..........The Bellsouth tech said there is definitely no modem and no interface box. This is a fiber optic setup, although wiring to the house is copper.
It is really beyond the scope of your thread to deal with the finer points of just what a modem is, but I'll ramble on a bit.
Wikipedia is not the best source to cite - but the opening paragraph is pretty good:
A modem (modulator-demodulator) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data. Modems can be used over any means of transmitting analog signals, from light emitting diodes to radio. The most familiar example is a voice band modem that turns the digital data of a personal computer into modulated electrical signals in the voice frequency range of a telephone channel. These signals can be transmitted over telephone lines and demodulated by another modem at the receiver side to recover the digital data.
There are many other (simpler) definitions for modem on the web, but most technical definitions include the fact there is an
analog signal involved. Light is most definitely an analog signal. And BellSouth holds some of the earliest patents on how to modulate and switch it within a fiber optic network. Notice the date (and low speeds) on
these fiber optic modems.
Starting around 2005/2006, papers started talking about digital modulation vs. the analog modulation that had been the norm for years. Once you start turning the light off and on, it could be argued that there is no more analog carrier being modulated and thus the box that turns the digitized light into digitized electricity is not a modem. I don't care one way or the other what you call the box. If you are interested,
page 7 of this PDF shows what one form of digital modulation looks like.
No matter what you call it - there must be a box somewhere that turns the light in the fiber into electronic data that your computer can use.
Called my service provider and we set up a new connection. Now it works. I'd like to know what caused this, but am no closer to that answer....
I'm surprised that it ever worked without you first releasing the IP that the router had. My "optical modem" associates my router's mac address with the IP address that it assigns to the router. It will not talk to a computer unless the router releases the IP or I cycle the power to the "optical modem".
I'm not sure what changed between the last time that you connected your computer directly to the "optical modem" and this time. Maybe the firmware on the "optical modem" was updated.
