back online woo hoo!
You guys, today the Friendship with Superpowers (TM me and heresluck) fixed my Internet.
Here's how it happened...
I'd been having intermittent connectivity problems with my home Internet for the past couple of weeks. It started out slowly...the Internet would drop out and I'd go into the kitchen and unplug the modem and/or the router for a couple minutes, and then plug it back in and it would be fine for a while longer. Then the interval between incidents started to shorten. Then the recovery time (time I had to leave stuff unplugged in order for things to work when I plugged stuff back in) started to get longer. At least twice in the past week, I'd turned things off overnight and left them off all the next day while I was at work, in hopes of having Internet in the evening when I got home again.
Troubleshooting earlier this past week led me to conclude that my wireless router might have been the primary cause of my trouble, since I was able to reach the Internet when I connected my laptop directly to the cable modem with an Ethernet cable. So, when the Internet dropped out on me again last night and a brief session of powering everything down and then back on didn't fix it, I decided to unplug everything in the kitchen Internet/computer area overnight, and go immediately to Best Buy if I couldn't get the Internet back on Saturday when I got up. Then I burned s1 of Orphan Black to DVD to have something to do on an Internet-less and home network-less Friday night. (Usually, I just stream video files across my home network from the desktop computer in the kitchen to watch on my laptop, but see above re: everything powered off in the kitchen computing area.)
On Saturday, still no joy with the Internet connection, so after enjoying a couple more episodes of Orphan Black while I ate lunch to build up strength for my outing, I took off for Best Buy to pick up a new wireless router. Mission accomplished, I set it up and started to configure it and, after a stuttering moment of allowing me to download the router's manual from the manufacturer's website during the set up process, no Internet again. I grabbed my laptop from the other room to test the connectivity directly from the modem and...this time, no Internet connection that way, either. Argh!
After ascertaining the Time Warner store's hours using my smart phone's Internet connection, I hopped in the car again and traded in my old cable modem for a nicer, newer one. (A nice perk of leasing the cable modem for that awful monthly fee.) When I got it home and set it up, at first there was no Internet, even after I waited several minutes to make sure each piece of equipment had enough time to go through its start-up routine. *headdesk*
Frustrated, I called my favorite, heresluck. I felt like I was at the end of my rope, so I whined at her about how I just wanted my Internet to work again without all of this ongoing hassle, and how, of all the cables involved (most of which I had already swapped out in the process of replacing the above hardware), the coaxial cable running from the modem to the cable connection on the wall seemed the least likely cable to suddenly stop working. As is her wont, she insisted on presenting me with the cold hard facts of how, if it wasn't the router or the modem that was causing the problem, then it had to be a) the cable between the modem and the wall, b) the connection at the wall itself, or c) the line outside the house. "If I could fix it for you, I would," she concluded, "but I'm afraid I can't just wave a magic wand and make everything better."
As I whined further at her about how we have a Friendship with SUPERPOWERS, and that should qualify for magical fix-it abilities, wand or no wand, I ducked my head around the corner to contemplate whether I could hurdle the mess in the living room to reach the co-axial cable in there that still runs from my TV to the wall, even though I canceled my cable TV subscription months ago. Nah, too much of a disaster in there to be worth the hassle. So, I just shut down everything connected to the computer again, and then unscrewed the co-axial cable that was already in use in the kitchen, flipped it around and connected it back up.
After a few more minutes of complaining to here's luck about how much I did NOT want to clean my kitchen up enough for a cable repair technician to come out and troubleshoot my Internet problems, I poked at my restarted computer again and...did I dare believe my eyes...was that an "Internet access" status showing for my network? I did a few web searches (successful) and checked for a wireless connection on my smart phone (successful), before declaring to here's luck that the Friendship with Superpowers had just fixed my Internet connection, because it appeared to be working again!
I wish I could say that I can rub this in here's luck's face and cut her off the next time she goes on and on at me about objective reality and claims not to be able to fix my tech problems with magic, but I find it likely that that lecture is actually vital to the mysterious mechanism of the Friendship with Superpowers. Made up, as it is, of the Essence of Us. So :P to you, here's luck, and thanks for bringing half the magic that fixed my Internet today!
P.S. And now I have a spiffy new, dual-band wireless router, and I finally started using my new, huge power strip thing that's been sitting around for at least 6 months, and I unpacked and connected my 2TB external drive that's been languishing in a box for several years, and I can even connect it directly to the wireless router and keep the media I want to view/listen to from the other room on there so my desktop computer can be powered off occasionally! Woo!
Manually cross-posted from http://renenet.dreamwidth.org/294261.html because automatic cross-posting failed for some reason I'm too tired to investigate at the moment.
Here's how it happened...
I'd been having intermittent connectivity problems with my home Internet for the past couple of weeks. It started out slowly...the Internet would drop out and I'd go into the kitchen and unplug the modem and/or the router for a couple minutes, and then plug it back in and it would be fine for a while longer. Then the interval between incidents started to shorten. Then the recovery time (time I had to leave stuff unplugged in order for things to work when I plugged stuff back in) started to get longer. At least twice in the past week, I'd turned things off overnight and left them off all the next day while I was at work, in hopes of having Internet in the evening when I got home again.
Troubleshooting earlier this past week led me to conclude that my wireless router might have been the primary cause of my trouble, since I was able to reach the Internet when I connected my laptop directly to the cable modem with an Ethernet cable. So, when the Internet dropped out on me again last night and a brief session of powering everything down and then back on didn't fix it, I decided to unplug everything in the kitchen Internet/computer area overnight, and go immediately to Best Buy if I couldn't get the Internet back on Saturday when I got up. Then I burned s1 of Orphan Black to DVD to have something to do on an Internet-less and home network-less Friday night. (Usually, I just stream video files across my home network from the desktop computer in the kitchen to watch on my laptop, but see above re: everything powered off in the kitchen computing area.)
On Saturday, still no joy with the Internet connection, so after enjoying a couple more episodes of Orphan Black while I ate lunch to build up strength for my outing, I took off for Best Buy to pick up a new wireless router. Mission accomplished, I set it up and started to configure it and, after a stuttering moment of allowing me to download the router's manual from the manufacturer's website during the set up process, no Internet again. I grabbed my laptop from the other room to test the connectivity directly from the modem and...this time, no Internet connection that way, either. Argh!
After ascertaining the Time Warner store's hours using my smart phone's Internet connection, I hopped in the car again and traded in my old cable modem for a nicer, newer one. (A nice perk of leasing the cable modem for that awful monthly fee.) When I got it home and set it up, at first there was no Internet, even after I waited several minutes to make sure each piece of equipment had enough time to go through its start-up routine. *headdesk*
Frustrated, I called my favorite, heresluck. I felt like I was at the end of my rope, so I whined at her about how I just wanted my Internet to work again without all of this ongoing hassle, and how, of all the cables involved (most of which I had already swapped out in the process of replacing the above hardware), the coaxial cable running from the modem to the cable connection on the wall seemed the least likely cable to suddenly stop working. As is her wont, she insisted on presenting me with the cold hard facts of how, if it wasn't the router or the modem that was causing the problem, then it had to be a) the cable between the modem and the wall, b) the connection at the wall itself, or c) the line outside the house. "If I could fix it for you, I would," she concluded, "but I'm afraid I can't just wave a magic wand and make everything better."
As I whined further at her about how we have a Friendship with SUPERPOWERS, and that should qualify for magical fix-it abilities, wand or no wand, I ducked my head around the corner to contemplate whether I could hurdle the mess in the living room to reach the co-axial cable in there that still runs from my TV to the wall, even though I canceled my cable TV subscription months ago. Nah, too much of a disaster in there to be worth the hassle. So, I just shut down everything connected to the computer again, and then unscrewed the co-axial cable that was already in use in the kitchen, flipped it around and connected it back up.
After a few more minutes of complaining to here's luck about how much I did NOT want to clean my kitchen up enough for a cable repair technician to come out and troubleshoot my Internet problems, I poked at my restarted computer again and...did I dare believe my eyes...was that an "Internet access" status showing for my network? I did a few web searches (successful) and checked for a wireless connection on my smart phone (successful), before declaring to here's luck that the Friendship with Superpowers had just fixed my Internet connection, because it appeared to be working again!
I wish I could say that I can rub this in here's luck's face and cut her off the next time she goes on and on at me about objective reality and claims not to be able to fix my tech problems with magic, but I find it likely that that lecture is actually vital to the mysterious mechanism of the Friendship with Superpowers. Made up, as it is, of the Essence of Us. So :P to you, here's luck, and thanks for bringing half the magic that fixed my Internet today!
P.S. And now I have a spiffy new, dual-band wireless router, and I finally started using my new, huge power strip thing that's been sitting around for at least 6 months, and I unpacked and connected my 2TB external drive that's been languishing in a box for several years, and I can even connect it directly to the wireless router and keep the media I want to view/listen to from the other room on there so my desktop computer can be powered off occasionally! Woo!
Manually cross-posted from http://renenet.dreamwidth.org/294261.html because automatic cross-posting failed for some reason I'm too tired to investigate at the moment.