Troubleshooting

IN THIS SECTION:

A Nice Diagram (again)
Who to Blame when it's not Working
What They Can Do
What You Can Do

A Nice Diagram

Who to Blame when it's not Working

I really do like to think of things in terms of responsibility: theirs, and yours.

The responsibility of the DSL provider is to provide you with internet service. Their responsibility lies in everything that gets DSL service to the outside of your house. Technically, it is your own responsibility, or that of the landlord, to make sure that the service line attached to the outside of your house terminates to at least one active telephone jack on the inside. Fortunately, if you have an active telephone line, you are set in this department.

Additionally, the DSL provider is responsible for the operability of the additional DSL equipment they furnish to you. This means they are responsible for making sure that your DSL modem works.

Hereafter, the issue of responsibility becomes your own. The DSL router is your responsibility, and any computers on your side of that router are your responsibility.

What They Can Do

Fortunately, any DSL provider that provides you with equipment will be able to test it. Your DSL provider can test your DSL connection right up to the DSL modem--where their responsibility ends and your begins. They can test the speed and reliability of your modem's connection to the internet, and they can even test to see if you have an active connection running from your DSL modem to your router. The ability to test your modem, however, is contingent on them being able to reach your modem remotely. This is indicated usually by a solid green "SYNC" light on the modem itself.

If the SYNC light is solid green and they can't access your modem, most techs will give up and send you a different modem, after having you triple-check your connections and making you power-cycle (turn off and on) the device several times.

Most of the time, however, you will find that once you set up the equipment and they swear that DSL service is active, the sync light on your DSL modem will refuse to turn solid green. If this is the case, give it another week. .After 30 minutes on hold, this is what a technician will likely tell you.

If it's been a week since the DSL service was supposedly activated, call them up and blow their socks off by casually asking them to do a "rip and rebuild on the dockside"

This is technical lingo for completely resetting and rebuilding your connection to the DSL provider. This is generally the last thing a technician will do before she or he replaces your DSL modem.

If they have replaced your modem and the service still isn't working, they will likely send out a technician. Before you agree to having a technician visit your house, remember the following: If a technician visits your house and determines the problem was of your doing, they will charge you $100 for the visit. However, if the problem is of their doing, the visit is free. Before calling them out:

Make sure that the DSL modem is plugged into the correct phone line. If you have two phone lines in your house and you ordered DSL on the second phone line, make sure that the telephone cord going into the modem has four wires in it (Red, Green, Black, and Yellow).

Make sure there is a line filter between your telephone and your line splitter, but that there is no filter between your splitter and your DSL modem.

What You Can Do

The great thing about using a hardware router when setting up your DSL connection is that there are only so many things that can go wrong. Sitting by itself, encased in metal or plastic, your DSL or Cable router exists to do one thing: connect you to your DSL or Cable internet service. The even nicer thing about this is that you are able to connect to a large amount of DSL providers with little to no modification of the router itself. One the router is configured, a very basic configuration of your computer is required, and then you are set for the rest of eternity.

Let's assume from this point on that your DSL modem is working. There is a solid green light under "SYNC," and your DSL provider can access your modem and verify that there is an active connection.

Problem 1.
You can't access your router by typing in http://192.168.0.1
Possible solution: Turn off the router, and shut down your computer. Turn the router back on, wait 30 seconds, and then turn your computer back on.

Now:

Click on the Start Menu
Click on Run
Type in "command"

When the black window appears, type in "ipconfig"
With any luck, something like the following should come up:

If the Default Gateway is listed as 192.168.0.1, you are in luck. You PC is now talking to your router. Now, fire up your web browser and try typing in http://192.168.0.1 again. If you still get "Page cannot be displayed" Go to the Tools menu, then the Options menu, then click Delete Cookies. Hit OK when prompted. Then click Delete Files... and check the box "Delete all offline content" click OK. Close out all of the open windows, and then restart your web browser.

If the Default Gateway is NOT listed as 192.168.0.1, for example, if it is listed as 169.254.254.1, your computer is not talking to your router. The most likely cause is that you have a faulty connection to the router itself. This could be because of:
-A bad ethernet cable. Switch it with another cable, and make sure that it says "straight-through" and NOT "crossover"
-Check to make sure there is a solid, yet occasionally blinking green or amber light on the back of your computer, next to where the ethernet cable plugs in. Also make sure that there is a green light on the front of the router under "port 1" or whichever slot you plugged the cable into on the back of the router.
-Make sure the ethernet card in your computer is functioning:

Right-click on My Computer on your desktop. Left-click on properties. Click on the Hardware tab, and then click on the Device Manager. The pictures below illustrate this: (If you have Windows 98 or below, going to the control panel and clicking on the Device manager will bring you to the Device Manager as well)

Once the device manger is open, click the plus symbol under "Network Adapters" if it isn't already expanded. Make sure that some sort of network adapter is listed under there. It doesn't have to be the same one in this picture, but there should be at least one. If there is a network adapter lsited, but it has a red x or yellow exclamation point next to it, you may at this point want to turn to somebody who knows a bit about computers. Feel free to call me if you need help at this point, my number is on the first page in this tutorial. Really, feel free.