I just had a visit from a courteous and helpful (really) Comcast guy that was quite illuminating. You see, a few months ago I had a new cable modem installed, since my old one was freezing up every few minutes. The guy who came then happened to have an extra modem in his van of the correct spec and installed it right away. Everything was fine until a week or two ago, when I started losing connection in the morning consistently and finding the internet moving at an unbelievably slow pace — we’re talking 1KB/s here, and I pay for the fattest pipe Comcast offers in the area. So I called it in, and today the guy came and told me that the Terayon modem I’d just recently had installed was a piece of garbage. Uh, okay?
It turns out that all the techs recognize this modem as junk. It craps out on everyone the way it crapped out on me, and the guy who came today said he flat out refuses to install any. Yet the higher-ups insist that some techs do so, due to a backup of Terayons in the warehouse. It’s not that this surprises me or is some big scoop — I expect this kind of behavior from telecoms — but you should probably look under your desk and make sure you don’t have one of these duds.
Mine looked like the one at right; I forgot to note the model number, but if you had it installed in the last year and it’s blue, it’s probably one of these. Call Comcast right now and set up a date for it to be replaced. Even the guy I talked to on the phone spoke of this thing with distaste, so I’m guessing it won’t be a lot of trouble. If they ask, say you’re having connection problems — even if you aren’t, you probably will be in a month or two.