You only dreamed of this day! The two biggest network supply companies facing off in an epic battle over my Internet service. The winner rose up out of the dust, to save all that we hold dear…. or at least let me add Facebook updates.
Let’s go back to the start; when I first set up the Internet connection here. Charter Communications (with their outsourced customer service) insisted that they can do nothing more than make sure my Motorola modem was correctly set up. Legal stuff right? Whatever, I was not pleased that they didn’t take the extra step to make sure I don’t find a new ISP. So I set up the wireless Linksys router I have, everything worked (or seemed to work) fine. Then at random times the connection dropped. These occurrences continued until today, when the entire connection was lost. Oh joy!
One frustrating phone call with a Charter Communications rep (who had a certain prejudice towards Linux!) and we confirmed it was just the router which was causing the complete failure. Another phone call to Linksys and it sounds like I’m on the phone with the same person, not very pleasant. Not only does Linksys refuse to help me unless I pay them for tech support; their configuration screen also looks like it was designed by NASA scientists and would confuse any Harvard graduate. So, being the ambitious person that I am, I decide to upgrade the router’s firmware. It seemed to go quite nicely, but didn’t resolve the problem one bit. At this point I am trying not to rip out my hair….
Desprate to make something work I plug in my Netgear router that happens to be laying around. I finally was greeted by an automated setup which held hands perfectly with the modem and asked me for no more than a couple questions (what would I like my wifi passphrase to be, and if I wanted coke or pepsi– kidding!). Finally after 3 hours of insanity, Netgear saved my saneness and has held the connection strong ever since. THANK YOU NETGEAR!
As a side note, my PCI wifi card is the LAST thing I’m EVER buying from Linksys. They lost a good customer just because they’re greedy. I hope Netgear dominates the networking business for decades to come!
July 30th
i agree whole heartedly. i thought there was something wrong with my service provider(also charter
)
then i upgraded my router…netgear. things were a little better. i figured why not go all in? purchased a netgear wireless adapter. night and day. a netgear devotee is born.
August 1st
Glad to hear that, congrats Brad!