1. My connection is slow, intermittent, or not working at all, what should I do?

 

The first thing that we recommend for you to try is to power-cycle your equipment.  This simple procedure fixes nearly 90% of all problems associated with our service.  To power-cycle, you need to locate where our cable comes into your home/business.  On the inside of your house/business, this cable plugs into a junction box that allows it to provide power to our radio.  The box will be small (smaller than a deck of cards usually), white or grey in color, and have a single red or green light at the top or two green lights off to one side.  The type and color of the junction box is dependant only on the type of radio that you have.  They all work the same though.  One of the cables that plugs into this junction box is a thin rounded power cable.  You should pull this cable out from the junction box and leave it powered down for four to five minutes.  Once that time has passed, plug it back in and give it a try.

 

If you find yourself having to power-cycle too often (more than twice weekly) or if power-cycling doesn’t help, your radio may be malfunctioning.  We would like for you to give us a call so that we can get you back up and working again.

 

2. Power-cycling my Radio didn’t help, is there anything else I can do?

 

Another possible reason behind slow transfer rates or not getting any connection could be your router (if you have one).  What you may want to try is to power-cycle your router.  To do this you will want to look at the back of your router.  Far to one side (usually) there will be a thin rounded black power cable.  If you unplug it and let the router sit for four to five minutes, when you plug it back in, you may have a connection again.

 

3. Why do I need to power-cycle at all?

 

Most computer related equipment is generally very susceptible to power fluctuations.  Power fluctuations are a normal part of power generation.  Extreme spikes in power will blow fuses in your house. Extreme lulls in power will cause lights to dim or blink.  Generally weak surges and lulls don’t cause much harm, but over time, they can cause our radios to stop working correctly.  When you let the equipment rest, without power, for the four to five minutes that we suggest, it lets the radio start back up nearly like new.

 

4. When I run speed tests and ping tests, I get poor results, is there anything that I can do about it?

 

There are many considerations to take into account when running speed tests on any connection.  The main consideration is network usage at the moment.  If everyone is trying to use the internet at the same time, some slow-down should be expected.  We are constantly trying to make sure that everyone of our customers is getting the maximum amount of bandwidth that they should, but some load balancing is always necessary.

 

Also, you may want to take into account any other computers in the house that may be connecting to the internet at the same time.  File sharing software and automatically updating software can also cause erroneous speed tests.

 

Finally, keep track of where you are running the test from.  A test run from server in Chicago will certainly report better speeds than a test run from a server in Europe or Australia.

 

We have found that the most accurate test come from using the Mozilla Firefox browser to run the tests themselves.  

 

5. I am getting a new PC, is there anything that I need to connect my new PC in place of my old PC?

 

This depends on your home setup.  If you have a router, you should just be able to plug in and go.  If you are directly connected to our junction box, however, you will need to enter your static IP address.  If you don’t have that, please give us a call and we will walk you through putting that information into your computer.

 

6. I want another RCOM email address, how can I get one?

 

The number of email addresses that we allow per account depends on the service plan that you are using.

 

Basic – 2 E-mail Accounts

Standard and Extreme – 8 E-mail Accounts

 

If you would like to get another account created or would like to get more accounts, please give us a call and we will be happy to help you out, but there may be a charge for the extra accounts.

 

7. My WEP key doesn’t work when I connect to it with an Apple Airport card, why?

 

A: The problem is based on a missing bit of information.  On all WEP keys there should be a header that precedes the actual key.  In most cases, the hardware driver adds this header.  In the case of Airport cards, the driver doesn’t.  In short, you need to add ‘0x’ to the front of your WEP key when entering it in order for the router to recognize it as the right key.