my wireless router started crapping out this past sunday, though i didn’t know that it was really it’s fault until tuesday or so.
due to the unique circumstances of my current living arrangement, the router actually lives in the other half of my duplex, so i can’t just go fiddle with it at any time, which is kind of annoying, but it hasn’t really been an issue until now.
ever since we figured out those first issues with the phone line, the router has behaved perfectly, and though the dsl goes down every once in a while, i can reset it by talking to the router directly in my browser, and that has solved 95% of our problems.
this time, however, the router just stopped broadcasting altogether, so i had to go talk to it in person. i went and looked at it on monday and it took a while to figure out, because it seemed to be working just fine. i did notice, however, that when i picked it up, the lights went out, and when i shook it around, the lights came on and went out and came on and went out…
blah.

i jiggled all the cords to make sure they weren’t loose, set and reset the security settings, and basically just fiddled with one thing after another until it worked again.
and then i crossed my fingers.
it had already broken again by tuesday morning, so i decided to classify it as “technology” a là strongbad and just buy another one, because the first one had been on sale anyway so i wasn’t in very deep at all on the wireless front so far, and my work habits were completely flummoxed by having no reliable internet connection at home.

so i went to best buy on wednesday and bought a new router. last time, i had gone with netgear, and even though the early fizzling may well have been a fluke, and it behaved quite well otherwise, i decided to protest and try something different this time. i helped a random guy in the aisle figure out which 4 of the 1323 options actually contained “that thing you can get that you plug into the internet and then you can get on with your laptop without wires?” and i subtly coached him towards linksys, which he seemed to be leaning towards anyway because they made his wireless card.

i, however, was feeling somewhat rebellious, and spontaneously decided to go with belkin, because it was smaller, lighter, cheaper, and i liked the box – it had things like an estimated distance range, a simple illustration of the port layout, and happy people doing the setup process in 3 minutes while they sipped their chai.
the setup Was rather easy, i admit, but the post-setup administrative interface is actually Less approachable overall than the netgear version that i just abandoned, making it even easier to bring yet another completely unsecured wireless network into the world without a second thought.

this issue is the focus of amanda’s capstone project, so i look forward to hearing what she has to say.

in the meantime, i will enjoy my new wireless connection, and stow the old router under my bed until i decide to fiddle with it some more or someone offers me $20 for it, whichever comes first.
any takers?

This entry was posted on Friday, April 14th, 2006 at 12:38 pm and is filed under stuff i got, things i do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.