To BT Infinity and beyond

The new BT router arrived today, the one with the VDSL interface, all set for BT Infinity fibre-optic VDSL to be turned on shortly. The device also works with the current ADSL and it's gotten easier these days to switch out an old router and replace with a new one, although there are more devices around the house than you might think which need to know the new SSID and be re-logged in.

Alex will inherit the now-redundant Netgear router.

I see we also have 5 GHz WiFi on the new router with an elevated data rate. Works with the android phone, tablet and the iPad; the PC I'm currently writing on, upstairs, has to subsist on the old disappointing 2.4 GHz and a vastly slower data link.

The fibre-connection turns on Monday.

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Putting together a personal yoga routine focused on strengthening the lower back muscles, a complement to gym exercises.

1. Mountain
2. Fold
3. Mighty
4. Dancer
5. Cat
6. Dog
7. Locust
8. Leg tilt
9. Boat
10. Plank

We shall see.

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Clare made a blackcurrant cake yesterday (together with some soda bread). The blackcurrants were from the tree bush in our garden and mysteriously sank to the bottom of the cake during the cooking.

In the baking the cake remained rather damp, which explains why Clare kept scampering back to the kitchen to 'give it another ten minutes'.

It was finally delivered to the table upside-down, so that the blackcurrants were on top; the rest looked, and tasted, like a sponge.

Delicious with ice cream. Yes, really.

Changing the router (again)

Back in May I went through the hell of retiring my BT Home Hub in favour of a spare one (v.2) which I had lying around. I wrote about the pain here. That replacement router was not a success. What is it with BT Home Hubs? Unstable, dropping the broadband line, refusing to allocate IP addresses ... .

I bought a Netgear N300 wireless ADSL+ Modem Router (DGN2200v4) on Tuesday and installed it yesterday. Good day - it was chucking it down with rain, which reliably knocks over the DSL line. The Netgear wizard was not so smart either, believing for some reason I was connecting to a cable modem. I tried to manually configure the Internet connection but to no avail. After some hours of messing around I re-engaged the wizard (via the "Advanced" pane) and this time everything worked. I remembered that the Sky Box WiFi connector needed to be re-homed; only later did I recall the wireless printer and my Kindle.

I may pay a price for ditching the Home Hub. I no longer provide the BT FON function and will most likely be shut out of using other people's BT WiFi when out and about. There again, BT will probably not notice.

The hell of changing the router in a connected house

Today my BT Home Hub Wifi died and I entered the hell which is the installation of a new router.

I happened to have a spare BT Home Hub which I duly installed via the CD, carefully arranging not to have BT-Yahoo as my home page and not to be parasitized by the Yahoo toolbar.

My first mistake was to change the WiFi security password. The laptop immediately dropped the wireless connection and refused henceforth to recognise the router - and could not be persuaded otherwise. Trying a re-installation with the CD, it wouldn't accept my preferred password. So back to factory defaults and at least the laptop can now access the Internet.

What's easy? Mobile phones and tablets are no problem. They find the new SSID and the password is accepted no problem. Other devices are more problematic.

It seemed impossible to configure the D-Link cameras to the new router wirelessly. I have had to connect via Ethernet (in one case by dusting off my old Netgear Powerline devices).

The printer was a pain when I forgot that entering hex using UPPER CASE characters is never going to work. Eventually I did it again - properly - tapping away on the front of the printer's tiny screen.

The Sky Wireless Connector, used for iPlayer and similar, is reconfigured through the Sky Box itself and after (a) refusing to throw up the necessary screen, and (b) denying it had succeeded, it eventually worked.

It's amazing how many devices around the house are wirelessly linked to the Internet, and ludicrous that it took me two hours of messing around with diverse management interfaces to get most of these devices rehomed.

What's needed is a standard all-device management interface which is universally implemented, so that a home management system can do the whole thing once and for all. The amount of human input actually needed is zero - it should all be plug and play.