So as a temporizing measure to solve my network connectivity problems at home (the Lappy will, as expected, have to go into the depot in Newmarket, fucking Ontario, for servicing — more later), I went out this afternoon and bought a D-Link DI-524 wireless router. I didn’t really need another router — I really just needed an access point — but I’m cheap, and it was on sale (with a rebate that makes it less than $50 at the local Electronics R Us). Given how much fun I have when I configure consumer grade networking gear I was expecting a fight.
Most of the time, I freely admit this is my own fault. I’m too damn stubborn to read the idiot manuals, and I figure I ought to be able to plug it in and have things work, or at least be able to hack around the “user friendly” components and make it do what I want it to do. For instance, like I said, the DI-524 is a router. I already have a router on my network. It works very nicely. I suppose I could rip it out and replace it with the DI-524, but I don’t want to do that; my network works just fine, and the less time I spend screwing around with my configuration, the happier I’m going to be (since it’s less likely to break that way). I fully expected the DI-524 to fight for gateway control, and start arguing with the other hosts on the network that provide DHCP service for the entire environment, and make me figure out how to talk directly to it to disable the dumb shit through its inevitably craptacular Web interface.
But much to my surprise, when I plugged it in, it found there was already a local DHCP service operating. And, moreover, that said local DHCP service would assign it an IP address without having to do any stupid negotiating. And, moreover, that it already had a non-standard subnet (I don’t, for historical reasons, use 192.168.1.0/24 as my internal netblock), and so it should just grab an address in that /24. And that it should probably pass DHCP requests from clients on to my original DHCP server. So when Lappy’s list of wireless networks was refreshed, and it connected automatically (we’ll have to do something about that), the request for an address and routing information went straight to the network’s DHCP server, and everything is sweetness and light.
It might be the first time I’ve ever had any piece of networking gear Just Work right out of the box. Hot diggity damn, I love this thing. Did I mention it’s 802.11g? Yeah, it’s 802.11g. 0wned.