rented on a monthly basis.) If you suspect a hardware failure, you have every
right to insist on a replacement.Soon after my first cable modem was installed I decided that I was dissatis-
fied with uneven speeds — the download speed seemed to vary minute by
minute. After I called to discuss the issue with the cable company, they
offered to swap one brand of DOCSIS modem for another; within five minutes
of the changeover, it was obvious that the problem had been fixed. I never
found out (and it didn’t really matter) whether the original modem had been
faulty or somehow not fully compatible with the incoming cable signal in my
office or my own computer setup.And now, four years later, as I upgraded my office to include a telephone
adapter for voice over Internet phone service, I found decreasing download
speeds and experienced some dropouts on the new phone service. I called
the cable company, and it brought me a third-generation cable modem, and
now I am communicating by keyboard and telephone at top speed. (For the
record, as I write this paragraph I am receiving an astounding 3,911 kbps in
download speed, something on the order of 100 times faster than a dial-up
modem. That’s a good thing.)238 Part IV: Failing to Communicate