The progress bar didn’t move. The page went white. Then the router’s LEDs performed a death dance: Power green, PON off, LOS red, LAN off, WAN off. Then nothing. Just a single, slow heartbeat blink from the Power LED.

He checked the system log. The last entry before the flash read: [WARN] remote management heartbeat sent to 10.10.10.254:8080 — the ISP’s hidden server. After the flash? [INFO] TR-069 acl blocked. Heartbeat: none.

PON: solid green. LAN1: flickering like a trapped firefly.

At 2:17 PM, he held his breath.

He downloaded the 14.2 MB file. The download finished with a soft ding that sounded like a challenge.