I’ve been down

and up and down and up and down. About 5 months ago a tree fell on the lines at the end of the road missing the power but stretching the phone and cable without breaking them. The line crews came out and retensioned the wires. Now when it rains, our Comcast Internet connection seems flaky. Coincidence? Maybe.

After several calls and 2 tech visits to the house I may have figured out the problem. On one phone call a wise technician suggested that "your splitter might be going bad" I finally spent $15 on a really nice ChannelPlus 2514a splitter/combiner and went into the attic only to find I don’t have a splitter. Turns out the splitter is in the sealed box on the outside of the house which the last technician kindly left unlocked for me. During his call he proclaimed that "your signal is too good!" and switched the Internet to the -7.5db lead putting the television on the -3.5db lead. Tech magic. Discussions with the tech and a couple of other people led me to belief I’d been taken by Shields on the splitter.

This morning the Internet connection was down worse than ever. I got frustrated and may a support call for a visit on Tuesday morning. With nothing else to do I went outside an replaced the old generic splitter with the new ChannelPlus splitter and in minutes the Internet was back and working seemlessly. Apparently, splitters do go bad and you do get what you pay for!

Now, do I replace my RCA cable modem with a Motorola come Tuesday morning?