After almost all this sacred sunday spent swearing against two stupid boxes, I found out a nice hack to make them work together nicely. So I thought someone else might find it helpful.
This is the situation: my wife's parents home, a Linksys WAG200G to provide wireless internet access to the not so wide but 3-storey apartment. Everything is flawless. Then they happen to buy (read: are forced by one of those sellers) a super high tech, Alice branded, white, nice looking adsl modem with VoIP features plus a matching cordless phone. So Grandma asked if I could have a look...
Well, it turned out that the modem may be connected through ethernet or usb, but the web interface is nothing but a sort of summary of the actual configuration and status. But nothing can be changed there.
So I changed to the WAG200G web interface, which I already knew and which has all sorts of manipulation forms...except one for turning off the modem function and just use it as a wireless bridge/router and using the other modem.
I updated the Linksys' firmware, googled around, but everything seemed to confirm it: you can't put one modem after the other. So I thought I'd buy a wrt54gc and get rid of the wag200g. I even had a winning bid on one ending an hour after. As last check, I wanted to make sure there was no extra surprise hidden in the Alice stuff, so I disconnected, unplugged and replugged a couple of cables, but the voip phone base wasn't happy either, with its connection led off, or red, but never green. Then I tried to connect from my macbook following the instructions and there I found a surprise: it uses PPPoE. I think that means the connection is made somewhere on the net, not on/through the modem (...SORT OF...). I tried it out and it worked, and POP! the green led of the phone base lit up too.
So what? Well, I tried what you might guess: I connected to the wireless network without caring about its modem configuration (it has PPPoA now, but except "bridged only" I'm sure you may choose any). This is 192.168.1.2 in my case. I turned off DHCP server and used static addresses, but I guess this might be changed back too without problems. The Alice modem is at 192.168.1.1 and can't be changed, and this is what I use as gateway btw. Well, it just happens to work nice!!
- I connect to the wireless network - this is easy
- I use another address as gateway, so anything not in the local network is forwarded there: the modem.
At the same time, being on the same net with the wag200g, they find each other without hops in between. - Using PPPoE, the connection/authentication is sort of encapsulated, passing by the first modem with its wrong config, the second too (I guess) and finally takes place and is successful on some remote machine (I repeat: I guess, correct me if I'm wrong)
- So, it worked on the macbook. That's not really a surprise ;-) But what about windows? The config differs a bit, but it works fine there also. You have to create a new network connection, choose PPPoE, insert user and password. Then, once the wireless connection is up, a small window pops up for the pppoe authentication, like in the good old analog modems times. That's all.
Only one more month of waiting, the first week of
September I discovered a German web shop selling new and not-so-new
(refurbished?) macs with pre-installed 3rd party RAM and hard drives,
those things apple tries to make the money with. So after some more day
of thinking/planning/evaluating I ordered a white 1,8GHz macbook (btw.
the black finish sucks) with 2GB RAM and a 120 GB hard drive, and at
the same time, sold the single parts of my beloved Inspiron (making far
less money than I'd thought) on ebay. So I thought to put an end to my
nightmare waiting experience...Ha! That was just the beginning. A 10
days after ordering, I wasn't getting any answer to my emails at the
webshop. I only knew the order and the money were sent. Then, somebody
(never putting his/her name under the messages - probably for security
reasons) wrote saying my macbook was fine...they sent it to the apple
service to get a new battery and a new logic board - which was in my
interest, as they wrote. But, not to worry, it would have been back
soon, very soon.
As if that was not blaming enough, they said I
sent 5€ less than required, I should use the remaining waitng time to
transfer that. That was too much even for me. I wrote back, and my
usual calm writing tone vanished...I complained about the absolute lack
of professionality and expereince (the 5€ were obviously something
their bank was responsible for) and most of all, of communication. To
confirm that, I didn't have any answer. Once, twice...after 3 weeks I
contacted a german laywer at anwalt.de. Cool site, cool service, nice
and gentle laywer. He obviously said I was right and we could/should
start with an official letter saying one week time to send or find
another very good answer...
So. After about two months running around with two big and heavy tags on my shoulder: WAITING and NOT WORKING, I decided to stop passively waiting for something good to happen and started looking over to the other side of the river, at apple and its cute fruits...
I discovered a community of perverts, feeding themselves with rumors about anything regarding or surrounding the Cupertino thing. I obviously joined them. The idea was to wait for the second generation of macbooks and let others do the beta testing on the first buggy generation. So...I waited, and thought about it, and studied and learned. For example, that apple users were not used to such buggy hardware. Probably all those companies think work in China is simply cheaper - nothing to do with tags like QUALITY, STANDARDS, and completely forget about ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, KILLING THIS PLANET or similar. Just make more MONEY MONEY MONEY - fast!
(Btw. I'm still wondering if this whole TAG thing is funny or ridiculous. If I make up my mind, I'll tell!)
Well, that's how the stupid world is going:
CHINA = CHEAP --> SATURATE CHINA WITH POLLUTING INDUSTRIES + DON'T CARE ABOUT CONSEQUENCES
I've been a happy Dell notebook user for quiet a long time. That was a really good item. All the ports one might need, fast, great flexibility and a 1600x1200 display. Then, after 5 years, it began to have problems and although I tried everything, things were getting worse: the opening was getting loose, the left angle under the display mysteriously got broken (with wife & kids making innocent faces), then the power supply started going crazy. I bought another one a first time and I changed both the batteries it was equipped with, and for some months that helped. Then the powering started doing strange things again, I bought a third power supply (maybe a forth too?) but at that point I found out it was not the male part of the powering that was wrong, but the female.
I decided to give it a last try, ordering an Inspiron 8200 base from the US. That means the lower part of the laptop, without keyboard, without display, but with mainboard and all ports (on the back).
So. This could have been a good idea. Unluckily I didn't consider the fact that there are some small differences between 8100 and 8200, like different RAM types and a sooo stupid different keyboard port on the mainboard. That was my fault, I should have payed more attention to those details...
But as shit happens, and in my case when it decides to happen it happens to be huge shit, unluckily that was going to be the minor of the problems...the order started the first week of july. I needed the parts because I had a bigger project to do, with all my data on the old one. At that time I could still power on the old one, and making a certain pressure on the power cable entry, it even recharged a little bit. Then, after 5 minutes or so it became to warm to recharge. But that was enough to access my data and copy a part of it on a kind of network storage device which was proudly blinking in my living room.
So I was able to do some easier tasks on my wife's laptop, which - seeing my face - she kindly proposed to lend for the time I needed it. But obviously I needed those parts badly. Weeks went by. After 1 month, the a**holes of some duty/tax office sent me a letter (calling or email is not an option - too fast!) saying there was a new kind of rule for imported (not EU)items, that there should have been a bill showing the payment transaction and blablabla. There was a form to compile and fax, so I did - adding a couple of compliments in the extra field at the end of the form...you may immagine. Another 2 or 3 weeks passed.
Then another ass**le called (so they do have phones) saying they were sorry, they made a (?) mistake and they would ship the thing thereafter - so just 7 more days and I would have it. I complained, but - considering the situation - I was really kind even in that occasion. Weeks passed. My little daughter was born. That took all my attention, obviously, but I was still waiting...
Hi,
you probably didn't feel the need for this new blog to start. Well, I didn't either. I just signed up to give a comment on another blog and then found out that this vox thing is quiet cool.
I don't know if I'll write on a regular basis, but one thing I know is this: I'll use it to unburden all the negative things that happened to me this last year. They all have something to do with these tags(!!): technology, not-working, repair, anger, wait, waste of time, and some more.
So I will criticize a lot, comment some, praise a few...
I recently gave up and joined the dark side of...Apple freaks...buying a macbook. Well, that will take a couple of entries one of these days, but let's say I like Apple, and I like iTunes. But one thing I hate in iTunes is the continuous changing of the music's home directory, without ever asking to do so: if you happen to have your music collection on a samba share on another computer in your LAN, you can choose that folder as the iTunes folder, and iTunes will happily copy new songs you play to that folder, create directories, keep things nicely ordered etc. So this is what I did, and I can access my music from all the connected computers. Unluckily it happens quiet often that your share is not connected, because [...lot of reasons...]. So you open up iTunes and - not finding its "network home" - it just changes (back) to its default iTunes folder, which is local. So if you don't really pay attention, after some of this jokes you end up with a mess of songs sparkled all over the network (ok, not that bad, but half here and half there). Apple owes its fame to the fact that they do things the way things should be done (which is: smooth and easy), but in this case...couldn't you ASK before doing that, Steve, or at least put the option to ask in there??
(AAAaRGHH)
bye,
rix
