The good old “unplug the modem” trick doesn’t seem to work anymore?

For years, when home users with cable modems would experience an outage, slowness or problems in general, the first thing to do would be to unplug the cable modem.  Many people have found that this no longer works for them.

It turns out that many service providers who offer phone service in addition to Internet, have been providing their customers with modems that contain battery backups.  These batteries are included to allow people to make phone calls in the event of a power outage.  Simply unplugging the cable modem no longer does the trick because it doesn’t actually power cycle the modem.  In order to power cycle the modem, the battery first needs to be removed and then pulling the power cable should do the trick.  Most modems with batteries will have a battery indicator light as shown in the image below.

Don’t forget to reboot your router once the cable modem comes back up!