Networking blues

I put a bit of the story of my cable modem on my main blog last week ... Had a few more network issues since then. Apparently the new Belkin wi-fi card on my main PC doesn't like my old router very much. When finishing a game session on Thursday, I looked to reboot back to the applications drive but was greeted by a Total failure to get a connection going to the router and therefore the internet.

Networking can be extremely fiddly at the best of times, even if everything is working to satisfaction. Which was definitely not the case with my old router. The Router story is a fairly old one now, it had a habit of knocking me off the internet with the logs telling me about a series of "SYN Flood" attacks coming from my computer. (Translation - it thought my PCs were trying to hack the net and blocked all traffic). That problem escalated into the router going to sleep entirely, needing a Power Off / Power On to fix. Bit irritating when the music you're listening to gets cut off mid-song.

Bit like the giggling sailor in the advert - sometimes all it takes is the switch going off and then on. I used to be able to do that in software (and then get issues with laptop not seeing the router!) but after a while had to resort to pulling the plug.

Anyway ... old Philips router is now one step away from the garbage bin, having :

• a habit of knocking me off the net
• unexplained crashes needing a power off/power on
• difficulty getting new laptop to connect to it after a router reset
• Extreme difficulty getting the new wifi card in the desktop to connect

I'd basically gotten sick of the antics of what got bought because it was the cheapest in the shop. Cheap not necessarily cheerful in this case.

I'm now using the Apple Airport Express as my router, more about that a couple of posts down from this one. Seems trouble free so far, although I've only had one gaming session with it so far. I'm impressed with the Little White Box (aka Airport Express), it's handled what I've asked of it so far without batting a virtual eyelid. Unlike the objectionable Philips item which needed constant prodding to keep it alive.

So that's the home network, now for mum's & dad's ...

I had warnings that I'd need the Techie Hat on for this Mother's Day weekend because my dad's laptop had lost its internet. We tried the usual suspects :

Usual suspects if your internet doesn't work :

• Unplug router/modem, plug it back in again. A power cycle can often get a locked-up device working again.
• Try the "repair connection" option from the networking. That does a power cycle too but restricts it to the network hardware inside your machine.
• Check whether a signal is coming through.
  

No joy there though. My laptop saw the network fine, albeit a little quiet. Cue idea number one - my dad's router uses an external aerial to boost the signal, this aerial had got a little loose at the plug. If there's an air gap in the loop between transmitter and aerial, it's not good for the reception. That didn't sort it though.

Idea 2 was to do a bunch of restarts on my dad's laptop and to use my Little White Box again to give it something else to look at. Laptop couldn't see Little White Box either, which is where I was starting to get worried due to running out of ideas.

Was it a hardware issue where the laptop's wifi connection had got borken ? Quite possibly.
Did I have my now-spare PCMCIA wifi card with me ? Noooo ...

The screensaver came up while I was pondering (translation - peeking at stuff from my own laptop :-) and inspired a little ... erm ... inspiration. If something isn't working for you, have a root around in the Power Management settings in case the Green Fanatics have caused some trouble for you. I'll all for being Green but they do cause problems by going nuts with it. Things like low activity power downs on hard discs causing hard disc failures, energy saving lightbulbs that will contaminate your room with Mercury if they break. Catalytic convertors that use up all the platinum while also making engines thirstier. Greenies causing the destruction of a Space Shuttle by enforcing a change in how the fuel tank is made.

In this case, Network Crippled By Power Saving Feature. Shoulda known really. As soon as the laptop's transmitter got turned back on, it connected up immediately.

It turned out as 2-1 in the Techie Stakes this weekend :

Win - laptop now connects to internet again.
Loss - couldn't fix my nan's Sky. Think the box is fried, which will actually be an easier fix than if it's the cable to the Sky box as we have a spare.
Win - their microwave doesn't just nuke food, it nukes the reception on their telly too.

PS I got told off by my mom for swearing on realising it was the Green Power Save that had disabled the internet on that laptop.