Under Development

Posted on 2 Jul 2009 at 16:33

 

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1. The router has, in the process of the restarts, corrupted its settings.

2. The power outage has also affected the phone exchange, which is 400 yards away in the village.

3. The router's broken. This seems unlikely, though, as the router did work for a while when the mains came back on.

The first problem is where I find my notes about the router settings. The second problem is that it's now too late to call the ISP helpline to get them to check the physical ADSL link. Mrs R's update will have to wait, and she's not best pleased.

At least the alarm got fixed promptly. After an optimistic call to Chubb at 8pm on a Friday night, the engineer turned up at 9pm and had it fixed by 10pm. That's service.

Benefit of hindsight

Looking back, what I should have done was:

1. Downloaded the latest management software from US Robotics' website.

2. Used that to back up the router settings to a file on the PC.

3. Updated the router firmware to cure the WiFi issue.

4. Made sure I had a written note of all the settings and filed it in that mythical safe place, where we all keep serial numbers, passwords and the like. Don't we?

But, of course, I'm no better than anyone else in assuming that things will continue to work OK if left well alone. After all this time, I should know better than that.

The following day, when the helpdesk was open again, Kingston Communications (which is both our ISP and the line provider) sent a man to the exchange to check the line. He could see us trying to log in unsuccessfully. The router setup seemed to be OK but, of course, it's not possible to verify the username and password as they're blocked out with the ****** pattern to make them secure.

Another call to another support person and, after answering obscure security questions about pets' names and the date the budgie died, we have the user login name and password. After re-entering this into the router we tried connecting again and, finally, success.

How did the router retain all the other various settings but lose the password? Dunno.

Speed deprivation

Having no internet access is like being subjected to sensory deprivation - no email, no Skype and no instant weather forecast or sports results. No any-time-you-like access-to-customer-systems. It's only when you can't have these things that you realise how important they are.

Anyway, the immediate task is to persuade the cat to come back in. After that, it's off to find the US Robotics site and download that software and firmware update. After I've checked what's on at the cinema, viewed the latest guitars for sale on eBay and looked up the online dictionary definition for 'procrastinate', that is.

Author: David Robinson