If you have a wireless router, but not through the broadband company

[jdj]

should you keep it a secret from the company you get your service from? I let the cat out of the bag with the tech support guy today, and he seemed kind of miffed. My sister's computer science teacher set it up for us.

I want to get outlook express for this computer that is on wireless, but I am afraid after the way the guy acted today.

Is it like stealing cable or something?

[mondo joe]

1. When I bought mine I didn't tell the broadbannd company right away

But it came up later and was no big deal.

They do seem to really want to know what equipment you're using.

[jdj]

3. he freaked me out, he said well it looks like you have some

signal loss (so I checked and it said my signal strength was excellent) and then he started on about "I'm gonna have to send someone out there to check why you are losing your signal as a maintenance call, blah, blah, blah, so I told him that no one would be home today or tommorrow and we would call them when it was convenient...and then for the longest time I couldn't get back on the internet.

[Dookus]

2. As long as you're paying for your service

they don't care if you use a wireless router. Now if you were "borrowing" somebody else's internet connection, then yeah, that's like stealing cable.

[jdj]

4. The main computer is hooked up to them, and the router is

feeding my computer, does that mean I am stealing from the main computer? Sorry to be stupid, I just want to make sure I understand this.

[mondo joe]

5. If you steal from your own computer it's not really stealing.

[Dookus]

6. That's fine....

they wouldn't have any problem with that.

[jojo54]

7. My broadband company wants to know

only because if they can't fix the problem within 5 minutes, they say "contact the manufacturer of your router". They have time limits per phone call (I know, I worked there for a short time). They change my ID number each week, so if I can't get online, I just reset the modem and router.

[Nite Owl]

8. Just had a long tech call

with Roadrunner last week. She said that they don't care they are just not going to help you fix it if something is wrong with the setup or the router. Two hour call, I was up to level three it seems.

[barackmyworld]

9. Sometimes it can violate your contract

Because it allows a lot of people to get on your one internet connection. If it's not password protected, that means a lot of random people can use it too. We can't use wireless routers here at school because it violates the ISP's contract.

[TOhioLiberal]

10. I used to work tech support...

for a well-hated company. Anyway, we didn't care if the customer had a router. The only reason the 'Do you have a router' question was asked was so we could tell the customer we don't support it, and hook the modem to one computer. Fixed the problem about 50% of the time. Then they'd get the 'contact the router manufacturer for support, and thank you for calling C*mc*st.'