machines 1, Monica 0
Sep. 24th, 2010 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioIt should not be this hard for me to break into my own wireless network. Hrmpf.
Once upon a time we decided to go the "authorized MAC addresses" route instead of the "shared password" route or the "leaking open wireless all over the street" route. I no longer remember what I had to do to add the Roku last winter, but it was pretty straightforward. I strongly suspect that it involved a link like "add MAC address" on the router's wireless-settings page. Now I have a new wireless device and want to add it.
Problem the first: the new device doesn't have an obvious way to cough up a MAC address. Problem the second (and this makes the first irrelevant, at least temporarily): the router interface for managing MAC addresses seems to be hosed. I can't even find a way to just turn the MAC filtering off (which would allow the new device to join the network, at which point the router would tell me its MAC address and I could theoretically add it and turn the security back on). The router reports that this filtering is enabled but on the configuration page the check-box is unchecked; checking it does not then give me access to the list to manage. So I guess I've reached the wrong part of the configuration, despite this being the only plausible part I've found so far.
Google was no help, at least in a first round. Verizon's tech support (they supplied the router) claims that my only option is to reset to factory defaults and start over. Since I don't now remember everything we changed from factory defaults, I don't know how big a task this is. There is an interface to save and restore a configuration file, which I thought might give me something to poke around in, but "save" does not mean "save somewhere where a mere administrator can actually see its contents".
Leaking open wireless all over the street is looking better and better to me. If I can figure out how to turn the MAC filtering off I may well just leave it off. Meanwhile, I will take the Kindle I received as a birthday present to a coffee shop to register it.
Once upon a time we decided to go the "authorized MAC addresses" route instead of the "shared password" route or the "leaking open wireless all over the street" route. I no longer remember what I had to do to add the Roku last winter, but it was pretty straightforward. I strongly suspect that it involved a link like "add MAC address" on the router's wireless-settings page. Now I have a new wireless device and want to add it.
Problem the first: the new device doesn't have an obvious way to cough up a MAC address. Problem the second (and this makes the first irrelevant, at least temporarily): the router interface for managing MAC addresses seems to be hosed. I can't even find a way to just turn the MAC filtering off (which would allow the new device to join the network, at which point the router would tell me its MAC address and I could theoretically add it and turn the security back on). The router reports that this filtering is enabled but on the configuration page the check-box is unchecked; checking it does not then give me access to the list to manage. So I guess I've reached the wrong part of the configuration, despite this being the only plausible part I've found so far.
Google was no help, at least in a first round. Verizon's tech support (they supplied the router) claims that my only option is to reset to factory defaults and start over. Since I don't now remember everything we changed from factory defaults, I don't know how big a task this is. There is an interface to save and restore a configuration file, which I thought might give me something to poke around in, but "save" does not mean "save somewhere where a mere administrator can actually see its contents".
Leaking open wireless all over the street is looking better and better to me. If I can figure out how to turn the MAC filtering off I may well just leave it off. Meanwhile, I will take the Kindle I received as a birthday present to a coffee shop to register it.
update
Date: 2010-09-26 03:18 am (UTC)