Lightning

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:48 pm

was a problem for me this week.

Monday we had a big ol' lightning storm here in the Dallas area. Near constant flash boomies, right at the start of morning rush hour. Came to find out it took out some stuff. The easy-to-find issues were 1) dead cable modem and 2) one dead ethernet port on Rogue's machine. Had a spare NIC so 2) was an easy fix. The modem shoulda been easy. Went to Fry's, found my choices were basically Linksys, Dlink, and Zoom. The Zoom has a 5-yr warranty and cost 15-20 bux less than the competition. And I've had Zoom products before (my old 28.8 dialup modem). Bring it home, hook it up, direct to my computer since the cable company will want no extraneous equipment, and call the cable co. to activate. All done, no problem. Hook up my DLink router and everything looks fine except... It's not getting the DHCP info from the modem. Huh? And it's too late to go to Fry's again. Bummer.

Tuesday I went to Fry's at lunch and picked up a refurb Netgear router they had on sale for $20. Hey, routers aren't rocket science, and I've had good luck with refurbs. Bring it home, hook it up, and no love - same issue. Double huh? Beat head against wall for a while, doesn't seem to help. Get plaster in hair.

Today (Wednesday) I am annoyed. Going to pull out the stops. Go to Fry's at lunch again, buy a new Linksys cable modem and new Linksys router. I figure if these guys don't talk to each other, I'm calling support. Which I'm generally loath to do. Pull out the router and hook it up, no DHCP. At this point I'm prepared to open the modem too and hook it up, but before that I call the RoadRunner support line and explain my situation to May. She suggests I use the MAC cloning function in the router. I explain that I did that on the DLink and Netgear but haven't on the Linksys, hang on a sec while I try that. Meanwhile on her end she notices that the cablemodem thinks it's got multiple devices attached, and explains that I need to reset the modem after plugging in a new device (router, computer, etc) so it won't be confused. By this time I've cloned my MAC address and she's also cleared the modem's settings up remotely. Voila! The router has the needed upstream DHCP info, and my PC can get out via the router. I thank May profusely, explain that I will continue to try to isolate my problem, and hang up.

Whew! says I. Now, what's up with this stuff? I have a partly dead cablemodem, dlink, netgar, and linksys routers, a working Zoom cablemodem and an unopened linksys cablemodem. What parts do I need to take back?

Old cablemodem - written off (though the USB connection is probably still good). Keep zoom, return linksys.

Re-try old Dlink router. Still no workee. Looks like everything works but the WAN port, and perhaps even that would work in a static IP environment. So now I have a mini switch + access point instead of a router.

Re-try Netgear router. It works! WTH?? Must be that cablemodem confusion thing that was messing it up before. Fiddle with the settings for a while, determine some things are not working quite as they should. Okay, return Netgear. Keep linksys router. (WRT54G2)

I still have some twiddling to do but looks like I'm back online. Only cost me $100 and 3 nights. Sigh. Have to try out the wireless connectivity too. But surprisingly I don't like the Linksys interface much more or less than my old DLink. I thought the DLink interface was pretty clunky after my first one, an SMB. Well, I'll get used to it.

BlackRider · Post by **BlackRider** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:41 pm

hehe, good to hear you're back online then

Spinning Hat · Post by **Spinning Hat** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 3:10 am

Damn... Sounds like my Hardware issues I been having with my brothers' new PC... Here's to hoping the new Intel chip is the answer...

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 7:22 pm

Ok, I think I'm all set up except that I haven't tested the wireless yet. However....

I didn't think 16 down / 0.5 up was too bad, though I'd like to see more upstream. I saw some reviews that said the Zoom cablemodem was pretty fast vs. its competition.

Spinning Hat · Post by **Spinning Hat** » Fri May 01, 2009 1:00 pm

Nice!

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Fri May 01, 2009 4:29 pm

just tested mine. Let me start off by saying I'm on the slowest speed offered in the area.

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Fri May 01, 2009 7:39 pm

Nothing wrong with that speed, especially if you remember the days of dialup like I do.

I just hope you're not paying more than $25 or so for that.

(Although it'd be a pain to download the full set of SUSE or Debian at that rate - likely an all-nighter)

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Fri May 01, 2009 9:17 pm

I'm paying $20 a month. It would cost another $15 or so to double the speed. I've been watching shows on Hulu with no major problems, just moments where I have to wait a little bit for the buffer to fill up. I still remember dialup and refuse to ever go back to that.

XMEN Iceman · Post by **XMEN Iceman** » Mon May 04, 2009 4:57 pm

Holy Crap Gambino! I average about 5mb/sec and 1.5mb up but I am sure I am paying more for my DSL connection that you. About $70 per month.

FaLLGuY · Post by **FaLLGuY** » Mon May 04, 2009 5:40 pm

Minnesota to Texas isn't bad..... You guys sure don't have good internet. WTH! Come on guys!

What's with the wimpy upstream????

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Mon May 04, 2009 7:58 pm

FaLLGuY wrote:What's with the wimpy upstream????

Two words:

Time Warner.

Ice, one real advantage cable is supposed to have over DSL is the downstream speed. The same tech differences mean that upstream is (on average) better, though. Having said that, most companies can do better on upstream than they do, and honestly most people use a lot more down than up, so it generally works.

Except when you want to set up a server in your closet.