ADSL Update

[Rod Holmes <rod@example.com>]

The Easter Bunny is real! Yes...I'm writing this via my new ADSL 
connection. After nearly two months (one month late) GOL and eAccess 
(http://www.eaccess.net/) came through.

Last Wednesday my router/modem arrived. NTT flipped the ADSL switch 
sometime Thursday and GOL flipped their switch at 12:01 AM on Friday.

So, Friday morning I woke up all excited to plug everything in and get 
going...but it wasn't that simple.

The floppy that came with the router was of ZERO help--it was supposed to 
configure everything, but it simply didn't work on English OS. (An 
interesting aside--GOL advertises IN ENGLISH that for a limited time there 
is free installation. It turns out that the subcontractor that does the 
setups won't touch English OS machines...so I got a free nothing.)

Only one person at GOL tech support seemed to know anything about ADSL and 
how to set the router up (Graham). It took me most of the morning to get 
past all the lower-level technical support people who weren't sure if ADSL 
was a new club in Roppongi or the warm up band for AC/DC. ;-)

The router hadn't come with an ethernet cable, so a friend gave me an extra 
he had. This turned out to be a big mistake...it was a crossed cable and I 
needed a straight.  Graham at GOL was the one that figured this out.

I decided to go get everything I needed to hook up my two computers. Went 
to T-Zone in Shibuya, got a hub and three cables (all about 9,000 yen). 
Came back, Graham helped me go through configuring the router (via web 
pages and a built in web server in the router).

So, now I have my Windoze and my Mac on the same ADSL router and all is 
very well. This morning, while listening to a 128K MP3 stream from SomaFM 
(http://www.somafm.com/) on the PC, I downloaded a 33MB upgrade for my Mac 
OS. The upgrade came in at about 100K/sec and the radio station didn't burp 
at all.

Happy, happy, joy, joy...

Problems: A little one for some of you might be that eAccess doesn't have 
static IP's for their ADSL...so running a server off of it will be tough. 
I've heard there are some services that will help take care of this though.

Later,
Rod "I now believe in Harvey the rabbit too" Holmes

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Rod Holmes
Eight13 LLC
p: +81.3.5716.4229
f: +81-3-3483-2869
e: rod@example.com
w: http://www.app-comm.com/
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