A Tale Of Two Modems
It Was The Most Mundane of Times, And Not So Quite Worst of Times...
It was late night and foggy outside. We just got home from the
Super Bowl party. I felt liked a stuff pigeon. It was rewarding
considering the game itself wasn't that good. One could write
multiple articles about how that Super Bowl was one of the lamest
games ever.
Anyway, after getting home, I laid down on my bed. I was tired and exhausted from being a pigeon in human form. My brother, Matt, informed me that the Internet was down. Getting on my phone and connecting to the 4G network, the outage map provided by downdetector.com for our Internet provider, Spectrum, showed that there was many outages nationwide. After checking, I rested for the rest of the night.
The Internet still had massive issues the next day. The connection would go on and off throughout. During the periods were there was connectivity, Matt confirmed the massive Internet shortages. Despite the fact that the Super Bowl game wasn't going to be streamed online, many clever users on various sites (many of them with known malware) streamed the game anyway, which placed a heavy load on the network, which resulted in various issues.
The outage map confirmed this as well. Not only that, the issues with the Internet got worse that particular day because there was a massive windstorm which affected the power grid. In some areas, the affection of power from the storm caused power surges in certain areas. Hardware that wasn't connected to a surge protector became bricks and coasters as the equipment bit the dust due to electrical spikes due to the storm.
Things didn't get any better as the week continued. Millions flooding the Internet as a result of the State Of The Union address would cause further disruptions. The outage map continued to show outages nationwide, and in our particular area in South Texas. Forget the undocumented immigration issue. Not having Internet is the real problem!
The following days after, little changed. Some days was better than others, but things were starting to get very critical. Bills needed to be paid online soon. Also, I was following behind on my blogging. I couldn't catch up with the news either. BBC withdraw is a real thing. Matters didn't improve, as confirmed by the outage map, which continued to show problems nationwide. Hopes that the problem would fix itself diminished as things weren't getting any better.
Going into the second week, the Internet failed altogether. The modern would connect, work for a few minutes, and then restart. It entered into a endless look. Not having Internet meant seeing a throwback to pre-Internet days. One can only have so much data on 4G network with data caps. That bandwidth became gold!
How Does One Get The News Without Internet?
A nuclear war could have occurred and I would have been the last person in the world to find out about it. I didn't know about the Emergency Declaration in full detail until 3 days after it was declared! At this point, one could respond with: Why didn't you watch the news on TV! At that point, I could respond with "What is this, 1997 again!"
News-on-demand from any device online changed the way one consumes news. No longer is one a slave to the idiot box. One longer does one have to conform to the mentality of going to a particular room in a house at a certain time to watch a particular channel in order to get the news. This worked when one didn't know any better. But with the proliferation of Internet and the decentralization of the news, going back to getting information in this manner is very archaic.
Not only that, broadcast news is very sensationalist in nature. News is sold, and not reported. The viewer seen as a statistic in the sea of marketing demographics, instead of a valuable audience member. There's a perceived bias as well. All the major news sources conform to there corporate bias. From there, the demographics determine the political bias. Bias is bias, regardless of whether one consumes there news with Liberal slants from MSNBC, Conservative bias of Fox News, or CNN's corporate bias. I don't want or need any of it. Give me my BBC, Frontline, NPR, Snopes, and PolitiFact!
Regardless of bias, because the news is sold to maximize profits, its reported in a way that makes it acceptable to those watching it. As such, some parts of a report will go into great detail, while other parts will be ignored altogether. What gets reported depends on the demographic of that particular audience that the network is trying to reach. Not conspiracy, but just plain-old Capitalism at work.
Many of those get there news from the TV look down upon those who get there news online, but yet, that audience is perhaps the most uninformed of viewers. Internet news can be truthful and objective if one gets it from reliable sources though. This though could be a massive issue on Facebook as well. Its estimated that as many as 40% of Internet users get there news from Facebook on a daily basis. No wonder fake news is out of control. A system not designed to stream news is used as such.
Facebook is perhaps the worst place to get news from as its a cesspool of misinformation. Facebook can be compared to a drug though. Many acknowledge its flaws, but yet, continue embrace conspiracy theory rubbish, sensationalist articles and click-bait, and outrage pieces. Someone trying to fulfill there addiction to rubbish I guess.
The decentralization of the news has come with pro's and con's. One is much more likely to encounter fake news and misinformation. At the same time, one is also much more likely see a story in a different perspective or getting it much more raw, and get details that would have been largely ignored by American corporate media. Thoughts that were conjured up as the lack of internet meant either getting sensationalist crap or no news at all!
I mostly avoided American corporate news
during the outage. I like the 90's, but I wasn't going back to it!
Being restricted to a couple of sources of information is one of the
few things I don't miss about that decade!
Something Needs To Get Done Now!
After a few more days of this endless loop, I finally called Spectrum's tech support. After getting through the automated rubbish, I was able to talk to a technician. The call was very helpful to the point where even I was impressed. The problem was quickly diagnosed.
We had out cable modem since the tail-end of 2008. It's now 2019. After dealing with the connectivity issues that was a result of the Super Bowl and that windstorm, the technicians updated the list of supported modems that could connect to there network. Our particular unit had been out of production for a couple of years now. It wasn't supported anymore.
The modem would connect to the network, and there would be Internet for about 30 seconds to 1 minute. When it phoned home, the supported device database showed that the particular model it wasn't supported anymore, and as such, the modem would disconnect. After disconnecting, the modem would then reconnect back to the network, only to disconnect a minute later. which It resulted in a endless loop. The modem needed to be traded in.
Me and my brother went the next day to the Spectrum office. Things went simple enough. No complaints. The visit was very quick too. We were only there for 30 minutes. I heard that those who traded in there dead equipment after the wind storm were there for three hours. We were issued a new modem, with a reduction in monthly rates as well. We were still on the same data plan that was in place since the Time Warner Cable days. After getting it set-up, the Internet was flowing like water out of a faucet. I couldn't have been a happier camper.
One thing crossed my mind though. If the support database was updated and many customers might have obsolete modems, then how come Spectrum didn't let them (and me or my brother Matt) know of these changes? Would they know which customers have these modems? Also, one wonders how many users are still dealing with this issue?
Regardless though, I'm just glad the issue got resolved in a productive manner. I'm getting my BBC and PBS fix again. One can never get to much Frontline! I can read those interesting articles from The Guardian again. Blog articles are getting done as well, including the one you're reading right now. Bills are getting paid as well and Facebook post are occurring. Awesome YouTube videos are being watched. It's 2019 again!
Our cable modem is connected to a WiFi router. I've noticed that the speeds and connectivity of the WiFi have significantly improved as well. Performance downstairs hasn't been the best in the world before the upgrade. The WiFi connection was spotty at best, and Chromecast would constantly fail. That was before the Internet issues too! Since the upgrade, Chromecast is running much better, as most videos streamed from YouTube start at 720 or 1080 without first start in standard definition and then going up. YouTube is my TV! With that said, there was a bump in Internet speeds, and I'm reaping the reward! Despite this though, our WiFi router is aged as well, so this will be upgraded within a couple of weeks as well. The speeds can be better still!
Spectrum outage map
DOWNDETECTOR.COM
SPECTRUM OUTAGE: CHANNELS, INTERNET UNAVAILABLE ACROSS THE COUNTRY
NEWSWEEK
WWW.NEWSWEEK.COM
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