Quality wiring

Since I am frequently the first to complain, let me also be the first to sing high praise:

I love my cable provider. I love Cox Communications.

You may all giggle and snort now. Yes. Cox for me. Mmmmmm mmmmm.

Moving on:

Problem

We had a couple of nagging problems with the ‘ole IT infrastructure here at the castle.

* Weird “ping” times that would alternate between 40ms (good) and 2,000ms (bad).
* The Vonage router needed to be rebooted once or twice a day.

Buying stuff

I decided to call Vonage and ask them for help. As documented earlier, they told me to buy a real VoIP router, and throw away their crap one. So I did. I got the Linksys WRTP54G. $130, with $50 back from Best Buy and $50 back from Vonage. It allowed me to replace three pieces of hardware in the network closet:

* The POS, Motorola “VT1005” VoIP box
* The Apple Airport Extreme wireless router
* The “Dear God that’s Old” Linksys 4 port switch.

Phone Support

So, things were considerably cleaned up in the wiring department. Sadly, nothing worked anymore. I hacked and I cussed and I generally failed to get things working. So finally I broke down and called Cox support. They dumped me into what turned out to be the very best automated phone support I’ve ever experienced. Cox rocks. It was one of these voice recognition doo-hickies.

While we wait for a technician to become available, would it be okay for me to try a couple of things to see if I can help you with your problem?

Sure. Why not.

I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you. Please say “yes” if it would be okay.

Yes

Okay. I see in our system that your cable modem is connected. I’m going to try to contact it and see if we can establish the connection in both directions. This is called ‘pinging’ the modem. … Great! I pinged the modem and it responded. This is very good news. Also, the signal quality is great. Now I’m going to try to find your router. I can’t see any router at your end. Is there a router plugged in?

Yes.

I would like you to try an experiment with me. Please unplug the router and tell me when it’s unplugged. When it’s unplugged, please say ‘continue’

Continue

Allright, now this may seem a little silly, but we’re going to wait a few seconds to be sure that everything is clear before we plug it back in … that should be plenty. Now please plug the router back in and say ‘continue’ when it’s done

Continue

Thanks. Now let’s see if I can find the router … … … hey! I just saw the router come online. The address of the router is different from what we had in our records. I bet you got some new hardware, didn’t you.

Yes (awed…keep in mind that this is still the automated system)

Great. I can fix this for you … okay, now please try to connect to the internet. Does it work?

You are my artificially intelligent goddess with a soothing voice. I bow before you.

I’m sorry, please say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

Yes. Oh god yes.

Great! A technician is available to talk to you now. Have a great day!

After that, I called up Vonage and had them activate my number with the new router. That wasn’t so blissful … but who cares.

Wiring

In a fit of enthusiasm, I then decided to expand the home wireless to provide better signal for the hammock. I ran my longest piece of cat-5 through the basement, and popped it up on the other side of the house. Plugged in the old Airport Extreme, and now I get good signal all the way to the back of the property.

Go me.