A Little Dab'll Do Ya

Sometimes, help comes from the oddest sources.
As you can probably tell by my last post, I really don’t like compromising on technical matters.  But I had to compromise a little in order to achieve the download speeds that I wanted.  Consequently, I chose to “relax” my desire to use DD-WRT.
But I couldn’t live with the compromise.  So that’s where a little innovation (and some off-the-shelf “hair grease”) came into play.
The problem was simple: when I connected the new router to the new cable modem, I was seeing abysmal throughput.  And the challenge only came when using DD-WRT.  So it seemed fairly clear that there was a problem with DD-WRT and how it managed the WAN port connection to the cable modem.  Since both the cable modem’s downstream link and the router’s upstream link were attempting a gigE connection, I suspected that the issue dealt with auto-negotiation of the WAN port.
What could I do to bypass the code problem?  From the simplest viewpoint, all I needed to do was change the hardware between the two devices; I needed a little dab of low-cost grease that could shiny up the problem.  So I bought a cheap tin of techno-Brylcreem: a Netgea GS105.
Brylcreem was a pomade used for your hair.  Pomades were made from beeswax, petroleum jelly and a little wax.  These off-the-shelf components would make your hair shiny – and practially immobile!  🙂  The GS105 was the “off-the-shelf” component that both the cable modem and the router would seamlessly connect to.  Hopefully,  this would be a classic work-around for the problem that DD-WRT was having with the Cisco DPC3010.
Did it work?
Absolutely!   The GS105 was the little dab that made my network quite shiny.  Once installed between the two devices, my bandwidth (as tested by Speedtest.net and Speakeasy.net) was back to my contracted expectations.  W00t!
-Roo

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A Little Dab’ll Do Ya

Sometimes, help comes from the oddest sources.

As you can probably tell by my last post, I really don’t like compromising on technical matters.  But I had to compromise a little in order to achieve the download speeds that I wanted.  Consequently, I chose to “relax” my desire to use DD-WRT.

But I couldn’t live with the compromise.  So that’s where a little innovation (and some off-the-shelf “hair grease”) came into play.

The problem was simple: when I connected the new router to the new cable modem, I was seeing abysmal throughput.  And the challenge only came when using DD-WRT.  So it seemed fairly clear that there was a problem with DD-WRT and how it managed the WAN port connection to the cable modem.  Since both the cable modem’s downstream link and the router’s upstream link were attempting a gigE connection, I suspected that the issue dealt with auto-negotiation of the WAN port.

What could I do to bypass the code problem?  From the simplest viewpoint, all I needed to do was change the hardware between the two devices; I needed a little dab of low-cost grease that could shiny up the problem.  So I bought a cheap tin of techno-Brylcreem: a Netgea GS105.

Brylcreem was a pomade used for your hair.  Pomades were made from beeswax, petroleum jelly and a little wax.  These off-the-shelf components would make your hair shiny – and practially immobile!  🙂  The GS105 was the “off-the-shelf” component that both the cable modem and the router would seamlessly connect to.  Hopefully,  this would be a classic work-around for the problem that DD-WRT was having with the Cisco DPC3010.

Did it work?

Absolutely!   The GS105 was the little dab that made my network quite shiny.  Once installed between the two devices, my bandwidth (as tested by Speedtest.net and Speakeasy.net) was back to my contracted expectations.  W00t!

-Roo

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A Little Bit of Firmware Magic…


My Droid 2 is one month old.  And up until a few minutes ago, I was happy but not ecstatic.  That’s because I could never connect my D2 up to my home WiFi network.  Since this wasn’t my number one priority, I let the situation fester until I had a few moments – and a need to have more bandwidth at home.
Well, the time came tonight.  I had a few hours and I have been toying with the idea of rooting the D2.  I haven’t done that yet.  If I do, you will be the first folks I tell.  But I knew that if I wanted to do his, I’d need to download a lot of stuff to the phone.  So the guantlet was thrown down and I eagerly picked it up.
I did the simple stuff first:

  • I turned off MAC filtering as I didn’t know what MAC address my phone used.
  • I enabled SSID broadcasts.
  • I stepped down my default encryption to WPA.

None of these solved the problem.  So I started to do some research.  Unfortunately, there was nothing obvious in Google about DD-WRT incompatibilities that prevented Motorola D2 devices from connecting.
But I did see enough to make me scratch my head.  I thought, “what if the beta build I was using was to blame for the inability to connect.”  So I went to the DD-WRT site and noted that I was on an April test build.  I grabbed the latest build (i.e., 14896 from August).  And what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a connected D2 and a wh0le lot more cheer.  Folks, I truly love being able to research my own problems and solve them myself.  This is what systems analysis is all about.
BTW, it really is nice to have so much more bandwidth for the phone.  I can’t wait for 4G to become ubiquitous.
-Roo