OK cool. On the back of that unit are four RJ-45 jacks. And somewhere on your computer is an identical RJ-45 jack. You'll know it when you see it because it is like your phone jack, except wider.

You are perfectly free to buy an Ethernet cable, male-to-male RJ45 and plug one end into that Netgear and the other end into your puter. These are the most common of cables, widely available in computer stores and office maxen and such. You can get 3 foot, 6 foot, 10 foot, 25 foot whatever you need. You don't need the most expensive one. Anything "Cat 5" or above will be fine.

So if the system starts going out again, it might be a good idear to wire it up wired, and reboot and see if that fixes it straightaway. You may be near something or a neighbor that causes wireless interference.

Sweet, thanks. :)

Oh yes and also, you can look at the lights on that box and that might give us a hint. I don't know what the "i" light means but the one arrow means upstream traffic and the other means downstream traffic. Se what lights are on now, when it's working, and then check it when it's not working to see if the lights are different.

Right now there's the on light, the i light, the squiggly arrow pointing down, and something that looks like an old test pattern.

OK, then when I sent this the squiggly arrow pointing up lit up.

If I have problems again I will look.

See all the stuff I'm learning? :)

[useless anecdote]

When I was in college--i.e., in the days before reasonable and inexpensive wireless--my roommates and I just ran direct cable like UT is talking about all throughout the house, into five separate bedrooms.

Except it wasn't our house, we were renters. So we didn't do it inside the walls with fancy jacks or nothin', we just got a hundred foot spool and ran it down all the halls and through the doorways.

Oh, and we were too cheap to get actual bits of plastic to secure the cable to the walls. We used scotch tape.

It was awesome.

[/useless anecdote]

That is the ideal installation, except that you should use duct tape.

I had trouble connecting again this morning. I will stop on my way home tonight and get a cable.

The i light wasn't lighting, if that means anything.

OK it looks like the i light is the connection to the cable company. So a wired connection may not even work, if the i light is not lit. You'll need to call their cust. support for this one.

After several years of using ReaConverter 4.0 Pro and a year of using Avast, suddenly Avast says ReaConverter contains a trojan. OK, dump ReaConverter and reinstall with the original disc. Avast still insists Reaconverter is infected.

Dump Avast and install AVG, full scan (2.5 hrs, over 400k items), nothing but a couple of tracking cookies.

I bought the wire. It is, again working, though.

Interesting aside, re: the Antichrist that is Time-Warner: my brother's phone, cable, and internet are out. THey called TW and they said it was due to our windstorm last week and there were area-wide outages that they were working on. Fine. So he calls a few days later and they tell him it's all fixed. Mine isn't, he responds. Oh, they'll be by on Tuesday to take a look. They might even compensate by not charging him for down time.

So I'm not putting a whole lot of my faith into customer service.

grumble

Acted like it couldn't find websites again, with the i light lit. So I hooked up the cable. There are two holes on the computer and 4 on the router...does it matter which one I use?

And is it even called a router? :blush:

Well, since I hooked up the cable I've been OK. I did have almost two days of uninterrupted service before that, so we'll see.

I don't even mind the wire stretching across the living room. Gaines had fun chasing it when I was unravelling the cable. :)

Shawnee,

May I ask what kind of laptop and wireless card you have?

Thanks,

Mitch

I don't have a laptop. I have a Dell tower...not sure what things identify it.

The installation dude plugged in whatever communicates with the router, into the back of my tower.

Shawnee,

Go to Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager and expand out the Network Adapters section. Take a screenshot and tell us what you have.

Thanks,

Mitch