The Problem with your Home’s Internet

The internet you get at home is not really designed for work. For that matter, the internet you get at work probably isn’t designed for work either. The problem is your modem. Modem is made-up word, shortened from modulator-demodulator. Basically, a modem translates a signal from one transmission form into a form that your computer can use.

How Broadband Internet Started

Before the latter part of the 90s, the way to connect to the internet was primarily through dial-up services over your phone line. AOL and CompuServe dominated the market and there were a ton of no-frills dial-up companies. Connecting to the internet required a modem that screeched and squawked as it established a connection. In case you were born after 1995, check out this vid that will be nostalgic to us seniors.

Then 3rd parties started using phone lines in a different way with a different kind of modem, and thus was born ADSL. Then, still in the 90’s, the cable companies caught on and they started using coaxial cable lines, that previously only provided a television signal, to also provide an internet connection. The cable modem was a different thing altogether. Not long after that, the telephone companies bought all the 3rd party internet providers, and the options for internet were ADLS from your telco and coax from your cable company.

Most recently another option for internet is fibre-optic cable. And just in case somebody feels left out, there are various forms of wireless internet connections, including radio wave, satellite, and cellular signal. All with a different kind of modem.

The Firewall and Router are Born

In the dial-up days, firewalls were mostly non-existent; people weren’t on the internet long enough and getting hacked enough to care. But that changed with the permanently connected ADSL and coax modems, now you could get hacked, so you needed a firewall in between your computer and the internet. Moreover, dialup was barely enough for one computer to get email, let alone share internet with a network, but once broadband came along, now we could share the internet connection with a company or a household. Now we needed a router.

So we had our modem (provided by the internet service provider) connected to a router (aka firewall) that was connected to a hub, and everybody connected to that hub had internet. Magic! No screeching or squawking, just blessed 7 Mbps second down, vs 56 kbps.

Multiple Personalities

In the last ten years, your ISP started combining the modem, router, and hub function into one device. Why not? After all, everybody needs all of them. Not only do we need those three, but we all seem to need WiFi. So now the “modem” does all four functions. Is it a modem? It is a firewall? It is a router? My kids think it is a WiFi.

Child: Dad, the WiFi is down. I thought you were a computer expert!
Me: Precision of language, please. The WiFi happens to be just fine, the modulator-demodulator portion of the device that is connected to our internet service provider is not receiving a signal from said service provider.
Child: Dad! I can’t play Fortnite!
Me: …

And like a human with multiple personalities, your “modem” doesn’t do any of them particularly well.

The Case for the Device Divorce

While a jack-of-all-trades will get the job done, we all know that the plumber, electrician, HVAC tech, and carpenter are going to do the job better faster and it will probably cost more. The same goes for modem, firewall, network switch, and wireless access point. But most people don’t want to spend $500 on all those devices when the free modem supplied by their ISP will get the job done. I get it. I get it until the job isn’t getting done!

If you can’t get connected to the office VPN, get a device divorce. If your WiFi sucks in certain rooms of the house, get a device divorce. If you need more security and control, get a device divorce. The problem with your internet is the modem.