Thursday, August 30, 2007

Goodbye, Beer Hunter

I received word via hunahpu's blog that Micheal Jackson, the author of many wonderful books and articles about beer, has passed away. I am planning to brew something in the next week; I absolutely will have to brew something in his honor.

Connecting to AT&T DSL with the Encore ENDSL-AR DSL Modem

This post is updated: the modem doesn't quite work yet.

After the burglars stole my 2wire modem, I picked up an AT&T / 2Wire 2700HG-B from Best Buy. It works okay, except that it has a highly annoying habit of rebooting itself randomly, several times a day. It always seems to know when you're in the middle of a 10 hour backup operation, or need to download a lecture slide in the next two minutes.

So I decided it was time to get a new modem, and pick up some flashable WRT54GL routers. I found a modem at NewEgg.com that got good reviews, the Encore ENDSL-AR.

AT&T was mildly helpful in getting it connected. After being on hold, listening to a sales pitch for their cell phone service, and being transfered twice, telling the computerized operator my phone number three times only to have the techs ask again, I got just enough info to figure the rest out through trial and error. This hold system definitely fails the ``don't look stupid'' test.

Anyway, enough complaining. Here's part of what you need to do... or at least, what I needed to do. First, plug everything in, and browse to http://10.0.0.2/, which is where the setup page lives. Go to the WAN Configuration page (Of course, you realize, if you need these instructions, you aren't going to be able to access my blog. Save this entry to your hard drive first.) It will ask you which adapter, I told it Pvc 0. Next, you'll get a screen for the WAN configuration. Here are the settings I needed, a * indicates that this was the default setting:

  • Virtual Circuit: Enabled *
  • Bridge: Disabled *
  • IGMP: Disabled *
  • Encapsulation: PPPoE LLC
  • DHCP Client: Disabled *
  • Static IP Address: 0.0.0.0
  • Username: username@sbcglobal.net (of course, put your own AT&T/SBC email address here)
  • Password: ***** (I think you know what goes here.)
I didn't change any of the other settings.

You need to hit the submit button, and then click on the save configuration link, then tell it to save and reboot.

You're not quite done yet. Next, you need to bring up the WAN page again, and select Advanced PPP Configuration. From there, go to PPP Account Configuration (the link is at the bottom of the page). You will need to type in the account name in the table below (on mine it was ``'') into the Acct ID field, and reinput your username and password. Don't forget the ``@sbcglobal.net'' part, or whatever yours should be.

Save and reboot again, and this time you should be connected. Good luck!

Now, the only problem is this: I can get out just fine, but none of my incoming connections work. I've tried setting a DMZ host, and playing with some of the other settings, but nothing seems to be working. It's labor day now, so I'll have to wait before calling tech support.