Under Development

Posted on 2 Jul 2009 at 16:33

 

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When a power cut sets the alarm off and scares the cat away, David Robinson is distraught to find an even more disturbing consequence: no internet connection.

It seemed like any other day as I drove through the gate at home, after a day of cosseting custards at the office. I unlocked the door and, as always, keyed my code into the computerised burglar alarm - which, definitely not as always, went completely bonkers. The control display became corrupted with characters that looked like they were from the Coptic alphabet and the alarm commenced a deafening clamour. Bloo, our wussy pussy, fled via the cat flap, leaving me wondering what to do next.

The first brainwave involved removing the fuse from the mains supply to the alarm control box, which is located behind three feet of junk in what's laughingly known as our 'box room'. That didn't work.

Ours is a 'proper' alarm from Chubb, as opposed to some DIY affair, and it's wired directly into the mains to stop burglars turning it off by unplugging it. Whipping out the fuse was no good because it has a backup power supply of its own.

Noise annoys

By now the noise was getting painful, which is what it's supposed to do in order to drive miscreants away. I didn't know how long the backup battery would last but, as it had been blasting away for 10 minutes, I decided to remove the sounder. To do that I needed to find my ear defenders, which are stored in the garage. This is so untidy that it makes the box room look like an operating theatre.

Having found the muffs, I stood on a chair with a screwdriver and disconnected the sounder. This was very easy; I wonder whether burglars will equip themselves with ear defenders if they read this.

With the cacophony silenced, I had time to investigate. The timer on the cooker was blinking 00:00, which was a good indication that the power had been switched off. My home computer had powered down, too, but restarted OK. The broadband router must have been off as well, so I checked it was working by logging into Google and doing a search. It was OK - phew.

Some time later Mrs R appeared, complaining that she couldn't connect to a customer's server to do an out-of-hours update. We often do this kind of work from home, as software updates usually involve shutting down database driver services and rebuilding data files, neither of which are popular when clients are trying to work. The problem seemed to be that the WiFi wasn't working and, as I connect using a regular Ethernet cable, I hadn't noticed.

Router all evil

The router - a US Robotics 9106 SureConnect (oh, the irony!) - does this occasionally after it restarts. The WiFi services don't turn on and, even worse, when you access the built-in management software with a browser, you don't see the menu options that allow you to tweak the wireless settings, including the important one that lets you enable and disable WiFi. When the router does this, the only thing that works is turning it off and on again.

I'd have used the software that came with the router, but I can't find the CD and the computer I installed it on way back when bit the dust ages ago. "Buy another router!" I hear you say. My middle name's not Ebenezer for nothing.

Two more attempts and the WiFi was back, so Mrs R's happy. At least, she would be if she could access the customer's system but, after the last reboot, she has WiFi access to our local network but can't connect to the internet. Argh!

The router statistics say it's exchanging data with the ISP but it hasn't got an external IP address, which is why we can't surf the net, use a VPN or connect to FTP servers. There are three possibilities: