On 10 Jan 2002 at 7:19, joseph marty wrote:

> guys dismantled my two computer home network. They were called because
> the plug on the cable modem allowed the cat 5 cable to wiggle and
> disconnect from the Internet.  I was at work, but they told my wife
> that because there is power to the router/switchbox I cannot use it.
> They told her it would screw up my connection and others on the
> network.  It worked fine aside from the loose plug on the modem.  Has
> anyone heard of such a thing, or is this, as I suspect, something they
> are trained to say so that you won't be able to connect your own LAN
> and not pay for extra IPs?

They obviously meant that it might disturb your connection and others on their network, not your
home network.  On a properly designed public network, such as an ISP's, nothing within reason
which could accidentally happen on a single node should damage other parts of the network.
The techies at my ISP like to make similar remarks, but I think that they are told to discourage us
from home networking just to reduce support calls, not for any more sinister reason.

As to problems on your home network interfering with your own Internet connection, most
definitely.  I sometimes have a home network, and it sometimes causes very mysterious and
sudden disturbances with my Internet connection, though my configurations are very simple and
each works fine when the other is disabled.  They involve almost random connection problems
and error messages, and neither I with my pretty laminated A+ and Network+ cards nor the ISP
techies ISP can ever make any sense out of them.  They occur only when I try to run the home
network using various configurations of TCP/IP.  That's one of the many reasons why, unlike
some people who know more than I do on this list, I'm a big fan of NetBEUI for home networks.
Thank you.
David Jonathan Justman

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