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Had a client ask me to fix their 'internet smell' yesterday
I was at a house in Tacoma doing a setup, and the guy pointed at his router and said it was making a 'burnt plastic' smell whenever he downloaded big files. I mean, I sniffed around and told him routers don't really work like that. Turns out his space heater's power strip was right under the desk and the cheap strip was overheating from the load. Took about 20 minutes to reroute the cables and swap the strip. Anyone else run into a problem where the client's description was way off but still led you to the real issue?
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mark7236mo ago
Man, that's a classic. Gotta love when the wrong clue still gets you to the crime scene. So when he said "internet smell," did you have any other wild guesses before you found the power strip, or was that your first hunch?
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rosek446mo ago
Oh man, "wild guesses" is putting it nicely. I was fully sniffing the router like a weirdo before I looked down.
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maryh965mo ago
@mark723 the power strip was honestly my last guess after I'd already checked the modem, the ethernet ports, and even the wall outlet like an idiot. I was this close to calling my ISP about a "phantom frequency smell" before I looked down. I think my favorite wrong theory was that the cat had peed on something important and I just hadn't found it yet. The internet smell thing really threw me because what does that even smell like? burnt plastic and regret I guess.
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