Yesterday I finally got about to trying to fix my DI-524 router.
Wait, before that, let me introduce some background history.
I had a Linksys WRT54G router free-of-charge from Starhub about 2 years ago. I had only 1 computer in my home then, so this router has no function other than increase the probability of internet access problems cropping up.
I kept this router in its box until a month or 2 ago, when I got this laptop. With a great laptop comes a great responsibility. I had to fix my own internet access. Piece of cake. Or so I thought.
Brimming with anticipation, I opened the wrapper, plugged in my modem in the WLAN socket, got the ethernet cable to substitute my direct modem connection to my desktop, and thought that was the end.
My first mistake.
I realized that after I had done all that, I had to rename my SSID( which is like a name for the wireless network), change my frequency so that it doesn't get affected by my neighbours', and set up some decent security.
Renaming was not a problem. Frequency had to be changed until the signal was healthily stable. Security was really child's play since all I had to do was click some buttons and copy some codes down.
But alas, the connection was not to be. Perhaps it was the Feng Shui. Perhaps I needed a statue of a Smiling Buddha next to my router, but the fact remained that I could not find the network named "Laglikefck".
I did not know what to do, so I asked my bro. He tried setting up everything on his own, following all the instructions in the manuals. Nothing. So we came to the same conclusion: the Linksys router is dead.
So then I went to Sim Lim, and bought a different router. A D-Link DI-524 router, and comes with a life-time warranty, no less.
And it did not work, just like the WRT54G.
So this time, my bro googled for some help. After half a day of research, he found this software called "Network Magic", which, it seems, had to be installed in all PCs in the network to work properly.
Heeding all instructions as described in the website, he installed this in the desktop. And suddenly, I have an internet connection in my laptop! But wait, he hadn't installed it in my laptop yet... Whatever was happening?
In he came, to my room to install this software. I was happy that my Internet connection was up, so I let him go ahead and settle this once and for all.
Did you think this is the end? This is only the halfway point!
With the installation of the Network Magic complete, I came back to proceed with my daily life. And of all things, I saw this message "Your network connection has been lost."
I was clueless before this, I was even more confused at that moment. Why did it work when it wasn't supposed to, and stopped working when it was supposed to??? My bro, as it turned out, was equally stumped.
Resetting the laptop didn't help. Neither did rebooting the routers. And just in case, I also rebooted the whole network, modem and all, AND hard-rebooted* my router. And the forsaken situation didn't improve one bit!
In desperation, I emailed D-Link support, and posted my problem in the Wireless Network section of the forum of www.speedguide.net, which is the biggest networking forum I found.
In the following 4 days, I responded accordingly to their questions, and followed their instructions to the word. I did what D-Link Customer Support asked and pinged the stated ips and etc. Their suggestions were truly useless, though I'm grateful that they tried.
When nothing worked, I removed my network settings and started the whole damned setup from scratch, all the while following all the directions in my manuals.
Then came the day of my utmost desperation. I was on the brink of abandoning the whole notion of a wireless network, when I came up with this final and seemingly useless idea of repeating what had happened the day my bro installed Network Magic on my laptop.
It was not supposed to work. I didn't expect it to, but I didn't want to give up this project with any lingering hope that something could have work which I didn't do. I had to try everything and convince myself it was a lost cause.
So I removed all networking softwares I had installed previously, reset all settings, hard-reboot my router, and switched off it and the modem.
And I installed Network Magic in my desktop.
Just like that truly baffling day, it worked!
But just as bizarre was the erraticism of my connection. Once in a while, it'd disconnect, leaving me annoyed and confused. My joy turned to chagrin as I realized this wasn't going to stop anytime soon.
Once again I decided to use the most improbable method. And once again, I was right. On that day, I discover an uncanny knack in myself that makes methods that were proven wrong, work for me.
But even though my connection was stable, my Firefox's ( another type of IE) connection doesn't seem to be so. Once in a while, my net surfing would be interrupted, nothing will load, but my bittorrent anime downloads and my Steam (game stuff) connection would be fine, if they were already on before the interruption. If they weren't, they, too, wouldn't load.
These unexplained stoppage of something lasting 1-5mins each, happen once every 5-6 hours, or about 1-3 times a day, and they still do. And only on my laptop.
But the tale still doesn't end yet. I have not explained why I needed to fix my DI-524, which I'm still using at this point of the story.
It just happened. One morning it was working fine. The next moment it stopped completely. The lights were blinking correctly, but no signal, wireless or wired, could be detected. No rebooting worked.
Out of complete frustration, I used the Linksys WRT54G, which was concluded before to be faulty. Again, I am unable to explain this phenomenon, but it worked. It is still working, but just like the DI-524, the interruptions still come as frequently.
I have long since given up on solving this tiny problem. This may be attributed to the fact that a more perplexing problem has surfaced.
My connection's bandwidth has been reduced for most of the time. Once upon a time, my download rate could hit 2Mb/s, but now, I'd be happy if I can even get half of that. These days, it's only slightly more than a quarter that.
Even worse is that I cannot download anything even when I play games that require little bandwidth, like Natural Selection. If I do, I get latencies that constantly fluctuate between 650-2000ms.
If I have my bittorrent on downloading at 25-50kb/s, my pings to www.yahoo.com takes 900+ms, while pings to www.yahoo.com.sg take 600+ms.
I am still unable to resolve this problem, even though I'm using dd-wrt as my router's firmware.
I have also realized that occasionally, my pings to my router can also hit 1000ms, which rebooting doesn't seem to help. Usually, it takes several changes in frequencies to revert it to normal, but it may just be something else.
In addition, I have detected 4 networks around me that share 2 frequencies. Why they have no problem working, which I deduce from the fact that they didn't change their frequencies after 2 days, is beyond me.
And now we come to the attempt at fixing the DI-524. I was bored of doing Physics, so I tried to discover what went wrong with it. Plugging it only to my laptop via the ethernet cable that came with the router, I tried to access the user interface in Firefox. It only gave me the timeout error. Pinging it gave me the same thing. Switching the cable socket from 1-4, and rebooting it were useless.
All these are the only ways I know how. Since this is not an urgent matter, I took the easy way out and emailed the Tech Support. I will get the replies soon...
*A hard-reboot is to hold the tiny reset button at the back of the router for 10-30 seconds while powered on. It sets the router back to its factory settings.
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