Back on the air!!

My absence of blog entries was not an indication that Ben was correct when he commented on my first blog entry. In fact he is far from being right, as usual I might add. I am very keen on blogging now since baby blue arrived. I am still turning him on and thinking "Ooooooh shiny!!" and getting all excited. On top of the l33t factor of blogging while watching TV I have genuinely rediscovered my love of blogging.

No indeed my lack of blogging was attributed to a lack of internet service. It seemed my trusty Netgear DG824M had lost the ability to communicate with TPG. Now it seemed to me that I was faced with either a modem or a connectivity issue. My DG824M was telling me that it was connected via the built-in modem but that it was unable to establish a connection and was dutifully "Waiting for data...". It could sense the link speed and all that jazz ok but never received an IP address and never fully established the ADSL connection.

So I up and rang TPG Support on Sunday after having a very busy Friday & Saturday. After hanging on hold for almost 20 minutes I was finally hooked up with a "technician". After simply describing my problem "My modem link light is on, it is telling me it is connected but not getting an IP address" I was then advised that I could only get limited support for my modem type, which I didn't want support for anyway, and then was walked down that commonly used aisle known as "Fool the customer with complicated seeming standard response".

This involved me going through all my settings to confirm they were correct and restarting my router numerous times. In between appeasing him by doing what he wanted I was asking questions like "so you can see that I am connected?" and "so there should be no issues on my line?" to which I was given all reassuring answers. This saga finished with me being asked to contact Netgear support and discuss with them how to change my modulation settings to what he wanted... I let it go at that and figured I had gotten as much use out of him as I was going to.

I was then left with a dilemna, assume the dude was right and that there should be no problems on my line to TPG, meaning it was a modem problem or tear my hair out in frustration and jump in front of a car. I decided, for the sake of Bee & baby blue getting lonely, on trying a new modem. I wanted to upgrade to a newer router anyway with 802.11g support, better wireless security and ADSL2 support so even if it proved to be an unnecessary purchase I would still end up with a shiny new toy. After doing some research and getting unsolicited advice from Cam when he was over on Saturday arvo (Ed: I have just noticed I don't have a link to Cams blog in my blog list to the right... this has been fixed) I finally settled on the DLink DSL-G804V.

This afternoon I picked him up, came straight home and began to play. Within about 2 minutes he was configured and ready to go... yet still couldn't connect. I muttered some expletives in TPGs direction and did more fiddling. I swapped phone cables, reconfigured the ADSL settings, tried different ADSL settings... nothing. I finally tried to call TPG only to be told that "Due to an influx of calls we are unable to take your call at this time. Please try to contact us again later"... which I wasn't impressed with. So in the meantime I relocated baby blue and my new toy to the lounge room to try the phone connection up there... same deal. More expletives followed but not long after bringing him back down to his rightful home down on the bench near the kitchen, lo and behold, it started working!! Don't ask me what happened, at the moment I don't care. I'm back on the air baby!!

Of course Mum & Dad were coming over to dinner tonight so this entry was started, paused and now finally finished. In that period it has once again stopped working and then started working again. Since it has been working again it hasn't stopped so I'm crossing everything I have, which believe me is easier said than done in some body part cases!!, in an attempt to ensure it keeps working... wish me luck!!