Hi all.
Finally got ADSL! Never thought I'd see the day!
The loss & SNR is excellent. I'm not far from the exchange, and IIRC, the
loss was about 35db, and I was allowed 59. The garage over the road was
getting a 2Mb link put in at the same time, and the engineer said there'd
be no problem getting 2Mb out of my line the quality was that good :-)
A not inconsiderable "thank you" to the kind installer who accidentally
left an integrated filter faceplate, instead of the traditional one.
I wish everything else would go that smoothly!
Due to a couple of reasons (namely a total lack of modem :-) I couldn't
get onto the Broadband store to order my router (I've decided on the
510v4) before 3:30 (their cutoff for next day, so it's Monday now :-( )
I decided to go to PC world to pick up their cheapest (I know!) USB ADSL
modem. I decided on their eTEC effort. Conexant(sp) chipset, £29.99.
Appears as a LAN connection, configured by connecting to http://10.0.0.2/
Got it home.
Wouldn't work, because I've got a NIC already in there. This modem appears
as a LAN connection.
Disabled NIC, sort of worked, couldn't connect.
Phoned up plusnet (after realising that my old laptop had a built in
modem, so I could connect via a PAYG number, to get the plusnet website
up), to find that BT hadn't informed them that it was installed, so they'd
not turned on the account.
Turned on the account, everything seemed to work.
I then tried to change my IP address to 10.0.1.3, because I've got
software running that needs to connect to that address.
This deeply upset the modem, which then refused to be connected to, either
on my PC, or my laptop.
Back in the box, and off to PC world.
Got the new one.
That didn't work either. I think whatever I'd done had upset the internals
of WinXP (resetting the TCPIP system didn't fix it!). It didn't work on my
laptop either.
I then tried it on my wife's laptop, and this time it connected (at least
I could get to the config screen).
All of the settings were screwed, which means it was unable to connect.
Did a factory reset, and now the internal webserver was missing half its
pages. Left it unplugged for 15 minutes, tried again, and this time it
worked. I've got fast internet again! And Damn! Is it fast!
OK, tried it on _my_ laptop. It works!
Tried it on my PC, no luck. The routing table is totally screwed up.
Occasionally, when it's plugged in, rather than giving me an address
between 10.0.0.3 and 10.0.0.14, it gives me 165....
Decided this wasn't a problem - it's only until Monday, I can use my
laptop until them.
Spent the evening browsing, deciding it wasn't worth waiting 3 hours for
my place in line to download the entire Steam install (28 hours on ISDN
compared with 3 on BB :-)
Realvideo (Harry potter 3 teaser trailer) was choppy & kept re-training,
but was very good. Could have been network congesion, or could have been
the MTU being wrong. (What is the optimal MTU? This one was set to 1476
IIRC).
Went to bed.
This morning, got up (as you do).
The damn thing is dead again! When it's first powered up, I can connect to
it for about 30 seconds, but then it just fails, looking at its IP status,
it's got an invalid IP address. It doesn't allow any external access
during that time though.
I'm now connecting on an internal modem, that was destined for my in-law's
computer, which is only getting 38.6k - 13 times slower than yesterday :-(
counting the seconds until my router arrives, hoping that it will work
properly!
Pete.
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