Been a long time. I have really gotten away from writing. A really good friend of mine told me I was letting her down by not keeping up with my stories. From the dashboard, I can see that there are very few people who are checking the site. I also have found that by not writing, I was letting some things get under my skin instead of letting them go, so I am going to be doing a better job of writing. Hopefully!!
Yesterday I had to do a lot of work on the Internet connection here in my house. I had gotten an enticement from Verizon to up the speed of my connection to the maximum that they are currently offering. It would include the new "Quantum Gateway" Router and would only increase my cost by $15.00 per month. I had questions, so I called the 800 number in the letter.
The young lady was very helpful. She explained everything slowly and completely and in several different ways, just to be sure that I understood. Then she went into my account, they usually do, and announced that in December I would be renewing my contract with them and my rate was going up by $25.00 a month. "Great", I think, "A total of $40 per month in December!" But this lovely young lady (and her supervisor listening in) offered me a deal.... keep my monthly rate at it's current level if I renew now. The only thing that will change is that all of the movie channels that were my 'gift' when I signed up two years ago will disappear. No big deal.... I think I have looked at three movies on HBO in the last year and a half! Just keep my DIY channels and wherever NASCAR is broadcast and I am a happy camper!
So, I agreed, and I received my new router yesterday. It was up to me to install the thing.
For most people, that would not be hard. Follow the directions on the card, attach your desktop to the router... done.
I am not most people!
Once the living room desktop was connected, I went to the basement and restarted to TP Link access point that I had to use to get the wireless signal to the basement and my sewing room. Gratefully, it was hard wired to the new router, so it rumbled around a little bit and, voila, any device that had been connected to the TP Link Access Point was now connected to the new network. So the Wink Hub was connected, the lights were connected to the Hub and my Amazon Echo was connected to the network. I can still turn on and off six (6) different lights in the house just using my voice. Five of the eight IP Cameras that broadcast live from my house were connected directly to the router or the access point, so I only had to reconnect three, that were wireless, to the network. That required them to be hard wired at the router, reset to the new network and then reinstalled. Easy Peasy.
I took my signal extender that is in the bedroom and reset it to factory settings. The we searched for the new network, punched the WPS buttons and it was connected. Now I can connect some items to the network in the bedroom much more easily. My little house is close to 100 years old. There is a lot of plaster and lathe, cinder blocks, etc. that tend to block modern wireless signals. So the extender and the Access Points are needed to send the signal throughout my house. Although the new router seems to have a stronger signal than the old one. Either way, there are signals all over my house now.
The final major task was to get the IP Cameras to broadcast from the Blue Iris software and stream live from my special web address. Try hard as I could, I could not make it happen. I made sure that the new IP address was where it needed to be, and still nothing. Thank goodness for my brother, who was very patient and walked me step by step until we realized I had forgotten to set port forwarding within my firewall for it to work. Once we got that hole punched into my firewall and rebooted the router, I was back online.
Just a few more little things like my Amazon Fire TV and my phone, and it was done. I am sure I will be finding a few things that remain to be changed, but I was up and running by bedtime and since the router did not arrive until around 5:00 PM, I think I did well!
Chalk up one for the old lady!!!
Welcome back!
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