2006-07-28 #1

Router Change

Called Rogers while the service was down again. The guy could see the netopia probing the modem for dhcp info bug could not explain why it was not picking up the lease. He had me power-cycle the modem and then plug my laptop into it, and it picked up a lease. We concluded that this meant that the netopia was dead.

In retrospect this proves nothing, as the netopia would have also picked up a lease had it been powercycled and plugged into a powercycled modem.

Installed the SMC router anyways; the netopia is retired for now. (We'll have to come up with another way to access work from home.)

So the SMC router is behaving funny, it drops the WAN after 20 minutes or so. (This is where I put together the fact that the Rogers test was bogus.) So during one of the availability windows I download a new firmware for the router, something which wasn't available when we first got the router. So I flash the update, and the wireless connection goes away. And I think, did I brick it?

I go downstairs and plug in directly, and sure enough the thing has been totally reset to basics. Good thing I kept the soft copy of the Admin guide on my laptop otherwise I would be hosed as regards finding the default password for it. I get into the router and manage to reconfigure the wireless although that takes a couple of tries, but I eventually get it going with the profile I have on the laptop already which means that Jenn's laptop should go no problem (confirmed later by trying it).

A couple of improvements in the firmware:

• an actual page on the config screen for setting the time zone, time, and NTP information
• the capability to syslog to a syslog server
• snmp configurability

Looking good.

I changed the xdroop.dhs.org address to point to what I thought was the new IP address, but I obviously made a mistake because it doesn't work. I also set up the DDNS configuration in the SMC so now the router should register itself as xdroop.homeip.net if/when the address changes.

All in all it made for a late night.