The only thing the Bell modem should be doing is providing your ISPs service to your new router, thus one cable from the ISP to the Bell modem, and one cable from the Bell modem to your new router. Everything else would be plugged into the new router's LAN ports or connected via wifi to the new router. Internal traffic (from, say, your laptop to your networked printer), would only ever go through your new router. Anything that needed to go to the internet would go wired/wifi -> your new router -> the bell modem -> the internet

Ah, I meant grilling as in going back to scientists who redacted or withdrew publications or published results that subsequently couldn't be reproduced to determine whether the issue was fear of publishing an uninteresting result, some kind of consensus pressure, or actual experimental error that was only found later. Not so much looking for misconduct.

You can't prove that we're all not dead and in some kind of weird purgatory right now. Maybe FamilyRadio.com was right!

ok, so you have fiber-to-the-home, that SFP connector (the white cable) is a fiber optic line. So in a perfect world you have white cable -> sfp, then bell WAN port -> new router WAN port, then your new router will do its own wifi (disable the bell's), and plug the blue ethernet into one of the new router's LAN ports so that the new router is managing the ethernet for your home devices. That's in an ideal world. In reality, depending on how that Bell device is set up and what kind of new router you get it might be WAN->WAN but it might also be WAN->LAN or even LAN->LAN

@imminent_nebula@lemmy.ca wait, do you have 2 devices from your ISP? what kind(s) are they (make/model) - they're all a bit different - and what kind of service do you have (cable, fiber, 5g)? Normally in this config (for a cable setup, for example), you'd have:

             cable modem                          LAN Router  
| ISP | -> | [cable jack] [ethernet jack] | -> | [WAN jack] [LAN jacks]  |

If there's a WAN port that isn't actually used to connect that device to the ISP's network, it's possible it can be used to pass the traffic through (the alternative is that device might be used on more than one kind of network that does use the WAN port). But typically when you can't use the device like a bridge, you'd have the ethernet jack from that device going to... maybe the WAN port or maybe a LAN port on your new router (depends on what it supports out-of-the-box or whether you'd be flashing it with something like OpenWRT)

The main gotcha is whether your ISP’s device can be put into “bridge mode”, which basically tells it to just act like a modem and pass the traffic along to your new router without doing anything to it. This makes everything just work, so if you self-host any services or do online gaming there won’t be issues. Otherwise, you’ll have to configure your ISP’s device to be as dumb and permissive as possible - disable DHCP so it’s not trying to give your devices IP addresses (this is your new router’s job now), and ideally put your new router into a DMZ (demilitarized zone, basically a part of your LAN that isn’t managed) so that again your new router can do all of the fancy routing and firewall stuff.

I do this sometimes to test my own mental fortitude. Haven't gotten sucked down any rabbit holes lately, but some ragebait is still pretty effective on me, even when I know what it's doing. It's like some evil placebo effect.

Strong solarpunk vibes

In UX/UI design there’s frequently a tradeoff between accessibility and utility/use rate. For example, that “click here to download guide” label might be too big for a button, might not work in a responsive design, or might not fit the design so it gets converted to a text link, and now the click through rate has dropped by 50%.

Literally. For 30 years. It’s a life-imitates-art moment.

Oh it’s a no-brainer then, stick with the laptop. You’re lucky, a lot of them won’t even power on without the battery connected these days.

The only reason to not use the laptop is because there is some concern that the battery in a laptop plugged in for years on end with constant operation might swell up and explode/catch fire. This is possible, but extremely rare. I’ve had a 10-year-old laptop plugged in exclusively for the last 6 and it’s been fine. YMMV. That aside, the Pentium-D was intel’s least efficient series by a large margin, which is part of the reason your idle is high.