all systems go?
so i’ve been struggling this week with finally getting dsl service at home, so that i can cease ripping off one or another of my neighbors (whose wireless connections are named things like “default” and taunt my laptop every time i sit on the porch or pass an open window), and become a fully-serviced, law-abiding member of the wireless community. i resisted paying the full cost of internet service while such tantalizing options were available because i am living by myself, i am like 6 blocks from school or the public library, and i don’t have a land line anymore so it would be ridiculously more because i would have to pay for phone service AND dsl, which is offensive.
nevertheless, the more i found myself doing things like holding my computer over my head whenever i needed to push “send”, and the more my little rules like “don’t download big files” and “don’t buy things” started to wear on me, i started to think that i should just give up the ghost and think about other options. i really didn’t feel like there were any, though, so i was quite delighted when my brain came up with the amazingly obvious solution of asking the guy who lives in the other half of my duplex if i could just get dsl on his line and set up a wireless network. i had long ago dismissed the idea of splitting the service with him because he is a self-proclaimed luddite and i wasn’t even sure that he had a computer, but prices got low enough that i felt like i could handle the whole dsl cost if i didn’t have to pay for the phone line, so i tossed the idea his way, and he said it sounded great.
turns out he Does have a computer, and maybe sometimes he might even like to search for something or whatever (that’s my paraphrase of his response), so it’s a win-win situation.
great news!
but we had several setbacks that i will not go into right now, and several months passed.
i began to lose hope.
then, quite suddenly, a couple of weeks ago everything seemed to be falling into place: the order was placed, the service was on, the router was purchased…
and the phone started cutting out and generally misbehaving.
sigh
so we have been fiddling with it for a week and a half to try and figure it out.
tonight we finally got everything set up and, if you’re reading this, it has been working a little bit longer than it has taken me to write this post, so hooray!!
but…
it’s flaky.
the phone is still making a noise that jim describes as “like whalesong,” and the dsl signal seems to cut in and out with no real consideration to the fact that it’s supposed to be “always-on” (internet connections these days… yeesh! no respect!)
so the verdict’s still out.
the leading theory at the moment, championed by david and nodded to by both myself and jim, is that the wiring in the house is just really shitty. when they first turned the service on they had to send a guy out to test it and he was like “whoa… this line is old” and he put in a new one from the pole to the house, and apparently put in a whole new outside box.
but inside the house is another matter, and we’re worried that it might just not be hip to the new dsl jive, in which case sbc will have to come check it out, and who knows what sort of telco-related madness will ensue…
i’m sure i’ll keep you posted.
for now, though, i will continue to have my own celebration of newfound internet legitimacy, in hopes that it will not be revoked prematurely.
here goes the test…
April 14th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
[…] 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, though, so i decided to exercise my role as a spoiled consumer and just buy a new 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 somewhat 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. […]