Sunday, May 30, 2004
I Have My Computer Back
Yay!
We got Deb’s new computer setup and both of us online at the same time. It’s so cool! And no more sharing mine.
The Linksys router naturally came with a spiffy CD and wizard to guide you through setting up the connection when you have had existing broadband on a single computer. That means to get it all working, I had to do it manually.
Both the DSL modem and the router were using 192.168.1.1 and DHCP. They conflicted enough to be a showstopper. I ended up resetting the address of the router, assigning the computer a static IP in the same range and for good measure manually setting the primary and secondary DNS to what the DSL modem’s internal configuration page specified. There were hoops leading up to this, but nothing worth going into.
The scary thing is that Joe Average User would have been screwed in the same situation. How is he supposed to know about IP address conflicts, changing the IP of the router, maybe trying static addresses, and that sort of thing? For a support person, it’s one of thos complex enough calls to keep them on the line for a while. And is it a DSL provider problem, or a router maker problem when it’s interactivity between the two? I’d say router, but how many people would go straight to the DSL provider?
We’re still not in Oz anymore. But when setting all this up becomes like magic, everything will change to something more complicated anyway.