From Oy Vey! to Yippee! : Router Set-Up Challenges

One of the goals I set up for this session was to successfully set up a router so I could have wireless access within my home.

After a few uninterrupted hours, several phone calls and 65 buckaroos later, I did succeed on Monday morning.

Oy Vey!

The challenge in set-up was not a technical issue but rather a question of accessing critical information and making erroneous assumptions. It had less to do with hardware than dealing with support services and abandoning assumptions. In order to setup the router one needs their Dynamic or Static IP address, subnet mask number, the router address, and both the primary and secondary DNS (Domain Name Server).

I had some of this information but not all of it. Most I could get from my own computer under the heading "System Preferences: Network" but the rest had to be provided by the ISP or so I thought. The other challenge was the misleading assumptions I made based on my interaction with the set-up program, and with technology in general. I also did not trust my intuition when interacting with my computer.

The hard copy directions where brief and, in the end, insufficient: it is only enough to guide you to the on-line instruction manual/setup wizard. Of course, this approach of instruction-giving presumes you will not fail to get to the critical on-line crossroad on the way to successful setup.

I managed to get to the on-line set-up wizard. Although I was missing a couple of bits of the key information, I thought I would try set up anyway, presuming the program would be "smart" and glean all the information from simply running through the systems. What led me to make this assumption is that one of the early set-up screens leads the user to believe that it actually can read how the system is configured. Trusting this was the case, I proceeded with set up. Well, I assumed wrong. The Wizard was not smart enough to read key system information. First problem: contrary to the Wizard's suggestion, my IP address was actually dynamic and not static. This fact was critical in the set-up because dynamic and static each had their own distinct configuration. I suspected that my IP address was dynamic: everytime I looked up the address under the system preferences, it was different; but I chose to disregard my intuition and trust the softwares' analysis instead. Second problem: the missing information was not furnished by the wizard. I figured as much but I thought it was worth a try.


By the time I realized what had gone wrong, there was no way for me to go back and correct the first mistake, claiming my IP address dynamic and not static. Now I am blurry about why I could not go back. Maybe it was because it seemed like I had lost internet access and could not get back to the wizard and the on-line directions. I had lost sight of the critical set-up crossroad and was lost in the wilderness. I had to troubleshoot both problems.

First I tried to get all the critical information. Surprisingly, the company that provided the router had the key information and not the ISP as I had assumed. This discovery took a few phone calls to the following: the ISP, to the store where I had purchased the router, and finally the router's own help desk.

Second, I went back to the set-up wizard and realized I needed help with the set up. When I tried to pull up the wizard page, nothing happened. I phoned the router support services and the router techician told me to type the router address number into the address window and bingo! the wizard reappeared. This is the key step that I never would have thought to do without the help of the technician; this very knowledge is what justifies the fees. It was strange typing a number instead of a typical web address. Although after the fact I understood why it worked, habit would have simply prevented me from putting a string of numbers where I usually put text. The router technician walked me through all of the steps. Once we actually began the process, it took roughly a half hour to have it up and running.

Yippee!

It is such a thrill to no longer be tethered to one desk in my home. The mobility to work anywhere in the house is terrific for all the obvious reasons. For me however, with winter coming, the ability to work from a warm room is key. While parts of my house can be heated with either the back up oil system or wood, my study is in a part of the house heated only by wood stove. It takes time to warm up parts of my home with the wood stove; last winter there were hours lost on-line because I simply could not work in a cold room. This is why I am thrilled with this new mobile access.

There have been other lessons learned in this process I shall share with you in briefer posts.