We moved!!!
We moved across our apartment complex into a 2-bedroom unit! Now we have a library/office/guest-room. Not only did we upgrade our living arrangement, but we upgraded our Internet Service, as well. We had been with At&t, but I made the decision to switch to Charter. I had heard third-hand horror stories about poor customer service, but the bundle for basic cable along with internet access about seven times faster for the same price just must be worth at least trying.
Today, I bought a wireless router to replace the modem-router combo we had been using with At&t. I had seen an article about the new line of Belkin wireless routers, and I was impressed. I headed down to MicroCenter, and was as impressed in real life as I was on the internet. The N+ was the high-end model, but as far as buying a router goes, it seems like these purchases will be few and far between. So, why not splurge just a little bit. This will last a while, so it will be worth it in the end. Bonus, it also came with my very own copy of the General Public License (in a lot of different languages)!Not only is it 802.11n, It’s got four Gigabit ethernet ports in the back. It’s perfect for a simple NAS appliance, a network printer, or a home server. Plus, it’s got a USB 2.0 port so that an external hard drive can be shared across the network. This port can also power an external USB hub. So, I can hook up several hard drives, flash drives, or whatever kind of storage that I want!
The instructions could not have been simpler or been easier to follow. Labeled “1, 2, 3” it would have been pretty hard to mess up. Plug this into that, put this wire here, power-cycle the modem, and you’re off to the races. The initial set-up was easy peasy lemon squeezy. It was up and running in a snap. The more impressive part was that there are so many advanced options. This router has any and every option that you could want to set up. It’s really easy to set up a DMZ, port forwarding, firewall, and I can even have guest-ready internet access that stays separate from my private network, so I don’t have to give out my WPA2 key to everybody who wants to check Facebook.
The only issues I had were that it took a few power-cycles of the modem. There were a couple of times that I would change a setting with the router and the internet connection would kick out. It also didn’t seem to play nice right away with a custom DNS. It was a pain in the butt to get Google DNS working.
Now that it’s all set up, I couldn’t be happier with the purchase! This will definitely be a staple in our technological life for a long time.