Well, my DSL internet has been down 3 times in 3 days. Coincidentally, there have been 3 Cincinnati Bell trucks parked for 4 days now near the "SLIC" that serves the neighborhood (SLIC is Subcriber Line Interface, an old AT&T term).
Bell has erected a tent over the existing SLIC, and one over a spot that used to be empty. Methinks Bell has finally had enough of their telephone customers canceling all wireline services, and going with Cell for phone, and cable for internet. About time.
But wait, there's more! The Linksys 802.11G wireless router has to be power-cycled to get the internet connection re-established. This is becoming unacceptable. This router is in constant communication with the WIN XP feed machine and a WIN7 machine. There has been a fix for this kind of problem since the microprocesser was developed. It is called a "Watchdog" or "Deadman" timer. Upon a system restart, a subroutine runs, "kicking the timer" every second or more often. The timer is "dumb" logic stuff by design. If it does not get a "kick" from the processor, it takes the processor chip's "reset" line low, and the whole machine reboots. And why can't Cisco/Linksys figure this out? I don't know. If anyone knows of a router with a deadman/watchdog timer, I would love to hear about it.
Jerry814
