Internet problems. Not again. Not after everything I went through before, I thought.

The internet was down, all right. The tubes to my house must have been clogged. I had no choice, I had to call customer service.

I hate calling customer service.

I told the robot on the other end what the skinny was. He seemed sympathetic, but I suppose he was programmed to seem that way. Then I held. I held for what seemed like an eternity, playing solitaire and listening to jazz on speakerphone. Then she answered.

An accent, I thought. Fantastic. Why do they always have to have accents? Hers was of indeterminate origin. I think she said her name was Nina.

I told her my beef. She asked questions. It was obvious she was parroting the text from her computer screen verbatim. My patience was thin. I told her all about the dropped packets, the poor connection quality. She asked me to reboot my system. I faked it.

Predictably, she went through her little play, reading her lines dutifully. She asked if she could get into that behemoth of plastic and circuit boards in my living room they call a gateway. I gave her permission. Then, she told me her little plan. She wanted to change the wireless channel on the router.

“Please, don’t.” It was more of a command than a request. “I live in an apartment complex with heavy wireless traffic, and if you do that, you’ll mess up my reception. The problem is between the gateway and your end. I guarantee you, there’s nothing wrong with my wireless.”

She wrote down my story, said she’d keep it handy in case I needed to call again. She’d better hope I don’t, I thought.

A couple of days later, the problems started up again. I felt that anger boiling up, churning. Then I realize something.

All that time I’d been doing ping checks to see my dropped packets…did I ever check the ping to the gateway? I fixated on my command prompt and typed the words.

Ping 192.168.1.254 –n 25

38% packet loss.

All that time, I’d been sure I had set up my wireless network properly. What I hadn’t counted on was the new neighbors, and a neighborhood full of 2Wire routers that blasted radio waves four times stronger than a normal router. The new kids on the block had steamrolled over my wireless, and probably didn’t even know they had done it.

I changed the wireless channel to 11.

The problems were gone. 0% packet loss to the gateway. 0ms average ping time.

I had a drink.