> Also, rebooting is offensive to me as a programmer. Kernel updates and memory leaks are the only reason you need to reboot. How absolutely shitty is modem firmware that the ISP actually spent the time to build this reboot system out??(Never mind that I personally don't feel like I've ever had a modem/isp actually problem solved by rebooting)

Why is rebooting offensive to you? State is hard; resetting your system to know state can fix many issues.

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40212967

> (Never mind that I personally don't feel like I've ever had a modem/isp actually problem solved by rebooting)

I had problems solved several times by rebooting modem. One time it was "reboot modem and access point in proper order", me naively rebooting them both at the same time didn't help, only phone support solved this problem.

> Also, rebooting is offensive to me as a programmer.

Hmm, I might be desensitivised from too much programming in erlang. It's implied that your program will encounter bugs or strange data and parts WILL be restarted, better account for that and plan on what to do on restart of each small part at the start of writing your program.

> So, basically there doesn't seem to be any phone technical support (with a human), at all.

Because it's cheaper. Those who don't have support can offer lower prices. When people search for trinkets, they only have information about what is supported, there is no good information about quality of device and support, high price also not always means better support. SO they just go for lower price and hope not to suffer too much.

>If things still aren't working, try our online support chat

>So, basically there doesn't seem to be any phone technical support (with a human), at all.

I wish everything had support chat. IMO it's much less hassle than having to call. It's usually trivial to get through the first layer of automated support and get a human on the line.

Why did you switch? Can't have been their reputation for support.

> Also, rebooting is offensive to me as a programmer. Kernel updates and memory leaks are the only reason you need to reboot.

This surprises me - as a programmer you should realise that reboots can often help. Cache invalidation is one of the notoriously hard CS problems and an awful lot of systems will start fresh on reboot.

> (Never mind that I personally don't feel like I've ever had a modem/isp actually problem solved by rebooting)

My current ISP is better, but my previous ISP cycled IP addresses at 2am (and lost connectivity for about 30 seconds at the same time) on a Friday night. I would semi-frequently be up playing games at that hour, and it was about 50/50 as to whether devices on my network would survive the blip. Rebooting the router had a 100% success rate.

I currently (unfortunately) have a google wifi mesh system. It works great, except about once a month it reports that absolutely everything is fine, all tests pass from my mobile device, but my laptop has no internet connectivity. Rebooting fixes it just fine.

> How absolutely shitty is modem firmware that the ISP actually spent the time to build this reboot system out?

Firmware is still software, like it or lump it. Modem firmware has been shitty for a long time. A major ISP [0] in the UK had an issue with their firmware that caused massive latency spikes under load. Alsom Power loss happens sometimes. The modem/router has to be able to turn on in the first place, so a "reboot" is just going through that process again. It's attempting to return to a "last known good".

[0] https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Forum-Archive/Hub-3-Com...