More difficult, and not as much fun, as herding cats.

Jun 06, 2007

Iteration 06/06/2007: Network Wrangler

Just over a month ago, I started my latest contract as a full-time telecommuter. I was given a laptop, shown how to find the support contact numbers and addresses, and then pretty much left to go it on my own. This, I thought, was going to be a bit of a learning curve.

Oh, yes, just a wee bit...it would also require many trips to the Geek Toy Store, fighting with wires, and several cases of the sulks.

1. I bought a KVM switch and a wired router. I went with a different brand of KVM switch than the one I knew, solely to save $10. This was something of a mistake. The KVM switch with which I was familiar - IOGear, for the curious — allows users to switch between computers by hitting the Scroll-Lock key twice. The other one (Belkin) asked users to click on a remote. So yet another item added to the desktop, another wire to snake about...and to top it off, the remote apparently came out of the box in a state to "select" the second computer. This made setup a nightmare. Matters weren't helped when my first phone call to Belkin support was cut off. (I don't know how - but the call stopped mid-word. I don't own a cell phone, and my landline rarely drops calls; so I don't know if the line problem was on their end or mine.) I finally took back the Belkin KVM switch and got the IOGear one.
2. The original setup with the Linksys router went fairly smoothly, even though I did need to call support. A support envelope that reads "Start Here" and merely contains a CD is not quite clear enough for all consumers. If I had loaded the CD and followed those instructions, I probably would have been fine. However, I kept looking for a piece of paper that explicitly told me what I'd need to do first. (Technical documentation personnel and packaging designers, take note: if your documentation relies on assumptions, assumptions other than the required ones will be made.)
3. About two weeks into this contract, my back began acting up. About three weeks into this contract, I began thinking about getting a laptop with wireless capabilities. (I've been thinking about this for several years...just haven't been in a place, fiscally or requirements-wise, where it would really be essential.) At four weeks into this contract (U.S. Memorial Day, actually) I ordered my laptop. This would require that I go back to the Geek Toy Store and get a router with wireless capabilities. Since this was Memorial Day, I was counting on all kinds of sales being in effect...and a helpful (aherm) salesperson convinced me to get a Netgear wireless router. It had a wide range, it would likely not interfere with my 5.8 Ghz wireless phone (that's one of the reasons I got the wireless phone I got...but that's another story), it allowed up to four wired-device hookups, and it was half the price of the comparable Linksys router. The Linksys router also had an odd thing between the two adjustable antennae that looked more like it belonged on a Navy ship than on a router...so I got the Netgear.
5. Netgear setup is not as easy to follow as the Linksys setup. While they do have a CD with step-by-step instructions, once you've hooked up your first wired computer, the directions stop. There's no easy way for the user to know what steps they have to take next: hook up the second computer the same way the first one was hooked up? How to activate the wireless network? And so on. It got stranger when I called the Netgear support line. Their techs were unfailingly courteous; however, before I could even use the router, I had to register it with Netgear. The support tech them was able to "see" my router. I don't know if this is how all routers work, but there are enough big-brother organizations in the world today. I don't need, or want, another one. Then, when the support tech did help me set up my wireless network, he kind of glossed over the "security" portion. No suggestion of setting an encryption format, no setting of even a basic password...nothing. These operators all had Indian accents, so were probably working from a script. I think Netgear needs to change their script. That, however, was not the worst of Netgear's transgressions.
6. I then shut everything down and unhooked all the cables so that I could put my router and modem up on the top shelf of my standing workstation, where they'd be visible, out of the way, up high (to aid in clean wireless connectivity), and away from my cats' curious paws and claws. Everything went fine until I tried to reactivate everything. I had to call Netgear support AGAIN and ask why such a seemingly simple task caused my modem to throw a miniature snitfit. Again, the techs were courteous...but I shouldn't have to call Netgear every time I need to rearrange something, or every time I...well, do anything. They did steer me to a company rep who was announcing their new upcoming support service: for a fee, a subscriber would be able to call Netgear and have their entire home network supported. No problem would be beyond their expertise. Macs, Windoze boxes, XP, Vista, Firefox, OpenOffice...you have it, they'll give you support for it. For that all-important semiannual fee. I began to see where this was all leading, and began to get a tad irritated. Still, this was not the straw that broke the camel's back...
7. ...it was the bright blue blinking light. Netgear's routers are big, tall, white things (think the 2001 monolith, but white and about the size of a trade paperback book.) The indicators are all on the front, and are all large for ease of reading. Problem is, they're against a white casing...so the engineers decided to make them extremely bright, for the necessary contrast and ease of readability. They also decided that the indicators for network connectivity should flash. The light for wireless networks is blue. So we have bright...large...blue...flashing. While I lay in bed that night, the Blue Light Special kept waking me up. I felt like I was trying to sleep in a K-Mart.
8. The next day, I bundled up my Netgear router and my former, non-wireless-enabled Linksys router, and headed for the Geek Toy Store. I didn't have the receipt for the Linksys router, but since it had been 32 days and since I was going to ask for store credit rather than a refund, I figured I had nothing to lose by trying. The folks at the Geek Toy Store were most helpful, giving me store credit for both the Netgear router and the Linksys router...and, hey, whaddayaknow. The combined store credit would be enough for me to get that Linksys mega-range (wireless-N, I think it's called) wireless broadband router. And a DVD. Stellar. And Norton Internet Security (the 3-computer-license version). I'd still have the mess o' cables to deal with, but I'd already been through the Linksys installation process once already and knew that it was a comparative breeze.
9. Sure enough, I got home, popped in the Linksys "start here" CD, and after hooking up my first computer, I was prompted to set up my wireless network. It went through security encryption levels, setting the router password, and then setting the network password — three things that are incredibly helpful, three things that are very important, and three things that (IMHO) might help the Netgear setup process. (If only they'd ditch the great big blinking lights, as well...) Internet connectivity went well — even better once the cable folks got a tech out to my place and found that, for some reason, my downstairs neighbor's broadband connection and mine were sharing a single connection in the junction box, via a splitter. This, with four unused connections just sitting idle.
10. My new laptop arrived today, about an hour ago. I turned it on and it immediately detected my wireless network. There was a brief scramble while I went to go look for my Passwords key, where my network password is written dow (it's long, and has alpha, numerical, and special characters, so it isn't something that I could ever remember without some prompting); but now it's logged in and working away, no problems. Now comes the fun part: configuration and cleanup.
11. I still have to get all the wires under control. The network is up, working, and secured (good thing, too, since many people in this complex apparently have wireless connections and some of them may have seen *my* network pop into being, as I saw theirs in the list of available wireless networks), but the wires are still something of a mess. I need to get them organized and nicely bundled, or I'll get twitchy.
12. The laptop is kind of heavy; but since I got it mainly for home use and for travel (watching DVDs on the airplane, especially during that aching four-hour trip from the west coast to Atlanta for DragonCon this August), the ungainly case just serves as a further disincentive to laptop thieves. I mean, if someone's going to try and make off with a laptop, they're probably looking for something to sell for drug money, so they might not be picky. Still, having an ugly laptop is like having an ugly car: yours will be further down on the list of potential items of theft, especially since they can get something better (probably in the next hotel room.) But that does remind me: I need to purchase a laptop security cable so that I can lock this puppy to something heavy when I leave it in the hotel room while travelling. I've already got a truly kick-ass laptop backpack (an employee gift from one of my previous gigs — the job wasn't thrilling, and the management was crazy-making, and they burned out most of their engineers within three years. But I avoided burnout, and got some decent stuff out of it.)

The good news is that after all this folderol, my home network is set up, including my wireless laptop. I've learned a few things, I've expanded the range of what I can do, and now I can not only geek while in my PJs...I can geek while reclining in bed, surrounded by my cats, a cup of coffee on the bedside table. I can't decide if that's sybaritic or just plain lazy. (Though I think I need a pegnoir and a silk robe with a feather lining to present the proper picture. And silk sheets. And way too many pillows. But I'm not trading the cats for a lapdog. I'll only go so far for verisimilitude.)

Keywords: | Wednesday | technology | Netgear | memes | Linksys |
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