My internet has become unreliable twice shortly after my ISP sent technicians to work on equipment at the curb for a nearby customer. The following day, my connection was extremely spotty. When I contacted the ISP, the technician blamed my router and tried to sell me one of their own.
The first time, I replaced my older router with a Netgear Nighthawk, and everything worked normally until this latest incident. The router is less than a year old and had no problems before the neighborhood work.
Can an ISP remotely disable or deliberately make third-party routers incompatible, or is it more likely that their maintenance exposed a signal, provisioning, modem, or wiring problem?
4 Answers
It would be unusual and unnecessary for them to send a crew out just to disable third-party routers. If they wanted to restrict equipment, they could do it remotely. Compare notes with neighbors and document the dates, outages, signal readings, and technician visits. If the ISP won't investigate the line, check whether another provider is available, since local broadband choices can be limited.
Try separating the modem problem from the Wi-Fi problem. Connect a computer directly to the modem, if your ISP allows it, and test whether the connection still drops. Also check whether the modem itself is ISP-approved and correctly provisioned. If you rent an ISP gateway and put your own mesh system behind it, make sure the gateway is in bridge mode; otherwise you can end up with double NAT and two separate wireless networks. None of that requires buying their router, though.
A truck at the curb is probably working on the shared line, tap, node, or another customer's connection. If your service gets worse afterward, ask the ISP to test signal levels, upstream noise, packet loss, and errors at the modem and at the outside demarcation point. A technician blaming the Wi-Fi router does not rule out a bad line or incorrect provisioning.
They can't physically destroy your router through the cable connection, but the ISP can change provisioning, authentication, supported modem configurations, or service parameters. They may also associate service with a particular modem or hardware address. That said, a normal maintenance change is more likely to cause a signal or configuration problem than to intentionally target your personal router.
That timing is what makes it feel suspicious. It happened once before, and both times they immediately pushed their own rental router after the neighborhood work.