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« Quadruple Bogey 2 | Main | Fruit and Carpet in Court » January 2, 2006BellSouth's Customer DisserviceRegular readers of this blog know that I have, intermittently, had problems getting my Westell DSL modem from BellSouth and my Linksys wireless router to play nice together. After having dealt with BellSouth's tech support, and Linksys' tech support, on this issue several times, I finally took the advice of the BellSouth tech support people and ordered BellSouth's combination all-in-one-box DSL modem and wireless router. I was told this would solve my problem.
Today, I found that my nearly-new Dell Inspiron 700m laptop with its state-of-the-art built-in wifi card, won't connect with BellSouth's wireless network if the laptop is more than about 18 inches away from the wireless antenna. Worse, when I contacted BellSouth through their online tech support chat service, they tried to blame the incompatibility on Dell - even though the only time my Dell has trouble connecting to an available wifi network is when it is trying to connect to a wifi network broadcast by equipment provided by BellSouth. Memo to BellSouth: Dell sells a lot of computers. A big DSL provider might consider making sure that the wireless routers it is selling to its customers are compatible with them. Here's the complete text of my chat with BellSouth's tech support, with key bits in bold.... BellSouth eAgent > Good evening, Welcome to Bellsouth Fast Access DSL eAgent, my name is Alexandria and I'll be more than happy to assist you with your issue, but first may I have your ten-digit DSL telephone number please?And then came the inevitable up-sell, when BellSouth tries to get more money for yet another piece of hardware that it promises will solve the problems created by the last piece of hardware it sold me. BellSouth eAgent > Would you like to purchase one of our wireless cards?I replied that I would soon be de-choosing BellSouth, but the BellSouth eAgent had closed the chat before I hit the send button. Yes, that's the actual "smiley" that the BellSouth eAgent ended the chat with. I really don't want to go back to Comcast. What I want is simple: broadband service and a wireless network in my house that works throughout the house and the small back yard, and works with the wireless card in a new laptop from Dell. What I don't want is a service provider whose equipment is incompatible with the wireless card in a laptop from one of the world's largest computer makers, and whose "solution" is always to try to up-sell me to another piece of hardware because the last piece of hardware they sold me didn't work right. Anyone have any suggestions? EarthLink, perhaps? Posted in Technology
Comments
Bill, I dropped BS DSL last October after months of problems. I went with Comcast and have not had one problem. I also got some good advice from Johnny Dobbins if you want to email him. Posted by: mks at January 3, 2006 8:23 AMTurn off the wireless on the Bellsouth device and put the Linksys back in place. It's fine to put it behind this modem, too. My concern is that there's no reason your Linksys shouldn't work fine with your old DSL modem. What were the symptoms? My Linksys problems are described here. I really need to get the wireless problems solved because I'm getting my daughter a computer and there is no phone jack or cable jack in her room, hence, no way to connect it to the 'net without wireless. Posted by: Bill Hobbs at January 3, 2006 9:55 AMIt looks as if your Linksys is overheating or something like that. While I haven't experienced it myself, there are reports of that happening to others. You might just want to buy another wireless router (or try for warranty work if that one isn't too old). At $5/month to BellSouth, it's definitely cheaper to get a $50 router, even if you go with another Linksys. I have never had problems with Linksys, and I have a couple here and one that I installed for a client (not my normal line of business). I generally suggest staying away from Netgear due to a problem a year or two ago involving their products having a backdoor username/password built in to the firmware, which was easily found by looking through the binary software image. When confronted with it, they released a new firmware which supposedly fixed it, but in fact included the same backdoor with a slightly different password. One thing that I will note is that all Bellsouth DSL modems that I've seen have a built-in firewall capability, but cable modems don't. It is safe to hook your computer straight into a DSL modem (from Bellsouth, at least). It is not safe to plug directly in to a cable modem. You must have a hardware firewall, such as a Linksys router, between the modem (i.e. "internet") and your computer. An unpatched XP system takes anywhere from 4 to 12 minutes on average- depending on who did the research- to become a spam zombie when plugged directly into the internet. The built-in firewall may or may not help, it's not worth finding out. A Linksys router is about the same price as software firewalls that you can buy for Windows. Just FYI if you go to Comcast. Anyway, all that said: I still think you're better off to figure out what's wrong with the Linksys. And, from reading your previous post, it's the Linksys. Posted by: Michael Chaney at January 3, 2006 12:18 PMBill: Do you think the people at BellSouth know that you should never start an argument with someone who buys bandwidth by the ....? Posted by: Drew Kelley at January 4, 2006 11:46 AMI believe Sprint offers EVDO service in the Nashville area. It'll require some new hardware, but you'll get much greater coverage for your laptop (your house versus most cities). Posted by: Jody at January 5, 2006 2:19 AMActually Bill, it is Dell's fault. Their notebooks will not connect to Westell modems due to a driver problem. I have a DELL, Compaq, HP and Toshiba notebook and a Bell South DSL setup. The only one that won't connect is Dell. It is the fault of their built in WIFI card. If you buy an inexpensive external USB WiFi card, $29 at Office Depot, your Dell will connect fine to your Westell modem. Many people avoid this problem by specifying the optional Intel WiFI card in their Dell when they place their build order. This problem with Dell notebooks' built in WiFi is well documented on net. Also if you had set your original Westell modem to bridge mode and your linksys to POPPE or something like that, they would work together, but your Dell notebook would still not connect because of its incompatibility with Westell modem. Posted by: Jim at April 29, 2007 9:46 PMI found this blog because I had a problem connecting a Dell Latitude D820, a Linksys WRT54G wireless router and a Westell Wirespeed DSL modem tied to Bellsouth. The problem turned out to be a subnet conflict because Linksys and Westell were both using 192.168.1.x subnets. I browsed to Linksys setup, changed the Local IP Address to 192.168.2.1, set the configuration to DHCP and saved. After the router reconfigured itself, it all worked. I also earlier did a MAC address clone, but don't know if that was necessary. I'm sure you've solved your problem by now but I hope this helps others. Posted by: Brian at July 8, 2007 2:57 PMPost a comment
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