Fair Warning: this is a light “techie post”. Nothing heavy, just an equipment upgrade yarn.
So, my very nice Netgear WPN824 802.11b/g MIMO router began being a bit finicky about accessing its web management interface, and, wanting to demonstrate excessive over compliance with keeping my own network equipment up to snuff, since it gives me extra ammo to rub in my ISP’s face *heh*, I purchased a Linksys WRT160NL 802.11b/g/n router to upgrade my lil network with.
Note: the Netgear was showing no packet losses across my home network, and was seemingly rock solid otherwise; in fact, it will serve nicely, I think, as a “breakout” switch, with the DHCP and wireless functionality turned off. Oh, and I’d switched my cable “modem” (it’s no such thing. It doesn’t modulate/demodulate; it’s a specialized router, for heaven’s sake!) earlier as well. The “old” one still works perfectly well, but my ISP can’t complain about my equipment.
Well, the Linksys router seems to be nice enough and all. Son & Heir has a snappier connection via the wireless n adapter in his Asus G71Gx-A1. (*sigh* I have to watch the envy factor. It’s a seriously cool machine 🙂 Oh, the link’s to the “A2”–whose only real difference is Win7 instead of Vista.)
Still, it could have been a better experience setting the thing up. *sigh* It took nearly an hour–yes, an hour!–to configure wireless connectivity on my Wonder Woman’s Toshiba. Don’t ask. OK, since you did (in my dreams nightmares *heh*), I’d been using the Intel Proset Wireless Management tool to manage the Intel chipset 802.11b/g adapter in her notebook. Why? Because Windows wireless management tool sucked dead bunnies through a straw on that adapter, the Toshiba maagement tool that came with the notebook… worked well on a different adapter that had come embedded in the original motherboard (which was changed out by Toshiba last year under warranty), but was even worse than the windows tool for the Intel adapter in this mobo.
Well, the Intel Proset tool could NOT negotiate with the Linksys WRT160NL any better than the built in Windows tool or the Toshiba tool could. That meant… installing the Linksys tool. And THAT meant installing the WHOLE Linksys management router management package, NOT just a wireless config tool. And for some reason, it took 30 minutes to install the frickin’ Linksys software! Un. Be. Lieveable.
*sigh* Once it installed and I jumped through a few (well, a BUNCH of–man! I’m not trying to make off with the crown jewels here!) hoops, all was well. Finally. But. Getting Son&Heir’s ASUS notebook on the wireless Netgear network had been a major pain in the neck (well, actually an anatomically lower region, if you get my drift), so what, thought I, was this going to be like?
Toddled off and got his password (again–I always forget the thing and I will NOT write it down :-)), fired up the monster and… yep. Windows found the wireless network and volunteered to attempt to log on. I clicked to insert the password (which I had handy on a thumb drive) and… that was all. Muuuuch easier than the last time on his computer. Tearing my hair out on my Wonder Woman’s–a computer that’s always managed to negotiate credentials relatively simply in the past, once I used the right management tool to do so.
Well, all is well now, except for my ISP’s woeful service. On again/off again. Good stuff, then, packet losses apparently out the wazoo (well, they can’t say where they’re lost, that’s for sure–or at least haven’t bothered to find out where *sigh*).
Now, if only I could figure out why the storage link on this thing is not configuring the way the documentation says it should… Yeh, neat lil function–if I can get it working correctly: a USB connection for an external drive. I can “see” the drive I installed and create shares, etc., from the router, but not from any of the computers. Yet. Just one more thing to tinker with. (It’ll be a media share when I get it working correctly, a place to dump shows I’ve recorded so others can view them on their computers. Oh, and a bunch of mp3s and such for Thanksgiving and Xmas family time. Just pump ’em through whatever computer’s set up in living room, kitchen/dining room, etc. Easier than burning another mix CD and playing it through the EC in the living room only.)
Ah, *thumps head*. The external drive issue? *sigh* It’ll require a reboot over to the Linux side of this box and a session with PartED to fix the issue. See, although the pdf “manual” that came with the router said Not One Word about it, the NTFS formatting on the drive I connected Will Not Do. No, it MUST be formatted using FAT32! What?!? That’s an extremely inefficient file format for large hard drives! Did I say “extremely”? Oh, I can attach the thing to an older computer running an older version of Windows (XP, even) and reformat the drive as FAT32, but I want a non-destructive format. There’s data on that drive, after all. Sure, sure, I have that data duplicated–backed up–elsewhere, but really, a destructive format? That’s for the birds!
So, since I no longer have a current, good non-destructive disk management software that can reformat an NTFS disk to FAT32 on anything but a Linux box, and because this is the fastest Linux box in the house (when it’s booted on that “side”), it’s
- detach the drive from the router
- reboot into Ubuntu
- attach the drive to this computer
- start PartEd and go to town.
Now, that’s not an onerous task, but it would’ve been n ice for the documentation to say so up front, and not require that I dig through a bunch of obscurantist support pages to find it out. Oh, well. Wait. I have another drive the same size (and make and NTFS file format *sigh*) attached. I guess I could just switch those out after reformatting “this” one (which has very little data on it). Then *sigh* swap out data. But of course, I’ll still need to either take it to an older Windows machine to reformat the drive or boot into Linux, because Win7 (and Vista) disk management will NOT format a drive using FAT32. Nope. The only choices are NTFS and exFAT, which will NOT be seen as FAT32 by the router. Or, and I suppose this would be the most efficient tack, I could simply clean off the little data on “this” drive, swap it out for the other and use the Linksys management interface to format the drive. I suppose. *sigh*
Oh. Well. Another day. 🙂