Based on my experience, the instructions you get thru your internet provider’s phone app need some revision. In fact this is a case where “revision” means “write something entirely different and throw the old instructions away.”
You will need:
- Masking tape
- small damp cloth
- headlamp
- towel
- flat tip screwdriver
- AAA batteries
- Adhesive label
- Sharpie
- Unpack the carton. separate the components into parts, printed stuff, recyclable packing and not-recyclable. If any packing is not recyclable, complain to your provider. Cardboard works fine for eggs. Are you saying that your electronics are more delicate than eggs? Or are you just filling my garbage can with Styrofoam for no reason?
- There are no instructions in the printed stuff; only the advice to download the provider’s app onto your smartphone. If you don’t have a smartphone, buy one and then return to this step.
- Shutdown your computers, avoiding “Connection lost” errors, etc.
- Unplug all the cords from your old gateway. Tape the plugs down on some surface so the weight of the cables won’t pull them onto the floor, undoing all your snaking of cables up thru your furniture and allowing them to take cover in the rats-nest of all the other cables on the floor.
- Notice how dusty the spot where the gateway sat has become. Untape cords and move them to a vertical surface (has to be less dusty). Use small damp cloth to dust. Dust the rest of the desk, the rest of the room, vacuum, etc.
- Try your old gateway for size in the carton the new gateway came in. It doesn’t fit. So you’ll have to find some other box to UPS it back to your provider.
- Put on headlamp and kneel on towel. Crawl under desk to unscrew old coaxial cable from wall receptable. Headlamp flickers and dies.
- Use flat tip screwdriver to unlatch fingernail-breaking latch on back of headlamp. Replace batteries, noting that + is the bump end and – is the smooth end. Clearly the engineers who design batteries are sexist. Return to previous step.
- Compare old coaxial cable to new coaxial cable; it’s shorter and will not reach from the receptable to the gateway. Consider moving gateway closer to receptacle; but then the Ethernet cable won’t reach it. Consider massive rearrangement and rewiring of your entire computer system.
- Notice little junction box in old coaxial cable; it is really two cables. Remove the shortest one and replace it with the new cable. Now you have lots of cable.
- Thread coaxial cable thru furniture to new gateway and attach it.
- Realize that the new gateway also came with a new Ethernet cable. Is it longer than the old one, so that you could have repositioned the gateway after all? You don’t want to know.
- Plug other cords into gateway, ignoring instructions on phone. Each one has a different kind of plug, so you can’t go wrong; and there’s no power going to anything anyway.
- Label plug end of gateway power cord “Gateway” by wrapping adhesive label around the cord. Now you’ll be able to find it in the power strip three months from now when you crawl under your desk again.
- Tell phone app to look for your gateway. Estimated time; 3 minutes. Various lights flicker on gateway to keep you from wandering off.
- Tell phone ap to create your new Wifi Network. New because you can’t remember the name of your old network, which your phone was remembering for you. Supply new name and password and make a note of them to tell your wife and any houseguests.
- Startup computer and try to join WiFi network. After a few frustrating minutes. recall that this computer is so rudimentary that it doesn’t have WiFi; thus the Ethernet cable. Google favorite website. Determine that it’s fresh and not from some cache. Okay, Ethernet is working already.
- Go to provider’s website to begin process of returning old gateway. Website says “Your label is ready!” But you find no print button on the page, and nothing new has been downloaded. You try to do the process over again, but now the only gateway your provider has a record of is the new one (do not return it).
- Google location of provider’s nearest store. Take your old gateway to this store. As you leave the store, listen for clunking noise from garbage cans in the back.
Travels, tinkering and thoughts 