What Happened Next - Restoring Normality

The following events took place between 6pm and 8pm on Tuesday 27th April 2010...
I played around for a while longer trying to get the cable modem to do sensible things on my home network. Didn't get anywhere, except the feeling of having failed. I was hoping I'd be able to leave the wireless aspect of the network as it was - just connect the cable modem to my network and leave the Netgear DG834 up, but with the ADSL modem part switched off (which I'm not now sure you can do anyway!).

So I concede defeat on this, and get the DLink DIR-615 out of its box. The cable modem is a little black box with green lights on it. So is this. The Quick Installation Guide is crap - it doesn't describe how to connect the cables, but fortunately, it's obvious. There's an Ethernet socket with "Internet" written above it, and some others. I connect the cable from the modem to "Internet", and the laptop to one of the others. I go in to the admin UI and get busy. All relatively straight-forward, and it works fine. Without going in to detail, I did have to completely alter the way the wireless network is set up, which was annoying. It's just that the Netgear has possibilities that the DLink doesn't. On the plus side, the DLink is "N", but I'm not sure we have any "N" devices. The DLink requires yet another power socket, so we now have no CD player.

I don't want to labour the point much further - but just to summarise - a VirginMedia installation requires THREE power sockets (V+HD, cable modem, router). We also had our power sockets arranged in such a way that only one thing needed to be switched on 24x7, so we were using the least electricity possible - that's gone out the window now and will need a re-think.

With the DLink up, the kids are back in business. I start reconfiguring wireless devices. Not a big deal. The printer was connected to a server on the Netgear in the study. Netgear is now out. Jury remains out over exactly how to connect the printer. The kids use it for homework, but it'd be nice to be able to print from the laptop over wireless. That needs some thought. In the immediate-term, I took the print server down, I took the Netgear down. I moved the printer so it's mid-way between the kids two computers, and they now have a USB cable connection to share. Installed printer/scanner software on the kids computers. So on the plus side, they can now scan stuff. I'm not happy with the printer where it is - it's essentially on top of a wall unit, and you can't see the lights/buttons on the control panel. May get a longer USB cable and put the printer back where it was, or look at a dedicated print server and put it back on the network.

There is now a large number of annoyingly-flashing green lights under the TV. I start tidying up and thinking about arranging things. The DLink is now hidden - quite literally in the very back corner of the room. The cable modem - which flashes the most - is in full view under the TV. I'll need to re-route all its cables in order to move it. This is a job for later. It's not that I'm putting it off as such - it's just that the Blu-ray player arrives today, and I'll move the modem as part of re-cabling to install the player.

Eventually - in a week or so - things WILL be better. There will be less devices, less need for power sockets, less complexity and less things on 24x7. We're just not quite there yet.

So I got there. Everything is up. Everyone is happy. The Internet is faster. It took longer than I anticipated - which these things generally do. When I bought this service, I went with all the default options - I didn't opt in or out of anything. This means that I got the same install experience as anyone else would get. You have to pay extra to have your Internet fully set up and your wireless etc. I'm a little bit technical - I know a bit about TCP/IP and networking - at least I understood that my modem was pushing out Class A when everything else was talking Class B. I wonder at what experience people who know less about computers and networking than me have...

Later, I'll post on what happened between 8 and 10 - our first-use experience.