You Can't Coach That

Monday, April 16, 2007

There has been much swearing and gnashing of teeth in the locker room that’s serves as the Coach’s study over the last few days. The technology fairy paid a visit and she sprinkled her magic sh#t fairy dust bloody everywhere.

You see I decided that a brand new modem was just what the doctor ordered to take advantage of the full bandwidth my relatively new ADSL2+ connection provides. Since my wireless router is a Netgear WPN 824, which up to this point had been working flawlessly with my ancient D-Link modem (how old was it I hear you ask - well there is a sticker underneath it reading “made in The People’s Republic of Bedrock") I decided to get the Netgear DMP111P modem.

If you are thinking “oh no not Netgear” I don’t want to hear it. Where were you when I was asking everyone with ears what I should buy? If you are thinking that Netgear is a good choice and should work seamlessly with the aforementioned router then read on.

While the set up of the D-Link modem with the router was as simple as plugging it in and changing some IP addresses (not necessary but I like to exert a little control over the technology), the shiny new Netgear modem just didn’t want to play nice. I did everything by the book. I ran the set up program on both the router and the modem. I followed the instructions to the letter. I switched on, turned off, rebooted, sacrificed a virgin, all to appease the gods of modem/router installation. The result? - an internet connection that lasted about three minutes but sometimes a little longer. Just what I was hoping for, an intermittent computer issue, the best kind.

I sometimes think that I am a pretty smart guy. I know a fair bit about these fancy thinking boxes, at least enough enough to get myself into trouble. So I spent the next afternoon determined to solve this problem for myself. Was I successful? - not bloody likely.

So into the world of support forums we go. As it turns out the answer was quite a simple one. The modem should be in bridge mode! Thirty seconds later, modem in bridge mode, connections settings now in the router instead of the modem and we are surfing the wondrous world we call “The Internets”. If only that little gem was contained somewhere in the documentation. Hang on a minute, what documentation. All I got was the CD. Well if you dig down five directory layers on the cd there’s the documentation. Alas, no mention of bridge mode however.

Honest, I did look. I’m not game enough to look again though, just in case I find it.

“You can’t coach that”