Well, the final answer is in: The modem was bad all along–the signal was “weak,” whatever that means, but once a good signal was obtained, the modem refused to work so a new (different) modem was installed and all seems to be well. I just got off the phone with the veteranarian husband of my veterinarian niece and he reported that he went out and bought one of the surge protectors mentioned by Stinkpalm above—I have never used one where the cable plugs into the surge protector, although I have used such for phone lines. Anyway, it seems to be working okay now. One more question if you guys will indulge me: AOL says the my sister DOES NOT need a firewall IF she uses nothing but AOL. If she uses IE, AOL will not be responsible if she gets hacked. So, what do we think of NOT having ZoneAlarm with a cable modem?
Thanks for all the input.