimum Voice for voicemail and call detail records.”
I figured this was non-essential, and probably dangerous, so ignored this, clicked “home” and was off and networking!
I can’t imagine why any of that was necessary – Cablevision’s system could have figured it all out on its own without asking me any questions. That process should be fully automatic. But on the other hand it worked, it worked fast, it was simple, and all the answers were obvious. I was done in about three minutes, most of which was spent doing something else while Cablevision chugged away on the swap problem.
Like I said at the outset, compared with any previous change I’ve ever made to the “plumbing” of my home network, this was like, well, being invited up to Angelina Jolie’s room after the first date. My previous interaction with Cablevision (installing two cablecards in a Series 3 TiVo) began in December and the saga still isn’t 100 percent complete. And lucky for me, since Strom has moved out of state and he can’t do house calls on my network anymore.
This experience was a beacon of hope – a much-needed beacon, since my new Linksys WRT150N router is scheduled to arrive from Amazon tomorrow!
One reader writes to tell his tale of woe:
So I finally bit the bullet and — responding to the letter Comcast sent
out 2 months ago to swap my aging modem (FREE!) for a new up-to-date
modem — I drove the 30 minutes to the “convenient” local office. I get
there and THEN they first inform me that, since I owned my modem, the
swap is free for only 1 year, and then will cost me a $3/month add’l charge.
I bit the bullet again and accepted the proposition. Got home, hooked
it up, the right lights went on, and booted up the PC. Sends me to the
Comcast page to install the software (probably just to register my new
modem with them I suspect). Clicked on the button and…nothing. Tried
again, still nothing.
Switched to Plan B: pop the CD in launch the software myself. It loads,
successfully checks my connection and the modem itself, and then…gets
stuck on some undecipherable error message. On to Plan C: call Comcast.
After chatting and holding for about 15 minutes the guy tells me he has
pushed out the s/w install and that I should try connecting to the
internet again. No luck. He tells me I need to shutdown, disconnect
modem and router, and re-start. My slow PC takes about 5 mins to
re-boot but finally everything seems to work.
Bottom line though: Comcast thus tricked me (since original letter made
no mention of the $3/month add’l charge) into swapping my free modem for
a leased one. Plus the physical swap was anything but seamless when I
got home.
I hate Comcast.
Addendum: I emailed the CEO (Brian_Roberts@comcast.com, if you ever need
it!) and got a quick response from one of his minions by email and then
later in the day by phone. She of course couldn’t do anything about
stopping the eventual monthly cable modem rental charge but she did
offer to give me the introductory promotional rate for internet
connection for 12 months, even though I’m an existing customer.
–DB, outside of Philadelphia
Mike sends the following PS:
Turns out my voice mail needed to be deactivated and reactivated, and
no one told me that. I wonder how many messages I missed between then
and today?
OTOH, in this process I learned about a cool new feature … I always
had notification of voice messages sent to me email box, with a wav
file attached. But the new feature is they will send a notification
to my cell phone that I VM has been recorded for the home office
line. No wav file, I have to call in for the VM, but still cool to be
alerted, IMHO. — Mike
Another dispatch from Mike today:
I tried to crimp my own cables today. The first one was a disaster: the throughput difference between my cable and the store-bought cable is MAJOR. Mine stinks. I should have tested the original, though, before I cut off the old end and put the new module
on (this was my first practice cable). Sigh.
My second cable worked much better. I tested the original cable this time, before cutting off one of its modules. The cable worked great, and the file I downloaded settled down to a rate of about 220 kb/second. After I cut it and attached my new module, it worked just as well if not better – the file I downloaded settled down to a rate of around 230/240 kb/second. Interestingly, when I checked the original connector to determine what standard – 568A or B — the cable used, I discovered that it used neither but instead had its own variation. I matched that variation, and it worked fine.
Thus inspired, I went ahead and installed an Ethernet jack in Ariel’s room, and found and strung the three cat5 cables in the basement over to where the router is located before breaking for the evening to make dinner. (You may recall, when my house was renovated in the summer of 1997, I had cat5 strung from each kids’ bedroom into the basement, but the cable was never terminated on either end). I have no way of telling which cable in the basement goes to which room, because they were never labeled. Although, each end in the basement has one, two, or three knots in it. A great code, if you remember the order of the rooms, but I have no clue. So my next step is to attach the connectors to each of the cables in the basement, and then plug each one into the router in turn. I’ll take my laptop up to Ariel’s room and plug in there, and when I get a connection I’ll know I’ve found the right cable. I’m going to guess it’s the three-knot cable, and try that one first, since Ariel is third in birth order. 🙂
Of course, if I did a poor job punching down the jack in her room, I may never get a connection up there. I’m also worried about the length of the run, which is long, and the condition of the cable. It looks like it got beat up a bit in the basement over the course of the last decade. The outer casing is broken in a couple spots. Ah well, it’ll be interesting, fun, and I’m sure very frustrating. 🙂
Today’s report from Mike’s cable diary:
Well, the first cable link failed. No network connection. I am going
to try the next cable. Meanwhile, I got a great WiFi link from
Ariel’s room. Hmmm.
The second cable failed. Luckily, I’ve been doing cardio at the gym,
so all this going up and down two flights of stairs from the top
floor to the basement isn’t even winding me.
Eureka! Third time’s a charm! 🙂 I am writing (and sending) this
email from Ariel’s room, where the third cable I tried has actually
worked! Not only that, but the whole thing is fast as hell! I
downloaded a file — WHILE streaming from YouTube (the other file
download rates I quoted you were the only movement on the network at
the time) and never saw the rate dip below 230 kb/second. Definitely
faster than the wifi connection I just had (though just for drill
…. ). So I guess I nailed that punchdown on the RJ45 jack on my
first try, and this room is all wired! I can do the other rooms now,
and their cables should be easier to find.
Of course, relating to other points I’ve heard you mention, there is
real difficulty in the carpentry aspects of installations. For
instance, my wife still doesn’t want the kids to be on the computer
in their private space. So she really wants the computer moved into
the center hall OUTSIDE the kids’ rooms. In order to do that, I have
to cut through the wall from either Ariel’s, or Michael’s rooms and
turn the jacks around and mount them in the hallway wall (I didn’t
have the foresight in 1997 to run cat5 into the hallway, even though
the end of the hallway is a very nice 9-X-5 space with a big window
and window seat. But luckily, both their rooms’ jacks are mounted on
the wall each room shares with the hall). I am dreading that work,
and mess, although it doesn’t seem like much work, and also seems
easy enough. But I know, I know, oh God how I know, once you open a
wall …. anything can go wrong, and usually does.
Latest dispatch from the networking front lines, from Sept. 1 edition:
Today I installed the new Linksys WRT150N, replacing an ancient Linksys (model BEFSR41). Based on previous experience, I didn’t bother to power down anything (as the instructions insisted), and it all just worked. The biggest problem I had was maneuvering the power cords for the Linksys and the cable modem so that they looked neat. One complaint: My last router installation taught me these things usually need a firmware upgrade right after installation. So when I registered the product, I expected it to tell me whether or not mine did. The registration process itself wasn’t too terrible. But once I entered my “router version” (the Linksys site didn’t bother to use the term firmware at this point. And it only offered a drop down to choose between versions 1.0 and 1.1; meanwhile, my router claimed to be firmware version 1.00.5, so I chose 1.0) I was presented with a cryptic list of “downloads” available for my device, including two different firmware versions — “1.01.9 7/11/2007” and “1.0.02 7/31/2007”. I felt stuck … do I download these? Are they a waste of time, and I’m better off hunting for 1.1? With all their billions, Cisco should FULLY automate this for consumers. When I get to that screen a dialog should pop up saying, we checked your router and it has slightly outdated firmware. The new version, blahdy blah, should be installed. Please click install …
Once installed, and with my wireless network renamed, I walked around the house and got connection everywhere — even on the second floor in the far corner of the master bedroom, the farthest possible point away from the router, on the top shelf of a metal file cabinet in the basement. But the connection in the master bedroom was very low, and not good enough to stream youtube video without glitches. (stops, pauses, etc.). The connection is very good or excellent in the “family club” as we call the space where we intend to set up the kids’ network, which is more or less two floors directly above the router. Still, I have cat5 in the wall and I’m going to use it!
So the next step was to install the RJ45 jack in the family club wall. The nearest wire is in my son Michael’s room. I was very worried about the mess I would make turning that wire around to come out in the hallway instead of his room, having to cut through a wall and all. But as luck would have it, I had the foresight to use a plastic electric box when I installed the phone and Ethernet wire 10 years ago, so a 1/2-inch boring bit on the end of an electric drill made short work of the problem, with minimal mess. I drilled right through the exact center of the rear of the box, using slight pressure so that it went slowly and cleanly; then once through the box, I bored gently through the wallboard on the other side. Oh, and I should point out that there was an electric outlet located about a foot and a half away, and I measured that location very carefully on both sides of the wall to make sure my bit wouldn’t hit remotely near any electricity cable. Then I slid about a foot of the cat5 through the two holes (luckily there was that much slack). On the other side, I used a utility knife to enlarge the hole in the wallboard enough to fit the back end of the jack. I connected up the jack, put it in its wall covering, screwed that right into the wallboard (what the hell) and all that’s left was testing the connection. I plugged BOTH remaining wires (having already labeled the one that went to Ariel’s room) into the new router, and had Michael stand by in the basement while I went upstairs and plugged my laptop into the jack. Mike’s instructions were to remove one of the wires when I called down; if my laptop read out “A network cable is unplugged” then I’d tell him to switch the wires; if it didn’t, I’d tell him that’s it. We got it right on the first try. And again, fast connectivity.
Through this process I’ve been collecting up old cat5 10 and 15 footers from around the house, where they have been left over the years as different computers came and went, or migrated from wired to wireless. I’ve noticed that compared with at least a couple of these, MY homemade connections are much better and neater. According to the web page where I learned how to terminate cat5 to modules and jacks, neatness counts … it’s very important because the twists in the four twisted pairs have to be just so to get maximum throughput. So I’m very proud of my throughput. Here’s the link to the page from which I learned to terminate cat5 – http://www.swhowto.com/CAT5_Ch1.htm – believe me, if I could do it, anyone can.
Last, I used an ancient 8-port Linksys Workgroup Hub that I found in the basement (no doubt installed on one of Strom’s many “dinner” visits, back when there were three computers networked in the basement) to create a workgroup network in the office that my wife and I share. But today I only wired it all up and it worked without difficulty, as expected. But it slowed down the network, because it’s just a 10 Mbps hub, not a 10/100 like the rest of the network. The real test will come day after tomorrow, when I attempt to network my wife’s computer and mine for backup and printer sharing purposes. And then after the new rug for the Family Club arrives next week, I’ll need another workgroup hub and then we move the Gateway XP machine upstairs and network it with the iMac G5 and a printer to create the kids’ network. Although, long term, (when next I land a real job again) my plan is to buy Macs for all three kids and then re-imagine the Gateway as a file and backup server.
Of course, all this leaves the kids without a machine in the basement to use for IM when they are hanging out down there with their friends, watching TV or playing video games. They cherish that connection to their wide-area friends network, so I’m going to have to figure something out. I’ve heard of cheap IM-only computers, but I don’t remember when or where. I’ll have to search it out, when the time comes.
Just found this site while researching Motorola SBV modems. A note for Mike and others who are trying to ID (unpowered) cables. Simply twist the wires together at one end and then use a continuity tester at the othre end. If you’ve got the right cable, it’ll light up. If you don’t know what a Continuity Tester is, its just a 3v flashlight where you close the circuit with an aligator clip wire and a probe wire.
Cheers,
Laird