apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

There was a big storm here Sat and the electricity flashed off and my son said there was an explosion like a transformer blew. I don't now if that had anything to do with it. After re-booting multiple times someone at Vonage said it was a system problem on Sunday and not just my phone and they would have it fixed soon. They didn't fix mine, The phone has been dead but I can make outgoing calls by plugging into the fax number. Incoming calls are immediately picked up by the answering service and I can hear mesages by opening e-mail clips. I have repeatedly shut down and reconnected the whole system multiple times, it feels like that's all I've done for two days as directed by people who are in India. Finally someone who was supposed to be a higher up tech person said the router could be the problem. I bought a new one and it has a tape over the ports saying watch the CD. The CD says to disconnect the modem from the computer but there is no connection from the computer. What if I just shut is all off, unplug it and plug everything back like it was to start with. All that detailed sequential plugging and unplugging is feeling like some kind of voodoo magic. Will I ruin everything if I I do something out of order and don't wait 5 minutes for this or 10 seconds for that or do it out of order somehow. I'm feeling crazy from all the repeats. What if I just switch all the connections from the old one to the new one?

If I understand your question correctly, it seems that you've gone and bought yourself a new router. All you need to do is the following: turn off the computer, the router, and the modem. Hook up the modem to the wall, and the computer and your vonage box to your new router. Turn it all back on and wait a little while so that the modem can connect to the network.
If you're still having problems, there may be something wrong with the modem.
Don't worry, you won't ruin anything by doing it out of order. :)

Thank you aghman. I decided to enjoy this not humid day, do some outdoor work and get away from electronics a bit.MY new quandary: when I switch everything, will the new router be connected to Vonage or will they recognize it is as new and not a linked one (The Linksys) The Vonage people kept asking me for the number on my Linksys, but I couldn't see it. They called the Linksys, the Vonage Device. Husband, checking in from parental health crisis, said we got the old Linksys free from Vonage. They did not offer to replace it when tech man pronounced it at fault. I will wait 'til tonight to resume dealing with plugs and Vonage. But now I will have to add this branch of AT to my required reading. It was the one I never checked before.