R.I.P. D-Link
Filed under: hardware, geeky
Yesterday I got home to find out that my no-longer-wireless D-Link router was also no longer a router. It had forwarded its last packet. I hadn't had time to hook up the new one which was sitting, un-powered, on top of the old one. Linksys, I choose you!
As I said, 1,000 geeks can't be wrong about a router. Most of the comments though dove in quite deep and suggested installing custom firmware, etc. While five years ago that would probably have been my first action, this time I just wanted to be Joe Consumer. I popped in the bundled CD, followed the instructions and had the new router up in less than 5 minutes.
The wireless was not quite right though. I couldn't connect with my old laptop settings or my DS. I opened a web browser and pointed it to http://192.168.0.1. No deal, so I pulled the small FAQ card from the box. How do I reconfigure my router? Browse to http://192.168.1.1. Thanks! I changed the transmission rate and security to be Nintendo DS happy. One thing I did not like was that I couldn't enter the WEP key (yes, the DS only supports WEP) as ASCII. The six year old D-Link router allowed that. I had to search for a web page that quickly converted ASCII to HEX (note: there are plenty). And that was it, everything was up and running. I will definitely have to add another 5-egg vote for this one.
UPDATE: Funny, Snap Shots can't preview the URLs above ;) The fact that it tried seems like a security risk.