Adventures in Computing

[sinanju]

I am once again netsurfing on my PC and snippy is netsurfing on hers. This is a new situation since Friday night. I was online about midnight with a Mozilla window open when I tried to surf to a new site and found out that the browser couldn't find any sites. I called Comcast and found out that they were having network issues.

Well...damn. But, oh well, the cable modem service has been pretty reliable overall so I was willing to cut them some slack. I went to bed. Next morning we still don't have a cable connection. Around midday I called Comcast again to ask what the situation was and when we could expect service to resume.

After asking a few questions and doing whatever it is tech support guys do, the Comcast guy told me that our cable modem was getting a signal. (He also asked me what OS I was using and when I told him Linux, he said that wasn't a supported OS and he knew nothing about it.) He did, however, suggest that I try plugging the modem directly into the network card on my PC.

I did. It worked fine. Oookay. So the router wasn't working. I had no idea why. Had something in Linux changed to bugger the configuration? Did the router simply give up the ghost? I posted questions to a linux support webforum and got some suggestions, but mostly I got assurances that the OS almost certainly wasn't the culprit (the router had been working fine under Linux for the last two-three weeks, after all).

So this afternoon I wandered up to CompUSA and picked up a Linksys router. The guy at the store was very helpful. I explained my problem and he suggested the new router currently sitting between my PC and the net. I asked about Linux and he said that the OS shouldn't make a difference, that though the router came with a software CD that I shouldn't need it.

I bought the router and went home. Powered down the PCs, old router and cable modem. Yanked out the old router, replaced it with the new router, powered up the router first, then the cable modem, then my PC. Opened Mozilla and I was surfing the net in moments! Then I had Snippy start up her computer and she's back online too.

No configuration, no software install, no nothing. Couldn't have been easier. The final score, then, is:

Linux: not the culprit
Netgear router: crapped out after less than a year.
Linksys router: easiest hardware install ever and working fine.
Snippy: no longer forced to arm wrestle for net-time on my PC
Sinanju: happy that Linux wasn't the problem, that Snippy can use her PC again, and that the problem is solved!

Comments

[aquamarcia.livejournal.com]

How do you know the Netgear router actually died? Did you try a hardware reset, or call Netgear's tech support?

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Yes, I tried resetting the hardware repeatedly. Nothing ever helped; trying to connect thru the router invariably resulted in failure. Connecting directly to the cable modem worked like a charm.

Once I swapped out the router, the new router worked immediately and without any configuration (by me). So I suppose it's possible that the Netgear router just needed some kind of reset, but the new router was inexpensive and worked from the get-go.