This will be the greatly shortened version of this story about how great technological dreams are shattered. Though I've lived on my own for years, this was my first opportunity to choose all the technological options from a clean slate (especially since the other party wanted no part of it). Immediately, road blocks were hit.
I decided this was a VoIP world (perhaps somewhat irrationally) since I was planning on making a lot of long distance calls during the day for work, so my cell phone plan (which I need to change) and regular phone service did not seem like great options. Ironically, this made DSL a less attractive option for broadband since without a phone line one cannot even get an accurate price on the web for the service - I even ended up just choosing a number in the complex). However, I've always had a great experience with cable, so that was the way I was leaning anyhow. The catch: I had my heart set on DirecTV (which I really plan to order tomorrow) to get Panthers games with NFL Ticket (Duke games should also fall in line) plus a very hackable DirecTV Tivo. Adelphia was running an ok deal, so I started with basic cable and modem figuring I would cancel the former and after 6 months pay $10 more for the latter. Unfortunately, I have come to learn that the service isn't as fast as I'm used to (though it does stick to the terms of what I ordered, damn tiered pricing). What makes the cable modem even more of a hassle is that I bought it out-right for $10 (it was free the next week), and I calculated afterwards that even counting gas and time at 0 with taxes thrown in I'll have to use it past my contract to save a dime. I can't even find a decent way to hack it since especially in Ohio they frown on that sort of thing.
I came into this deal already with a cable/router, but needed wireless. What made this even more interesting was the (perhaps ill-thought out) belief that the cable modem / router should be in my bedroom where it will be near 3 (or more) computers as opposed to by the TV where my soon-to-be less-used ReplayTV resides. Especially since I was not using local phone service (and thus wiring), it needed to be connected to the Internet. That is where the fun begins. It turns out a wireless access point, a device which I still figure is dumper than a router, is needed to make my Replay wireless (since its USB ports have yet to be activated by Sonic Blue after years of promises). However, this device is significantly more expensive than a router, especially with the current sales. Thus the trickiness, the trickeration, of using a second router as an AP. First, despite the protests of Netgear, I read online that their wireless g routers could be bridged. This goes to prove do not believe everything you read on the Internet, perhaps a smarter (or at least more patient) person than I could get this to work, but even the person who made the claim later emailed me to say he had no idea how to do this. Fortunately, I did return them exactly 30 days after purchase without penalty - good thing I didn't attempt to send off the rebates. Then I bought 2 Belkin routers for a theoretical $6 each (really like $41, I'll never see that rebate money since they shipped it late to me), which actually did this bridging. Yes, it took hours of manipulation even though it was mentioned in the manual, mainly because one cannot bridge them with WPA encryption. Yes, so for any real hackers out there I have a sign written in WEP saying "steal my bandwidth" - though broadcast is turned off so perhaps they'll have to be a little cleverer to accomplish the feat. The goal of this exercise was to perhaps save $40 after wasting A LOT of time and energy.
Like is good. I hooked up Vonage with a Linksys phone adapter (another rebate I'll never get). I attempted to use a "friend recommendation" to get a discount - which didn't seem to work since I had already bought the adapter and did not need it shipped. Shortly after they dropped the price of the service - I will fight unreasonably long if they attempt to charge me that extra $5, both on new customer and "friend recommendation" grounds. Great service, except I need to use my p2p and Adelphia is not lying about my upstream bandwidth. I apparently sound like I'm using a string and a tin can while on the moon if I try to use Vonage with p2p going full speed. What would be great is QoS to give my phone traffic (in fact, just that Ethernet port / address, if not VoIP) highest priority. Wait, that exists since the Belkin is just like the Linksys version, and that company (now Cisco) has released its modified linux firmware - heck, I, Cringely mentioned it. Sveasoft releases what I hear is an excellent firmware update for it that includes QoS. Heck, there is even the BatBox and HyperWRT distributions which adds some features. Unfortunately, the Sveasoft developer(s?) says Belkin has not been playing ball. I can totally understand concentrating on Linksys/Cisco since it is the much larger market and a company that sees the benefit of helping people contribute to their project (in order to incorporate their ideas), but the Belkins are so damn cheap. I honestly don't believe I have the skill set / time to learn the skill set to do anything about the problem, but I will contact the Belkin representative they mention.
Anyway, short of buying a lot more bandwidth or another device, I have to run to throttle my p2p when I get an incoming phone call at the moment. What is frustrating is I know the technology is there, the devices are just not effectively talking to each other right now. Plus their is the additional frustration of having no idea at what price to value my time.
Posted by shs4 at October 12, 2004 12:46 AM | TrackBack