Standby your WAN
My sister has been without an Internet connection for the last few weeks and being the other side of the Thames from me, I have only been able to offer support by phone. The SpeedTouch ADSL Router I had bodged to act as just an internal router/wireless AP was apparently working fine and she assured me the Cable Modem was on. She wasn't getting a connection either wirelessly or using the great long ethernet cable supplied by Telewest when she got the connection, so I was rather stumped.
Today, my parents, great aunt and I have come to hers for lunch and so I had an opportunity to diagnose the problem first-hand. It turns out that the Cable Modem has a Standby button and it had been pressed. Another press later and it was working fine.
Why would you ever want a standby button on networking hardware?! You either want it on or off - there's just no point in having it in a power-consuming non-functional state.
[ Entry posted at: Wed 01 Aug 2007 18:14:49 BST | 0 comment(s)... | Cat: Geeky ]