Hi, if you’re reading this and just started finding your way in the (to you still) amazing world of computers: stop while you still can. Seriously, the deeper you dig, the more crap you’ll dig up.
Sorry about that. I’m back! It has been a while since my last post on this blog. There are a couple of reasons for this. First of which is that I had other things to do. As you know, I just moved into Dublin and was getting to know it; figure out where the good stores are. My parents came over for 4 days and we explored more of the city together. The other is that I’ve been fighting with the internet connection we have here, and we haven’t been on speaking terms for a while.
If you live in Dublin, you undoubtedly heard of this marvelous thing called RipWave. Which is a device that allows you to wirelessly connect to the internet, you don’t need a phone line or cable to use it. It uses a radio signal (I think). Problem is that it’s crap. The speed is supposed to be 512kbit up/512kbit down, but I’m very happy if I can get it up to 20kbyte/s downstream (using a killer download accelerator), usually it’s like 2-4kbyte/s. The signal is bad, sometimes you don’t have a connection at all, sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it’s slow. It’s basically a phone line connection on steroids, but without the steroids and with the phone line half broken.
On top of the privilege of being allowed to use RipWave, I bought a wireless router when I came to live here. It was a D-Link one. At first it would crash after a couple hours — only way to bring it back up was to restart it. I found new firmware on the D-Link website and put that on. Then it didn’t connect to the internet at all. I tried changing every setting in the whole damn thing — nothing. I downgraded the firmware to an older version. This time it seemed to work. However the router rebooted itself sometimes. Sometimes every couple of hours, which would be bearable, but sometimes every few minutes. Why!? Why can’t a device like that not just work?
I searched around the internet, and apparently there are a lot more people having similar problems with this device. They advice to install older versions of the firmware. I tried about 5 versions: no results (it wouldn’t even start up normally with most). How can a company get away with such a bad product?
Anyway, yesterday I returned the router. The guy in the shop said they sold about thirty of those and never heard any complaints. Whatever. I bought a cheap Linksys router somewhere else and it seems to work fine. If I ignore the crap internet connection I’m fairly happy. We requested a smart telecom internet connection which is supposed to be 2mbit down/128kbit up. But it can take a couple of weeks before we get it.
Anyway, try to avoid this stuff if you can. Computers (and all things related to it) are nothing but trouble.
To late :(
Sorry to hear about your internet troubles, it sounds alot like trying to use an Australian ADSL connection (Optus is crap).
Hope you’re having a good time! :)
And I thoughts I modest connection with 4Mb/1Mb ^^
I feel for you, I once owned a D-Link router. Was a very frustrating experience. Needless to say I don’t buy anything D-Link these days…
I’ve heard of some “experiences” too. I have two Linksys routers and have never had a problem with either.
I have had same problem in US. Phone company wouldn’t put in DSL lines in my neighborhood (a scant 0.25 miles away). So they started the Ripwave service. Sometimes, blazing. Sometimes (most times) unusable. Alot of times, cannot get a signal. I have to rely on dialup fallback (wich I am glad that I didn’t cancel). I also bought a Linksys WRT54GS to hookup to it. Thing will not connect to internet through router. Had a Belkin 7230-4 that worked (intermittently, hence the “upgrade”). Going to get rid of it all and call the cable company to hook me up. I agree stay away from this Navini product (but not computers in general :)
Do you use an outside TV antenna?
I am 5 miles from my Navini Network basestation. Emu Plains to Kingswood, Sydney NSW, Australia My Rabbit modem is IN my metal garage. BUT, I use 2 x 10db horn antennas on the roof. No way do I have line of sight. Performance is always GREEN, never a dropout.