Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
A new and very dangerous security flaw has just been discovered in millions of some of the most popular cable modems in use today.
The flaw has been codenamed “Cable Haunt” and it could very well be present in YOUR cable modem.
If so, hackers can potentially exploit the flaw in your modem’s firmware to inject malicious code into your data transmissions, steal any personal or financial information that is sent or received by the modem or do one of several other malicious things – in your name!
Question from Cal: I’ve had the same Internet service through Charter for 4 years with no problems whatsoever.
But a few days ago the strangest thing started happening.
I’ll start playing a game and after exactly 3 minutes (I timed it) the Internet will disconnect and it’ll say “Attempting to reconnect”.
Every time this happens I always have to restart my computer in order to re-establish the connection.
It only does this when I’m playing a game, but it does it with every game I play. It doesn’t disconnect at all when I’m using the Internet for other things or watching Hulu.
Any idea what could be causing this?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Michelle K.: I’m the office manager for a small local insurance agency, and I need your help in finding an 8 port wired router (if they even exist).
We have a total of 6 employees who need to access the Internet though our LAN. Right now we’re using two 4 port wired routers, one connected to the cable modem and the other piggybacking off of that one.
We’ve been having some intermittent connection issues of late and we’re wanting to replace the two routers with a single 8 port wired router if at all possible. I can’t seem to find one though. The only thing I can find are 4 port routers.
If hope you can help me find an 8 port wired router. Do you have any idea where we might be able to find one? We don’t want Wi-Fi, therefore the request for a wired router.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
If you get your Internet service through Comcast, Charter or some other cable TV company, you are probably paying a hefty monthly rental fee for your cable modem. But you can save that rental fee by buying a modem of your own.
For example, if you have Comcast cable Internet, you’re probably paying $7 per month just to rent their modem. That’s $84 per year!
A better alternative in my opinion is to tell your cable company to keep their modem and buy your own!
The modem that I use and recommend is the Motorola SURFboard SBG6580 DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem and Wi-Fi N Router. (#ad)
This is an exceptional cable modem/wireless router combo that’s currently selling on Amazon for about $100. [Read more…]