My obsessive side came out big time during the past week. My cable modem fried, pushing me offline for several days, which made me pretty damned jittery. Think cigarette addict miles from the nearest smoke. I finally picked up a new modem from the folks at Comcast and hooked it up. Nothing. My wireless network was dead as Michael Jackson’s career.
So I started tinkering. I was getting a signal from my Apple Airport Extreme. I could see my computers on the network. But I could break out to the Internet.
And I tinkered some more. I found a note in the modem documentation saying I needed a crossover cable to connect the modem to the wireless access point. Went out and bought one. Still couldn’t get out ot the Net.
I could, however, hit the Net when I ran a cable straight to my computers. I just couldn’t get it wirelessly. So I tried another wireless router I had in a closet. Then another.
After a day and a half, it finally started working. I have no idea how or why. I was tinkering. I rebooted and bang. The deus ex machina of technology made everything right. I’m now using a Linksys setup instead of the Apple Extreme. But I don’t care. My Tivo can talk to my Mac and my Mac can talk to my PCs and everyone can romp around on the Internet.