Back online again!
May. 28th, 2006 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sugarplumkittyOur router died Friday night. I'm tempted to tease Eric that the giant software upgrade he was downloading burned it up but he'd probably say my puzzle pirates did it! lol
Where I try to get enough sleep and fail
Saturday I had a noon appointment to meet with Robert and Christine, my lab partners for the CCNA4 case study. Foolish me, I stayed up playing with my Sims after we lost internet. I stayed up until 3:30AM.. or was it 4? I thought it was just my laptop that lost the internet so I didn't try to reset the router. I knew Eric had a huge download going and didn't want to risk messing that up, so I just went to bed. I needed to sleep until 10 or 11 to get enough to function well but at around 9AM Eric woke up and suddenly threw the covers back over me to get up. He didn't mean to wake me up, he was too sleepy to realize he did it. Just as I was drifting back off, the phone rang. I knew it was Robert. It's already established that he's a "lark" and "larks" think 9:30AM is late. He was confirming our meeting and had the meeting time in his head as 11AM. I reminded him that it was noon and that I'm essentially a swing shift person with my work and class schedule. He apologized when I told him I really needed to sleep another hour. We hung up and I went back to bed.
The one electronic area where I out-shine Eric
I tried to go back to sleep knowing there was a good chance I was too awake to do it but as I started to drift off yet again I heard Eric muttering and slinging ethernet cables around. He and the dsl modem don't get along. If the connection drops, he can't seem to get it back up again. All I have to do is go in there and unplug it for 10 seconds then plug it back in. I think I'll watch him the next time to see what it is he does differently.
Why we have a router
Because the DSL modem only has one hookup for one computer and we each have more than one computer - not new, they're mostly old but still usable - we have a Linksys wireless router with a four-port switch for wired connections. That means we can plug four different computers or network printers into it and have any number of wireless computers. The wireless has been a problem and I have it turned off. Instead, we have long cables down the edge of our hall and around the edge of the living room so we can sit side by side in our recliners and play/work/study with our computers while we watch TV. Aren't we decadent?
Diagnosing the problem - not too techie and something non-techies should know/learn
Well this time, the modem would connect to earthlink properly (the top two lights, power and sync, were solid green), the WAN light (activity to earthlink) would flicker at first then stop but the LAN light (activity to our network) wouldn't even flicker once.
The router was blinking all of its lights on and off even for ports that had computers turned off. That means it was yelling for help. Normally, the lights are on or flickering for computers that are turned on and each flickers at a different rate. The usual fix of unplugging it for 10 seconds and plugging it back in didn't change that behavior, not a good sign. That means it was really confused.
Connecting my desktop PC's ethernet cable directly into the modem worked. That said the modem was OK. The messages it was sending were understood by my computer.
The problem was the router. I tried resetting the router to factory defaults by unplugging it for 10 seconds then plugging it in while holding the reset button for 30 seconds. After that it wouldn't power on at all. OK, the router was now dead. The warranty is long over so I let Eric take it apart to see if he could see a bad component. He couldn't. It wasn't fixable. He tested the AC adapter and said it was good. Dead router. Dead, dead router.
Where I try alternate methods to connect us
We are seriously addicted to the internet. What could I do until we figured out a permanent solution? Suddenly, I remembered the networking equipment I bought on ebay last fall. The Cisco router wouldn't work because it wasn't set up to work with dsl but the hub that came with it or the switch should! Oh.. well, they didn't work when I attached the modem to them, darn it. The PC's could see each other but the line from the modem wouldn't communicate. I had an extra ethernet card in my desktop PC that was in my previous desktop PC. We got one for each of our computers to play games together. It never worked in my old PC and I thought we determined it was my old PC that was defective. The replacement PC was a package deal and had one already. The old card sat idle for years. I tried to set it to let the other computers use it to access the internet. Either the card was really bad or it's just built up too much crud over the years of no cable plugged in because it wouldn't "see" the cable I plugged into it. I used compressed air to clean it. I plugged and unplugged the cable a bunch of times trying to scrape through the crud and the connection light would blink for a second after I plugged it in but it wouldn't stay on.
Finally I crawled out from under the desk to think and noticed I had 15 minutes to clean up, get dressed and drive 15 minutes away. Whoops!
I got ready in record time but five minutes before noon the phone rang again. It was Robert. He was at Peet's coffee house waiting. I told him I was trying to get out the door and he said he was sorry he interrupted me. He thought I'd be in the car and thought he'd called my cell phone. He was worried I didn't know where Peet's was, even though we'd had a conversation a few days before about the restaurant that used to be in that spot. I reminded him that I'd eaten at The Good Earth many times when it was there and I knew exactly where to look for Peet's. I asked if Christine was there yet and she wasn't. She wasn't answering her cell phone, he said. I hung up and tried to reassemble my thoughts. Before I left, I attached Eric's long cable from the living room to the modem so he'd have internet access. In my rush out the door I forgot that I'd brought my class paperwork into the house. Usually my car is my library because the book and note studying happens during the gap between work and class unless I do it at work. The online studying happens at home. I'd planned to go over the case study over breakfast. *sigh* Best laid plans...
Anyway, I showed up about 15 minutes late without my paperwork and still not quite awake because I hadn't taken my adderall until I was headed out the door. If things had gone normally, I would have taken it right when I woke up. I also hadn't had much caffiene. When I looked for the $20 I got for the weekend, I couldn't find it. Was it in the jeans I wore the day before? Sometimes I put the cash in my pocket and I was wearing a different pair of jeans than the day before. Christine said she'd just gotten there five minutes before so don't worry. She had her copy of the case study. Robert didn't have his. Hmm... Christine bought us all a round of coffees. We're planning to meet there at noon every Saturday until we finish the case study. I'm on to buy them next Saturday. Later, I found the $20 hiding inside my checkbook.
**This section is techie-talk about the case study**
As we started going over the case study we didn't see any glaring things to assign to different people. We all want to make sure we understand how to do all the parts of the case study because in the real world, we'll need to do it by ourselves. So we'll all use Cisco's packet tracer to set it up and compare notes next week. Christine said she already had table templates created from last quarter ad she'd clear them and email them to us so we could fill them in with our ideas. She showed me their case study documentation from last quarter. It was better than mine. Whee! I'm not the secretary this time!
I suggested we spend this meeting figuring out the subnetting. Christine likes to use an online tool and she had her laptop, but Peet's requires people to register with them to use their wireless network. She didn't want to do that. As my head cleared and all my lights came on, I showed them my method and suddenly she got access to the website she wanted for long enough to test what we'd been discussing. It came up with the same answer. They both struggle with subnetting. For some reason, it's easier for me to visualize it. They were in a different CCNA1 class I guess, because the easy method Mike taught us and I use to figure out the bits for an octet from the decimal number was new to them. Christine copied it down. We got the subnets figured out and were out of there by 2PM. Robert was quite amused by watching me wake up. He says he can read minds and I was thinking in binary. He says I think like a computer. *rolls eyes* Riiight. Robert is an interesting person. ;)
** end of case study **
Back home
I thought Eric said he was going to research replacement router prices while I was gone but instead, he was doing the incredibly big download he'd started the night before. He said that at this point I know a lot more about it than he does and he'd rather I do the research since I understand what the terms mean and he doesn't. His enormous download meant that I couldn't research replacement router prices using the dsl until it finished. He was two hours into a 3.5 hour download.
What to buy.. what to buy... I'll try to keep this "tech-lite"
One thing I'd considered was getting a dual-port fast ethernet card (two ports, one for the dsl line and one to the switch or hub) for my desktop PC and set it to be our router (I know how to do that!) and using the hub or switch we already had for the other computers, but Eric said he'd been getting a lot of messages from Norton Anti-Virus that it was blocking worms trying to get into his system. A real router offers protection from that kind of stuff. It took a while, but I finally got dialup working and had Eric check Earthlink's site for the local connection numbers. We decided to go with the follow-on to what we had. It has wireless if we ever want to try that again and four ports for our computers to directly connect to. If we want to connect more devices like Sirius radio if we get it or guest laptops, I can activate the wireless access or attach the switch or hub for those.
To market, to market to buy a fat pig... er.. router
Best Buy had a decent price for it and our local store had it in stock. We fought three-day-weekend shopper traffic and that was an adventure. All the amateurs are out and either parking in the lanes waiting for people to leave or talking on their cell phones while driving 2 miles per hour as the bullies in the SUV's intimidate their way at high speed. Pedestrians just walk out in front of cars without looking. Why more of them don't get hit is beyond my comprehension, especially with how they tend to walk either diagonally across the lane or right down the middle without considering the traffic jam they're creating. Are Eric and I among the few who try to get out of the way of traffic in parking lots?
Once in the store, I didn't see the router we wanted on the shelf. The only Linksys router I saw was one that had all we wanted plus a Vonage startup kit with two phone lines for $10 less than the one we were looking for! Woot! If we sign up for Vonage, there's another $60 rebate for us. I'll check it out but we probably won't go for it, not with the flaky ethernet connection we have. Eric found the one we were looking for sitting on a table with assorted other stuff, some on clearance and some just needing to go back to their shelves. We had the helpful department clerk double-check the prices of them for us just in case the online price was different or there was a trick to it, like it's only that low if you sign up for Vonage. It was as it appeared. Wow! I'm not used to that.
We browsed the sale area and Eric found "Resident Evil" in the cheap rack. He has "Resident Evil II" already and asked if I minded him buying the first one. He promised to watch it while I was in class. ;) The latest Harry Potter movie was on the Recent Releases rack but I wasn't willing to pay that much for it. When it costs less than one movie ticket, I'll buy it.
I considered getting a gift card for my nephew Mike while we were in line to pay and decided not to do that. Cash is spendable anywhere. Eric saw a new energy drink we hadn't tried for a decent price. We each grabbed one because we were both feeling so tired. Then at the register, we resisted a bit when the clerk told us she had to get our information for Vonage even if we weren't planning to sign up for it. She even said we could give fake information. We didn't. We gave her the real information and as a reward, she gave us a $25 gift card! Maybe it was because we spent over $120? Because mentioned I'm a full-time student, she also signed me up as a frequent buyer without the fee and I'll get credit toward gift cards when I buy things there. I wonder how they manage to make money when they have low prices and give so much away? I guess Mike is getting that gift card anyway! :)
The energy drinks were OK. Eric didn't like the taste. It was kind of citrusy.
Home again, home again, jiggity jig.
We got our weekly burritos and went home. We ate before I attempted to set the router up. I was two of HALT (Hungry Angry Lonely Tired) and technical tasks are best done with one or none of those. Last week I saw and bought the new release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail on DVD for really cheap! It had added features including a tour of filming sites. We watched the movie. I'd forgotten most of it. So had Eric. Then I set up the router. It was easy! Yay!
It makes me feel more confident all the time as I gain in experience with troubleshooting. I'm able to zero in on the problems pretty fast now. Solving them isn't as easy as I'd like yet, but that's getting better all the time. Networking is easy for me now. It's the PC's that frustrate me most.
Where I try to get enough sleep and fail
Saturday I had a noon appointment to meet with Robert and Christine, my lab partners for the CCNA4 case study. Foolish me, I stayed up playing with my Sims after we lost internet. I stayed up until 3:30AM.. or was it 4? I thought it was just my laptop that lost the internet so I didn't try to reset the router. I knew Eric had a huge download going and didn't want to risk messing that up, so I just went to bed. I needed to sleep until 10 or 11 to get enough to function well but at around 9AM Eric woke up and suddenly threw the covers back over me to get up. He didn't mean to wake me up, he was too sleepy to realize he did it. Just as I was drifting back off, the phone rang. I knew it was Robert. It's already established that he's a "lark" and "larks" think 9:30AM is late. He was confirming our meeting and had the meeting time in his head as 11AM. I reminded him that it was noon and that I'm essentially a swing shift person with my work and class schedule. He apologized when I told him I really needed to sleep another hour. We hung up and I went back to bed.
The one electronic area where I out-shine Eric
I tried to go back to sleep knowing there was a good chance I was too awake to do it but as I started to drift off yet again I heard Eric muttering and slinging ethernet cables around. He and the dsl modem don't get along. If the connection drops, he can't seem to get it back up again. All I have to do is go in there and unplug it for 10 seconds then plug it back in. I think I'll watch him the next time to see what it is he does differently.
Why we have a router
Because the DSL modem only has one hookup for one computer and we each have more than one computer - not new, they're mostly old but still usable - we have a Linksys wireless router with a four-port switch for wired connections. That means we can plug four different computers or network printers into it and have any number of wireless computers. The wireless has been a problem and I have it turned off. Instead, we have long cables down the edge of our hall and around the edge of the living room so we can sit side by side in our recliners and play/work/study with our computers while we watch TV. Aren't we decadent?
Diagnosing the problem - not too techie and something non-techies should know/learn
Well this time, the modem would connect to earthlink properly (the top two lights, power and sync, were solid green), the WAN light (activity to earthlink) would flicker at first then stop but the LAN light (activity to our network) wouldn't even flicker once.
The router was blinking all of its lights on and off even for ports that had computers turned off. That means it was yelling for help. Normally, the lights are on or flickering for computers that are turned on and each flickers at a different rate. The usual fix of unplugging it for 10 seconds and plugging it back in didn't change that behavior, not a good sign. That means it was really confused.
Connecting my desktop PC's ethernet cable directly into the modem worked. That said the modem was OK. The messages it was sending were understood by my computer.
The problem was the router. I tried resetting the router to factory defaults by unplugging it for 10 seconds then plugging it in while holding the reset button for 30 seconds. After that it wouldn't power on at all. OK, the router was now dead. The warranty is long over so I let Eric take it apart to see if he could see a bad component. He couldn't. It wasn't fixable. He tested the AC adapter and said it was good. Dead router. Dead, dead router.
Where I try alternate methods to connect us
We are seriously addicted to the internet. What could I do until we figured out a permanent solution? Suddenly, I remembered the networking equipment I bought on ebay last fall. The Cisco router wouldn't work because it wasn't set up to work with dsl but the hub that came with it or the switch should! Oh.. well, they didn't work when I attached the modem to them, darn it. The PC's could see each other but the line from the modem wouldn't communicate. I had an extra ethernet card in my desktop PC that was in my previous desktop PC. We got one for each of our computers to play games together. It never worked in my old PC and I thought we determined it was my old PC that was defective. The replacement PC was a package deal and had one already. The old card sat idle for years. I tried to set it to let the other computers use it to access the internet. Either the card was really bad or it's just built up too much crud over the years of no cable plugged in because it wouldn't "see" the cable I plugged into it. I used compressed air to clean it. I plugged and unplugged the cable a bunch of times trying to scrape through the crud and the connection light would blink for a second after I plugged it in but it wouldn't stay on.
Finally I crawled out from under the desk to think and noticed I had 15 minutes to clean up, get dressed and drive 15 minutes away. Whoops!
I got ready in record time but five minutes before noon the phone rang again. It was Robert. He was at Peet's coffee house waiting. I told him I was trying to get out the door and he said he was sorry he interrupted me. He thought I'd be in the car and thought he'd called my cell phone. He was worried I didn't know where Peet's was, even though we'd had a conversation a few days before about the restaurant that used to be in that spot. I reminded him that I'd eaten at The Good Earth many times when it was there and I knew exactly where to look for Peet's. I asked if Christine was there yet and she wasn't. She wasn't answering her cell phone, he said. I hung up and tried to reassemble my thoughts. Before I left, I attached Eric's long cable from the living room to the modem so he'd have internet access. In my rush out the door I forgot that I'd brought my class paperwork into the house. Usually my car is my library because the book and note studying happens during the gap between work and class unless I do it at work. The online studying happens at home. I'd planned to go over the case study over breakfast. *sigh* Best laid plans...
Anyway, I showed up about 15 minutes late without my paperwork and still not quite awake because I hadn't taken my adderall until I was headed out the door. If things had gone normally, I would have taken it right when I woke up. I also hadn't had much caffiene. When I looked for the $20 I got for the weekend, I couldn't find it. Was it in the jeans I wore the day before? Sometimes I put the cash in my pocket and I was wearing a different pair of jeans than the day before. Christine said she'd just gotten there five minutes before so don't worry. She had her copy of the case study. Robert didn't have his. Hmm... Christine bought us all a round of coffees. We're planning to meet there at noon every Saturday until we finish the case study. I'm on to buy them next Saturday. Later, I found the $20 hiding inside my checkbook.
**This section is techie-talk about the case study**
As we started going over the case study we didn't see any glaring things to assign to different people. We all want to make sure we understand how to do all the parts of the case study because in the real world, we'll need to do it by ourselves. So we'll all use Cisco's packet tracer to set it up and compare notes next week. Christine said she already had table templates created from last quarter ad she'd clear them and email them to us so we could fill them in with our ideas. She showed me their case study documentation from last quarter. It was better than mine. Whee! I'm not the secretary this time!
I suggested we spend this meeting figuring out the subnetting. Christine likes to use an online tool and she had her laptop, but Peet's requires people to register with them to use their wireless network. She didn't want to do that. As my head cleared and all my lights came on, I showed them my method and suddenly she got access to the website she wanted for long enough to test what we'd been discussing. It came up with the same answer. They both struggle with subnetting. For some reason, it's easier for me to visualize it. They were in a different CCNA1 class I guess, because the easy method Mike taught us and I use to figure out the bits for an octet from the decimal number was new to them. Christine copied it down. We got the subnets figured out and were out of there by 2PM. Robert was quite amused by watching me wake up. He says he can read minds and I was thinking in binary. He says I think like a computer. *rolls eyes* Riiight. Robert is an interesting person. ;)
** end of case study **
Back home
I thought Eric said he was going to research replacement router prices while I was gone but instead, he was doing the incredibly big download he'd started the night before. He said that at this point I know a lot more about it than he does and he'd rather I do the research since I understand what the terms mean and he doesn't. His enormous download meant that I couldn't research replacement router prices using the dsl until it finished. He was two hours into a 3.5 hour download.
What to buy.. what to buy... I'll try to keep this "tech-lite"
One thing I'd considered was getting a dual-port fast ethernet card (two ports, one for the dsl line and one to the switch or hub) for my desktop PC and set it to be our router (I know how to do that!) and using the hub or switch we already had for the other computers, but Eric said he'd been getting a lot of messages from Norton Anti-Virus that it was blocking worms trying to get into his system. A real router offers protection from that kind of stuff. It took a while, but I finally got dialup working and had Eric check Earthlink's site for the local connection numbers. We decided to go with the follow-on to what we had. It has wireless if we ever want to try that again and four ports for our computers to directly connect to. If we want to connect more devices like Sirius radio if we get it or guest laptops, I can activate the wireless access or attach the switch or hub for those.
To market, to market to buy a fat pig... er.. router
Best Buy had a decent price for it and our local store had it in stock. We fought three-day-weekend shopper traffic and that was an adventure. All the amateurs are out and either parking in the lanes waiting for people to leave or talking on their cell phones while driving 2 miles per hour as the bullies in the SUV's intimidate their way at high speed. Pedestrians just walk out in front of cars without looking. Why more of them don't get hit is beyond my comprehension, especially with how they tend to walk either diagonally across the lane or right down the middle without considering the traffic jam they're creating. Are Eric and I among the few who try to get out of the way of traffic in parking lots?
Once in the store, I didn't see the router we wanted on the shelf. The only Linksys router I saw was one that had all we wanted plus a Vonage startup kit with two phone lines for $10 less than the one we were looking for! Woot! If we sign up for Vonage, there's another $60 rebate for us. I'll check it out but we probably won't go for it, not with the flaky ethernet connection we have. Eric found the one we were looking for sitting on a table with assorted other stuff, some on clearance and some just needing to go back to their shelves. We had the helpful department clerk double-check the prices of them for us just in case the online price was different or there was a trick to it, like it's only that low if you sign up for Vonage. It was as it appeared. Wow! I'm not used to that.
We browsed the sale area and Eric found "Resident Evil" in the cheap rack. He has "Resident Evil II" already and asked if I minded him buying the first one. He promised to watch it while I was in class. ;) The latest Harry Potter movie was on the Recent Releases rack but I wasn't willing to pay that much for it. When it costs less than one movie ticket, I'll buy it.
I considered getting a gift card for my nephew Mike while we were in line to pay and decided not to do that. Cash is spendable anywhere. Eric saw a new energy drink we hadn't tried for a decent price. We each grabbed one because we were both feeling so tired. Then at the register, we resisted a bit when the clerk told us she had to get our information for Vonage even if we weren't planning to sign up for it. She even said we could give fake information. We didn't. We gave her the real information and as a reward, she gave us a $25 gift card! Maybe it was because we spent over $120? Because mentioned I'm a full-time student, she also signed me up as a frequent buyer without the fee and I'll get credit toward gift cards when I buy things there. I wonder how they manage to make money when they have low prices and give so much away? I guess Mike is getting that gift card anyway! :)
The energy drinks were OK. Eric didn't like the taste. It was kind of citrusy.
Home again, home again, jiggity jig.
We got our weekly burritos and went home. We ate before I attempted to set the router up. I was two of HALT (Hungry Angry Lonely Tired) and technical tasks are best done with one or none of those. Last week I saw and bought the new release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail on DVD for really cheap! It had added features including a tour of filming sites. We watched the movie. I'd forgotten most of it. So had Eric. Then I set up the router. It was easy! Yay!
It makes me feel more confident all the time as I gain in experience with troubleshooting. I'm able to zero in on the problems pretty fast now. Solving them isn't as easy as I'd like yet, but that's getting better all the time. Networking is easy for me now. It's the PC's that frustrate me most.
