[Hidden-tech] Help!

[Alan Hurwitz]

Esteemed colleagues,
I haven't asked for help too often on our network, though I've enjoyed 
many of the exchanges. We are now in the process of attempting to set 
up our internet and phone service for our winter sojourn in Miami, and 
it's been a total nightmare. I'll resist going through the whole story, 
especially since we need help more than sympathy at this point. There 
seem to be several problems coming together to make us crazy. Any 
useful comments that anyone can make about any of them will be very 
appreciated.

After an unsuccessful struggle to get DSL set up with Bellsouth, we got 
cable modem service from Atlantic Cable, the local cable TV folks. It 
works a lot (but not all) of the time with my iBook G4, as long as the 
cable is attached directly from the modem to my computer. But when we 
attach the modem (via ethernet) to our Vonage phone router, as 
suggested, we lose internet on the computer. The phone finally worked 
(after two hours + on the phone with Vonage folks from a variety of 
countries). But then I couldn't get internet on my computer. When I 
disconnect the Vonage router, and unplug and replug the modem, 
connecting the cable directly to the compute, I usually get a 
connection, but then of course without phone service.

We went through a lot of experiments with the Vonage folks, and it all 
was working when we got done. But then a bit later it wasn't working 
any longer. The Vonage guy was blaming it on the Bellsouth disk which 
we had previously downloaded on my Mac (to get ready for the Godot 
Bellsouth service). I've attempted to locate and trash all traces of 
their material from my computer (and life), but something is still 
getting in the way. When I do get on Explorer or Safari, somehow the 
home page still comes up Bellsouth. I wonder if that tells me 
something. Also, I get a funny box appearing from time to time, telling 
me there is no dial tone for connecting to the internet. It seems that 
somehow the computer thinks we're doing dial-up, or perhaps the DSL 
that we had set it up to do, before realizing that we weren't getting 
the signal and bailing over to Atlantic Cable. The Atlantic Cable 
people blame the Vonage router.

To make matters even more complicated, our ultimate goal is to set this 
all up so it all goes through our Airport Extreme wireless router, so 
that both my and my wife's computer can get onto the internet. This 
system worked great with Comcast in Amherst. How we long for the good 
old days in the cold but dependable Northeast! It hasn't come close to 
working in Miami, even without the Vonage router.

I tried it without Vonage, with the "help" of the Atlantic Cable folks. 
After several tries they told me the router was set for the wrong IP 
address, perhaps also still nostalgic for its Amherst days. He said I 
needed to re-set the wireless router to "DHCP", and then it would 
automatically get the right address from the cable modem. I happen to 
have the Airport Extreme disk with me. So I ran it and found an icon 
for re-setting the router. When I started that process, it asked me for 
a password for the router. I don't know if we ever had one, but 
certainly don't remember one now. I give up.

We're on the verge of going back to smoke signals. Please somebody say 
something about any of this. We're going nuts. I hope you all are 
enjoying the winter. We'd love to see any of you down here, especially 
anyone that can help us out of this nightmare.

Alan 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 3476 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.hidden-tech.net/pipermail/hidden-discuss/attachments/20060110/503c7c35/attachment-0010.bin