I realize that this might sound trivial, but have you tried bending the
locking tab out a bit in order to have it apply a bit more force on the
connector when plugged in.  You didn't say wether the cable wiggles up and
down or left to right.  This might tighten the cable in the socket.

As far as the techies (using the term very loosely here) goes, they were
feeding you a line.  Our cable company allows up to 2 computers to be
connected to the modem without any routers.  If we want more, they will
then suggest getting a 4 port router.  They won't support the connection
beyond the cable modem, but they don't mind the extra equipment.  Since a
router removes the requirement for them to provide additional IP address,
they aren't concerned about it.

At 20:46 1/10/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Thing is, my home network and internet connection were working fine. It
>would get disconnected from the Internet if you jiggled the Cat 5 cable
>plugged into the cable modem.  I just wanted them to either fix or replace
>the modem so the cable would be secure when plugged in.  Everything else
>worked fine.  What I had done as a temporary fix was to twisty tie the cat
>5 to the very stiff and stable incoming internet cable.  I should have
>just left that rather than have them come here when I wasn't
>here.  Considering the number of people on this list who have routers, if
>what those techies said was true, we should be bringing all the cable
>Internet networks down.  I don't think they would have said that to me,
>but rather were preying on my wife's general lack of knowledge.  If home
>networks were so bad, why do companies sell so many router/switchboxes?  I
>have never ever heard that argument for giving up a home network.

Mark C. Barron
www.tnp.ca/mbarron

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