So… I have Comcast cable Internet service at home, and a Motorola SB6120 cable modem that I own myself. I’m not sure if it is Comcast, the modem, the combination of the two, or something else altogether… but, every now and then, the modem goes into a funk and the Internet stops working, and the only way to fix it is to power-cycle the modem.
This doesn’t happen terribly often, maybe once a month or so. (Occasionally it will happen, say, twice in one week and thus cause me to think about it a little more.) Power-cycling the modem is not a big deal, but I do access stuff that I have at home remotely, so if the connection dies while I am at work or away someplace, I can’t fix it until I return home.
It would be great if there was a way for a computer at the house to, say, periodically check and see if the Internet is working and if it is not, somehow reset the modem. So, I did some searching on the topic, and… it turns out that it is possible to do this, and in fact, it is pretty simple.