No joke. My dad has Charter out at his business, and his modem died not too long ago, so he called them up and they came out and replaced it. This new modem had three different ethernet ports on it, and what the charter guy did was plug the router into the second, non-operative port (he was only paying for one connection anyway), and then plugged his desktop directly into the first port on this new modem. He also told my dad that he needed a "business router" and that's why the router no longer worked. Business router my foot, all he needed was someone with a brain larger than a peanut to come in and hook it up for him. I unplugged the computer, plugged it back into the router, then plugged the router into the first port of the new modem and all was well. It's just a cheap little d-link router but it works fine, he doesn't need anything more and never did.