FVS124G + DG632 + Plusnet = No Internet!

I have already been aware that the IP  address I get from cable can stay the same for months on end. I would still prefer a static IP not to mention that there are a number of services bundled in the package.

I was dissapointed when benchmarking to find though plus net's service is 2 meg as is NTL, NTL's benchmark speed is about 1.95meg vs plusnet 1.5meg at best even though we are only about 0.5km from our exchange.

I should check with plusnet to see if there is a problem. I already have Netgear looking at it. Is it just me who inspite telling them more than once that I am an IT professional with plenty of networing experience I still get paronised as though I don't know what socket to plug things in. The best bit was when the email said the wan socket was the one on it's own next to the antenna. My VPN router is not wireless and has no antenna!

LOL - yes, I just LOVE tech support!!! I remember one time calling our tech support and the "tech" began to give me an education. When he was done I ask him if he was telling my customers this load of garbage he just tried to feed me. There was a very long silence and then a 'no' in a very small voice. I then told him a nice story about the unemployed tech support that walked funny and didn't have any more trouble with him. Most just look at whatever page number comes up when you give them your problem (or just email it to you as in your case).

I have been moved up to Level 2 Support by Netgear now but have not heared from the level 2 people yet. I have had a chance thought to look at the other place where I used a seperate ADSL modem and Router and by the looks of it it should be set up with PPOE. I cannot get this working in spite of using settings which worked fine in the ADSL Modem.

I have to say I enjoy Networking. I am currently a student placement with a software development and develop in Java. I do wonder in terms of if that is what I would like to do with the rest of my life. I wonder because networking is something I very much enjoy. The company generally uses DG834G routers in the homes of their workers. It is upgradeable to VPN with a firmware update. I decided to go more up market as I do tend to like having good networking equipment. I thought this aught to put me in good stead. I have a silly amount of networking equipment and need to remember it is not up to me alone to network everyone I know. I have 2 DLink VPN routers collecting dust from a failed project. I am a tad concerned that Netgear level 2 support have not got back to me. I am not sure whether I am right in asuming that PPPoA will become PPPoE by the time it gets to my VPN router. The ATM side being handled by my ADSL modem.

I am starting to wish I had never started this project. I mean it is not about working from home in stead of comming in to the office it is just so I can carry on working after work at home in order to try and increace my productinity a bit. I guess being a student I am wary of not getting through my assignments at work as fast as the other employees and certainly not fast enough for my bosses liking. Ah well. Where are you located if you don't mind me asking? Another way I am trying to speed up is by learning touch typing and I have touch typed this whole post. (Well I thought that was good anyway.)  

Networking is fun until it becomes a "job". I have been 'networking' before it was called 'networking'. It is always a challenge, especially when you get someone who thinks they know networking setting something up and then they expect you to fix it.  I started in computers many years ago, when you had to program it in hex and make your own interfaces. In those days the "hacker" was the guy who could figure out how to interface your computer with something, write the software, and get it to work. As far as where I am located, I live in the northeatern US. I don't give exact locations on the 'net. I have too many peices of equipment gathering dust around the house. I keep saying that one day it will all go on ebay! ;)

I got a responce back from Netgear to pretty much say "we haven't forgotten you, we are still thinking". I don't think you are in much danger from me as I am several thousand miles away in Great Britain. I just recall one time writing to someone whom I assumed was in the US in some sort of exchange about ISPs and talking to them about how it was probably cheaper to run your own server in the US because broadband and electricity are cheaper only to discover that the guy I was posting to was in the UK anyway. I think the UK Broadband is more similar to the US technology and configuration than it is to it's other European neighbours. Because the ADSL broadband runs over lines all provided by British Telecom, even if you use any of the many different providers the configuration is much the same. I think cable technology is simpler and easier to set up and more robust. I just wish they would give me an official fixed IP Address as I have no real compaint otherwise and am starting to think it is true what they say that you don't know what you have got untill it is gone. Come back NTL all is forgiven. Someone once told me that the nature of how Cable broadband works makes assigning fixed IPs difficult but I don't know if this is true.

I am sorry for being a child of the 80's and not having needed to do any serious low level programming. I was interested in networking almost as long as I have owned a PC. Sadly my first networking was nothing to do with anything productive like sharing files and such but was all about multiplayer Doom. That was when I was still using Dos and IPX and Netware Lite.

LOL...Doom, that brings back memories! To set a static IP is as simple as typing into a web interface (at least on my system). I don't really know the reasoning, except that it conserves on bandwidth, to limit your uploads as DSL here does (usually 768K -1.5Mbs down and 128K up on DSL here). I just spent two days with some REAL network 'geniouses'. They came to fix the VPN router; the first day they spent hours just setting it up (a Linksys VPN router). My headend is a secure location so I, unfortunately, had to stay with them and so I could answer any questions about our network. After 2 hours of "suggestions" that it won't work right until they get the right static IP - I finally called my boss who called their boss and we got the static IP working. They they had problems getting them to talk to each other. Finally (or so I thought) they were done. I started doing some of the stuff that I was trying to get done when at 5 they called; they couldn't get into their server anymore and asked if I could reboot their server. I stopped on the way home and rebooted it - no luck. So the next day they started again. They brought a "new" router that had "GOOD" marked on the top that didn't work at all. Then they got the original to work...sort of. They then told me I had a network problem since they were having 75% packet loss pinging from the server to their remote equipment. I then had to infrm them that if I did have a network problem that my phone would be ringing off the hook right now and how they determined it was my network. Basically they did no troubleshooting except that it was losing packets and it was my network. After helping them troubleshoot the problem and then finding out that the ethernet card wasn't configure right (at first thought it was a bad ethernet card, but of course they didn't have one to replace it) and they had a bad ethernet cable. I even had to help the tech there get into the configuration of the Aplha server since he knew the root password and very few commands. The "admin" he was talking to at headquarters wasn't much better. The REAL scary part is that their head of IT used to be the sales manager! Anyway...I hope that it stays working. When I was still a tech I installed a modem for a guy who gave me his bio as having every networking cert under the sun - he then asked me how to find out what IP address he was getting. It is a funny but sad thing. Hopefully Netgear will be able to work out your problem. ;)

Stil no news from Netgear. The Cable broadband could run out any day now. I expect I will know about when it does as I will have a call from my father asking why the Internet is not working. I imagine that I don't have a lot of trouble with looking incompetent as I usually play down what I know. I hate people who are full of themselves and don't wish to be so myself. I also tend to give estimates which are longer than I actually expect things to take in order to normally finish ahead of schedule. Estimates are tough anyway because how long something takes when somethings goes wrong can be dramatically longer than how long something takes when it goes smoothly. In industry though I find I can't over estimate as it seems the boss wants something and he wants it yesterday. I just tell him what he wan'ts to here and then often end up missing these deadlines because something goes wrong. This of course does not give me a great feeling of job security but I am on a 12 month student placement and am not a normal employee.

Is 1.5 a normal speed where you are? Here 2 meg is usually the slowest service offered. We pay about $40 a month for that. There are 4 and 8 meg services on exchanges which can take it which should be virtually all of then by April. The big Cities have ADSL2+. This means 22/24 meg services. I can only get 2 meg services in my town (because it's a run down dump only getting in the news for people being murdered or for being the home of one of the London bombers). 10 minutes away my friend can get 18meg ADSL2+. Only a few years ago Britan came out as the worsed place in Europe to get broadband. The government was pretty embarrased by this and gave BT a kick in the backside to get ADSL rolled out but this did not go too well even so as the rollout of ADSL by BT was compared to the roll out of Telephones in Russia. Things are better now but in surveys show the UK as being more expensive than most places in the world for broadband. This is no surprise really as we seem to always be paying over the odds for everything. This fact has been termed "Rip off Britain". As many in the UK travel abroad we can see how much cheaper things are generally everywhere else.

I am lookin forward to BT's rollout of the 21st Century Network. By the end of the decade 100 meg broadband could be the norm but this is the norm in South Korrea already.

Netgear technical support have got back to me asking me to update my firmware (like that wasn't someting I tried myself already). *sigh*. It remains to be seen if level 2 support are any better than level 1 support.

Here 768K down and 128K up runs around $14.99 for DSL.  DSL service here is getting better, but still not close to being available to the average person everywhere. Some cable companies are offering 6Mbs speeds - some only get that down though as they limit the upload speeds also. I haven't heard of anything faster than 6Mbs offered for consumers at this point. I had a 10 Mbs connection through cable at the last system I worked on since I was the ISP tech - perks. Most broadband for any descent speed is around $35 - 40 which is around 3 - 6Mbs. Most cable companies have doubled the speeds for no more money twice in the past year or so. Some of the phone companies are attempting FTTH (Fiber To The Home) in select areas which will possibly bring very high speeds. When everything finally 'converges' and you can get whatever content you want from about any device - then that will be geek heaven! (and if they make self-configuring routers) ;)

I tested my ADSL home setup with my D-Link ADSL Ethernet modem (DSL-300T) and VPN router (DI-804HV) and got it to work. The VPN router needed to be set on Dinamic IP as opposed to PPPoE. I replaced this VPN router with the current one as it was not compatible with the office VPN which uses Symantec Enterprise firewall. In fact I have 2 DI-804HVs collecting dust from a failed project.

I aught to check now if the D-Link VPN router works with the Netgear ADSL modem. this aught to narrow down the problem. I recall already trying the Netgear VPN router with the D-Link ADSL modem and it not working.

Here the Cable company offers speeds of 1 meg 2 meg and 10 meg and are saying 10 meg will be standard for all some time this year. ADSL is usually
2 meg, 4 meg and 8meg with ADSL 2+ at  24meg or there abouts. ADSL 2+ availability is extremely limited. The cable company says that they are testing 20 meg broadband. Thef two main Cable companies are in the process of merging to become one giant company. The upgrade to the cable infastructure is in preperation for VOD. FTTH I believe is too expensive for BT to consider right now but new homes are being connected with fibre because it is as cheap to lay that now as copper. I can remember BT saying they would get rid of all the telegraph poles and put all the phone lines underground but it never happened.

I know 100Mbs connection on cable is possible as I have seen it working (not for anyone but the rich for the price). The sad thing is that some sites are just as slow on a 50 Mbs connection (I have one at my headend to the fiber backbone - VERY fast) as it is on a 3 Mbs connection. With DOCSIS 3 coming out, I don't know if there will be a limit as to what speed cable will top out at. I am glad to hear that you got your connection working; maybe not as you wanted though.

I guess this was just to prove a point. I am not really finished. I have the D-Link router and modem happily working together but my further findings are less conclusive. I tried the Netgear modem with the D-link VPN router and it did not work. I tried the Netgear VPN router with the D-link modem and it does not work. This means things are not really conclusive. It looks like the cable connection has now been cut off. The D-link VPN router is not compatible with the office VPN so I do not wish to use it. I am wondering about just buying one of the cheaper DG834G which aught to be guarenteed to work. I have been at this almost 2 week now and seem little nearer to fixing the problem. I guess I will be left with a redundant $180 Business class VPN router but it is not the end of the world. I have other members of the family with whom I can re-home the new router at a later date if I do get things working. It has been nice to talk to you. It would be nice if I could continue but that is purely up to you. As I don't expect you would wish to give out your email address I will give you mine and take the risk of spam and such: Carl@Jokl.co.uk

I might as well give you the points too.