If you read manuals, you probably already know this. But apparently some cable modems—at least the model supplied to us by AT&T Broadband—react badly when placed near a wireless hub, such as my graphite AirPort Base Station. For me the problem manifested itself as dropped packets (meaning generally slow traffic) and ultimately a complete disconnect about twenty minutes after cycling the power on the cable modem. Ever since the broadband tech told me about the potential RF interference effect in the cable modem and I moved the base station further away, I’ve had no further problems—performance is back to really good.