Home Networking Woes

How is it possible that in this age of streamlined (or all too often outright dumbed-down) user interfaces and beginner-friendly operating systems, setting up your home network still feels like such an impenetrable task to the average layman such as myself?

We have a large swath of an entire generation approaching adulthood without the necessary skills to navigate even a run-of-the-mill computer operating system (what is a... fi-le-ex-plo-rer?), yet managing your networking device remains a dizzying barrage of odd acronyms and unintuitive metaphors (this NAT is cone-shaped!).

Oh, but the routers and modems, they come with handy quick-start guides! Beautifully illustrated with thoughtful graphic designs, they create an impression of a technophile utopia where man and machine (or home electronics) live in perfect harmony and symbiosis. You're not fooling anyone! (Was that convincing?)

Even if you were lulled by the promise of a quick-start, you shall be brought back to the harsh reality by a slow-fix, for things get hairy the very instant something goes awry or doesn't just work. I do have a vague understanding of IP and MAC addresses, of DHCP and IPV protocols, of NATs and MTUs — and even then, half the time I do not know what the hell I am doing trying to fix something.

We the people, as a collective, are very reliant on home networks. While most people primarily use mobile data whilst out-and-about, wireless home networks are ubiquitous in both domestic and commercial settings. Using it is ordinary and mundane — configuring it is unfathomable and alien.

Case in point: I just recently experienced a brief downtime on my optical fiber setup. While the fiber connection was quickly restored, my router wasn't. It instead resorted to giving me its very best HAL-9000 impression, proclaiming my own failure with an unflinching red light.

I tried every possible recommended solution, even reverting to factory settings multiple times. Despite all my efforts, the router kept insisting that the ethernet cable wasn't plugged in, even after double and triple checking the connections and that the cable did, in fact, output a working internet connection. I was damn near ready to take the router back to the store after only a couple months of use, convinced that the thing had somehow self-destructed during the brief outage.

In the end, I did manage to resolve the issue, luckily (emphasis on lucky). Of note is how I more or less stumbled my way into the solution: with nothing to lose at that point, I was just noodling around with random settings when I suddenly realised that the cursed machine had, entirely on its own, reverted a MAC address setting in a way that rendered it altogether inoperable. How and why it had done so, I will probably never know.

I doubt that even the store personnel would have been able to diagnose the problem based on my description. Just imagining that kind of customer service hell gives me shivers.

Again: why are home networking (more like notworking, eh?) solutions still so convoluted and cumbersome, that you require either the help of a semi-professional or just plain dumb luck in order to resolve a very basic issue with connection downtime? Why is troubleshooting a simple router so unnecessarily complicated, when even my grandparents are supposed to be able to use one?

Be better! Give me my touch screen GUI, my step-by-step instructions with fancy animated transitions, my how-to videos with royalty-free elevator music! Out with the jargon, in with the focus-group-tested condescension! This time, I don't want to learn — I just want it to work.