The kind of things you don't read blogs for

Who said a blog can't be an electronic notepad?

Who said you can't use it to write up all the tedious things you've learned in one evening about home networking, such as:

• You can't string wireless routers together. Those are bridges.


• AT&T customer support doesn't care if the tech already told you it was the line coming into the apartment. They will make you get the modem off the carpet and remove the router.


• AT&T customer support doesn't care if you've told them that the problem is intermittent, they will still ask you after each test "is it working now?"


• AT&T customer support are very patient and polite, but have little sense of humor when you respond to their instruction to "now wait until the connection stabilizes" with a pithy "I've been waiting for two weeks now."


• AT&T's DSL technicians are the kind of folks you want as a neighbor to help you with projects. The kind that give you their phone number to call them directly next time. And they laugh. Now where was that number?


• Number of new networking devices purchased in the past 2 weeks: 4


• Number not actually needed: 2


• Number of additional network devices to be purchased this weekend: 2


• Things that can mess up your DSL line: other unfiltered phones, the test ringer the phone company puts on your line, dimmer switches, TVs, modems on carpet, aged modems, phone cords running parallel to the power cords, thin phone cords, long phone cords, logical network routers you cannot see, and apparently at least one more thing yet to be determined.


• Current Internet Crush: Slate magazine. Articles on "Stop hating on the new compact flourescent bulbs" plus a 30+ minute audio book club discussing Eat Pray Love. These are the people I want to invite over to drink the good stuff.


• Single worst thing your router can do to you: give bogus DHCP addresses. Hardcoded IP, subnet mask, default gateway, and DNS servers Ahoy! Remember to reprogram every time you plug directly into the modem to troubleshoot your DSL. And forget about talking to non-PC devices on your network. You don't even want to see the workaround.


• Why your Belkin Network USB hub won't let you connect to your USB devices: Because when you moved your PC and hub onto a new router daisy-chained to the old router, so your DHCP would work and they'd be on the same subnet, the Windows Firewall would not open up as many ports as the original setup, and your UDP packets would be dropped. Which you would see once you read all about the new Vista advanced firewall, with 3 separate modes and rule-builder interface. It's UDP port 19540 inbound that is being dropped, by the way. And no, it's not in the guide. [edit: okay, so it is in the troublehooting help... but who reads that?]


• Chance of your Voice-over-IP wireless router still giving you a dial tone after you daisy-chain it off the wired router that gives out proper DHCP addresses: Guess.


• Reason the remote iPod will not show up in iTunes while the remote digicam will copy pictures: not a clue


• It's one thing troubleshooting stuff like this for 7.5 hours. It's another to do so when your Internet connection bounces up and down constantly for hours at a time.

Do dentists wander around looking at people's teeth in their spare time? This computer stuff is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers sometimes.