Thursday, September 19, 2013

This should have posted Monday

Unfortunately, I didn't get around to completing this until today.  So there.

Well, I spent a larger portion of my weekend attempting to troubleshoot the hard-wired portion of my home network.  In order to deliver a more stable signal to the devices that we stream movies (Roku today and a Smart TV someday) and also to increase signal strength to the devices that extend our wireless, I bought a Netgear FVS318 Cable/DSL ProSafe VPN Firewall with 8-Port Switch.  It was used and I bought off Amazon with gift certificate so I got it really cheap.  The good news is that it worked as soon as I plugged it in.  The bad news is I accidentally reset it when I was trying to configure it to do more than just move the internet from one end of the house to another.
My new tech thinks it s the cable modem

The problem was that the support page and everything I read said that the default IP of the device was 192.168.1.1 when in fact it is 192.168.0.1 This lead me to believe there was no way I could gain access.  Apparently, the newer models have switched to the first address while older ones still have that second address, which is also what many Cable/DSL modems also default.  So I foolishly reset the device and let the webpage come up automatically.  It's possible I did something else to mess things up...after a few days, the memory becomes blurry.   I'm going to tell myself that this would have become a problem eventually.

So at the moment we have limited wireless as I took every Wi-Fi extender and streamer offline to troubleshoot.  Getting all that set back up will only take 10 minutes of my time.  I can always roll back to life before the FVS318 came into our home.  I just have visions of locking things down in such a way that when my BIL comes to visit, he cannot watch Golf in any way, shape, or form.

  • Update1:  Last night, I got the wired internet working!
  • Update2:  This morning it stopped working!  
  • Update3:  I have to reboot the router every morning.  So far it seems to be occur after we watch something on the Roku.  


The rest of the weekend was spent doing other things.  After hemming and hawing for almost an hour, I did make it out of the house Saturday morning to join the CARA group for a chilly morning run.  My group was doing 14 miles which would be just too much mileage for me given my current out-of-shape state.  I figured I could handle 8 but actually managed 10.  The knee held out for the most part.  There was a moment when it seemed to be a little tweaky.  I switched to walking for a bit.  Had a little heart-to-heart with my knee.  Turns out the old fellow just wanted some attention.  So once the knee felt validated, I was able to finish the run.

Instead of going all the way back to the CARA base, I waited for my group. There was no point going back there and waiting for everyone by myself when I could sit in the sunshine closer to the lakefront.  This afforded me the opportunity to snap some photos of random runners for use in future blog posts.  Speaking of blog posts, you should really read this one.  

One sour note of the day:  The new manager at Universal Sole gave me the wrong parking validation so instead of paying $4 for parking, I had to pay $16.
Downtown CARA marathon training group


On Sunday we had people over.  Originally it was supposed to be a cookout but the weather didn't cooperate.  I was going to babble about how it was looking like they weren't going to show at all but I'm out of breath.  Besides, they arrived during the final few minutes of the Bears game and waited in their car until the Bears scored the winning touchdown.


For Posterity:  So it's far too soon to be thinking Denver-Chicago in the Superbowl, but the Bears did pull out another come-from-behind victory that they had no business pulling off.  I've seen them win games like this before.  Usually, it's borrowing against a sure victory later in the season.  There was something different about this one though.  It was confidence in Cutler that I haven't seen in a Chicago QB since Kramer.  I'd still be happier if they could simply be up by two scores at the two-minute warning.

3 comments:

  1. Have you seen all the complaints about the FVS318 not being able to keep up w current broadband speeds? Also, do you have your cable modem in bridge mode?

    As ever,

    DZ

    ReplyDelete
  2. Truthfully DZ, I have not. I figured since I don't have the maximum broadband package possible, there wasn't much use in getting state-of-the-art equipment for my initial stroll into a home network.

    I do have bridging enabled on my cable modem though I don't know what to put in the remote bridge line. IP address? Name?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think it might be limited to something like 5Mbps.

    I don't know what the remote bridge line is. In my limited understanding, you put the cable modem in bridge mode so that it functions only as modem and not as router. And your standalone router is the router.

    ReplyDelete

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