Nearly six hours to fix my internet connection…
…and it was (almost) all my fault. :(
The story goes like this: many years ago when I first got ADSL I setup up a dedicated firewall/router using IPCop using a spare 486 box. It worked, and worked well.
Recently it started showing it’s age. Odd errors, spurious failures and taking far too long to boot up. I had a spare Pentium III box lying around, and I’d never made the jump to IPCop 2, so this lunchtime I decided to switch the hardware and software. Bad, bad idea.
Everything installed fine, but the NIC needed replaced (no big deal). The big problem though was needed the firmware for my USB ADSL modem, and I had no connectivity. After diagnosing the faulty NIC, completing the installation, and realising the firmware issue, I tried to bring the old router back up. It didn’t want to play though, so I was stuck without any Internet at all!
I ended up using the Personal Hotspot feature of my iPhone over very slow GPRS. Not fun.
I got there though, (despite the firmware not installing *after* I’d downloaded it at ~2Kb/s!) and I have a shiny new router to configure. Now I just need to catch up on the list working hours…