This all started because I wanted to pay less for TV and it turned into quite a bit of lost time yesterday, leading to a lesson learned about a remote work network at home.
Recently, in an effort to cut costs, we decided to get rid of our AT&T Uverse cable package and move to a streaming channel for our TV. We already subscribe to too many streaming channels, but what’s one more, right? We did the free trial for a couple of different streaming services before choosing one as we wanted to make sure it met our needs first.
Once we did that, I called AT&T to cancel the cable package. They did so without any issue (especially since they own the streaming service we selected). Then, we discussed our current Internet package and whether we wanted to increase our bandwidth. The technician noticed that our gateway was the same one we got when we moved into this house a few years ago, so they offered for me to try an equipment swap as that could yield as much as a “50% bandwidth improvement” over the old equipment (for free, no less). So, I decided to try that first.
I should note that I work at home, so more than 95% of my work is performed over the remote work network at home. Then again, am I really a remote employee when there is no office other than the home office?
Anyway, I received the gateway on Tuesday and began swapping it in for the old one – a process that “could take up to 30 minutes”. After a variety of issues – a couple of them user error on my part, a couple of them issues on the AT&T side, I finally got the gateway up and running two hours later.
The fun was only beginning then as I proceeded to learn a lesson about a remote work network at home!
Because the new router was a new network (and couldn’t be changed), I then had to proceed to reconnect every device in the house to the new network. That included:
- Three laptops, including current and old work laptop (which I sometimes use as a travel laptop)
- One gaming computer which is our son’s computer
- Four iPhones, one for each member of the family
- Three iPads, one for each member of the family (except me, sadly)
- One Amazon Echo (our main “Alexa”) and one Echo Dot (our daughter uses)
- One Nest thermostat (good thing that I haven’t gotten around to installing the upstairs one yet!)
- One Xbox and One PS4 (our son plays a lot of video games!)
- Two Ring cameras (front door and back door), and
- Three Amazon Fire Sticks (through which we now stream all our TV)
I’m sure that some of you have an easy way around the challenge here, may know of a way we could have kept the same network ID and credentials, etc. But (for me, anyway) the exercise was a lesson learned in what it takes to make changes in a household today, with several mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. It’s a lot to update.
BTW, the speed improvement so far? Negligible. Turned out my “old” equipment wasn’t so old after all. 😉
So, what do you think? Have you made changes to your home network recently and do you use it for work as well? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
P.S.: The person in the picture above isn’t me.
Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.