Need help

Vanity

[carjic]

Sorry for the vanity. My son is at Hillsdale College as a freshman. They said he could use a wireless router in the dorm but it had to be "Bridge Mode" instead of NAT mode. I asked many people including Best buy and no one had any idea what I was talking about. IT dept wont help him. I bought him two different routers and he has been quarenteened because he is operating in NAT mode. I am now 1700 miles south and can't help him. The one he has is a Linksys Wireless-N router. WRT160N Does anyone have any idea how I can get him operating again? Thanks in advance

[BuckyKat]

Perhaps it should be your son asking. Our daughter was half an ocean away from us, which made my helping out quite difficult. I told her what she needed to do - where to start and what to ask but from there she was on her own. She had the credit card and knew the rules (contact us for any single item over $100). Your son could also find someone in his field with a similar computer who is successfully connected to the system and find out what they’re using. His new friend could help him set it up as well.

I find the IT guys are a lot more helpful with a direct discussion with the individual with the problem, not using a go-between.

[for-q-clinton]

Be sure he has a firewall on his computer then and turned on because his machine will be wide open if he doesn’t.

Personally I’d get a wireless router hack it to turn on the other channels not on in the US and then use that channel because you know there’s going to be all kinds of users on the trash band. Plus it will keep down on wireless snoopers unless they also hacked their wireless to open the other channels.

I’d also like to know how they know if you’re doing NAT. It may be possible to hide the fact that he’s NATing. You could get a cheap PC and use that as your wireless NAT. Hook it up to the LAN and then share out the WIFI NATing the connection. This way the school sees a computer getting the IP address and they are happy. However, if the firewall is on either device I’m not sure how they could tell 100% what the device it is if you are masking the device from the LAN. I guess the DHCP request could reveal some info but that can be spoofed to look like you want it to.

[antiRepublicrat]

You beat me to it. DD-WRT on a cheap Linksys in bridge mode according to this tutorial (or the one at the DD-WRT site) will do the trick.

[antiRepublicrat]

The answer was given below, but for clarification for the clueless Best Buy guys, bridge mode means you are extending the current network with its IP addresses into wireless. In wireless NAT you create your own network with its own IP addresses. The latter is what the Best Buy guys are used to.

His WRT160N is on the compatibility list for DD-WRT. Download, install and enjoy.

[carjic]

Thanks to everyone who helped. IT has finally told him to bring router to them and they would fix him up. Thanks again.

[carjic]

Thanks and SO true.

[carjic]

Thanks but we live 2 blocks from the Rio Grande River. We brought him down here when he was 9. I am sure he wants to stay north. Not much down here for him.

[SunkenCiv]

The D-link dkt-401 router is about $45 at a local Menard’s (I was surprised). It immediately grabbed my interest because it comes with the USB dongle to network the computer to the router. Ordinarily routers and dongles come separately. The cheap dongles (and this is a slow 150, like the cheap ones are, such as the Belkin dongle) is in the $30+ range, with the better dongles around $60. Naturally this isn’t an issue for those (unlike me) with the wireless N etc built right into their notebooks and netbooks.

Anyway, anyone know anything about this router? It seems to have been on the market since 2007?

aside to Swordmaker: the 2 TB GoFlex is $119 and change at the warehouse club; the 500 GB is still the price I mentioned before. This is a tremendous deal, but the storage is far too large for people like me who don’t stream video. :’)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That is a slow drive in the Goflex...

Get a Sans Towerraid and and eSATA card that comes with it for some models and use your extra SATA drives.

SANS DIGITAL Server RAID Systems

There is a 2 Bay Raid enclosure for 99$ :

SANS DIGITAL MS2UTN+B 2 Bay SATA to eSATA/USB 2.0 RAID 0 / 1 / SAFE33 / 50 Enclosure (Black)

Not good reviews on that one ...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

This morning I find this at Newegg:

Western Digital Elements 1.5TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

Was: $119.99 Now: $89.99

Not a full 7200 ...Green drive I guess...also Be aware that this drive doesn't have eSATA .I think Seagate has a 3 TB drive for external...in the GoFlex.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Pricey:

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 3TB Black External Hard Drive

Was: $219.99 Now: $199.99

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

And at Fry's:

Seagate Barracuda 2TB Serial ATA/5900-RPM 3.5" Hard Drive

• Up to 2TB capacity
• Up to 3GB/s data transfer
• SATA connection
• 5900 RPM performance

  Price: $99.99

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks E. In the SCSI drive era the faster the better. And the drives were much higher quality. That is of course an apples and oranges comparison (so to speak) because the capacities have leaped since then. But this 10,000 RPM IBM SCSI drive (which is mounted in an external case, oh, I never put the lid on) is nearly always running, and has been for years. The internal SCSI drive (a dinky 1.2 GB or something) on the CPU is original to it, and that dates from the mid 1990s.

I sometimes look at them with concern, then pull a big external USB drive out of a box and back everything up. Again. Same external drive. Still has room. ;’)

As I think I said, these huge drives are more for media storage, a lot of people capture video streams, iTunes and other audio files, DVR use, etc. I don’t need that kind of capacity, but of course, I hunger for it, because at heart I’m still a geek. ;’)