Thanks for the response. The initial response I received from the electric company was that homeowners are responsible for their connections. It just seems crazy that a tree falling in one yard would result in significant damage to three other houses.
Unless there was some clear negligence involved (e.g. obviously dead tree that the neighbor failed to remove), neighbors aren’t liable for Acts of God that cause damage to your yard, even if the object came from the neighbor’s yard.
Makes sense, thanks. I once had a patio umbrella get picked up by the wind and break some tiles on a neighbor’s roof, but I think the fault was more with me failing to secure the umbrella than it was with the wind.
My house was build in 1937 and has lasted this long. My thinking is that if an earthquake does that much damage to my house, the rest of Los Angeles / California is going to also be flattened and actually getting paid will be a crapshoot, AND that will probably be the least of my worries.
We have ATT wifi. We have no trouble connecting, and when connected the signal is generally good based on my limited spot checks. However we get dropped a lot, multiple times a day, when we’re on zoom calls. Finally got an ATT person on the phone and he tried to imply our computers were too far from the router/modem/whatever it’s called. However it’s all on one floor, the signal only has to go through two walls to get to our laptops. Laptops are around 20-25 feet away.
Then he said we need a “wi-fi extender” which would concentrate/focus our signal somehow; this would be an added $10 per month forever. There was no option to buy the extender outright.
We do have a ton of signals from other houses floating around; my laptop picks up ten or fifteen possible wifi networks to join. The ATT guy tried to imply this was the problem. I don’t know why that would cause ours to disconnect though.
Is ATT just trying to avoid upgrading my router, or is this a thing (needing a wi-fi booster)? Has anyone else had to use a wifi extender/booster? I don’t know that this would solve the dropped connections.
Given the layout you describe it doesn’t sound like it should be necessary, but I would buy a mesh router before paying AT&T another $10/mo. My house has a very funky and spread-out layout and the mesh router solved all our issues. I have an old Orbi system that works great, looks like the newest basic model is only $75, which is a fraction of what I paid several years ago.
I use my own modem and wifi router. If you’re paying a fee to rent them from your provider there is no reason not to go that route. I do have an extender for WiFi since our modem and router are in a corner basement room and signal to the opposite side of the house upstairs was sketchy.
I was looking at the mesh option because from my limited reading, the extender is mainly for when you have a trouble spot in your house. We get disconnects all the time, even with the tv which is almost line of sight to the router. So I’m not really sure the signal strength is the problem
One article said this about extenders: “But you’re likely to notice a significant drop in throughput speeds in the “extended” network. That’s in part because an extender relies on the same frequency band as the router itself.”
This was exactly me at my old apt. At the current one I don’t reeeally need the extender so haven’t used it, but I still feel very strongly that you should just buy your own hardware. A cheap modem/router setup will pay for itself with a year or so of rental avoidance, and they usually last longer than that.
If/when I ever buy a home I will probably go the mesh route.
You can check your upload/download speeds using your phone just by googling Network Speed Test, which may give you more concrete data on where your troublespots are, if there are any.
Yeah I meant I would just purchase my own router and modem if you have to pay a monthly fee for those. Nice units can be had for reasonable prices (like $100-200). Obviously you can go wild with high end stuff but I’ve never needed those in my situations.
I use a TP Link modem and router with their Tether line for the extender. It’s a little mini router looking thing that plugs into a wall power outlet in the middle of my house and provides a great signal to the previous trouble spots. Network speed isn’t an issue with it.