Old routers

A parcel arrived today from PlusNet containing a new router; necessary, so they told me, if I was to take advantage of the new high speed broadband that has at last arrived at our village. It only took a couple of minutes to swap in the new router and alter a hosts file (1 Windows XP, 1 Windows 7, 1 Raspbian Linux, 1 RISC OS). Download speeds have gone up from 250kp/s to 25Mb/s. It is evident from the accompanying booklet that PlusNet have really put some effort in to making things as easy as possible for the technically illiterate.

There remains only one query. What do I do with the Belkin High Speed Mode Wireless G router that I was using previously, and the TG582n PlusNet router that turned up mysteriously 18 months ago, which I have never used?

The Wireless G router is a paperweight if it can’t do WPA2/AES. Don’t settle for anything less. I’d go out on a limb and suspect anything with a ‘G’ in the name is likely to be from the WiFi B/G era and may be WEP only.
Impressive, it looks like it can do WPA2/AES http://www.belkin.com/support/dl/p74725uk-c_f5d7632uk_man.pdf
If you give this to anybody, recycle it, charity shop it, or whatever, be sure to perform a factory reset to remove all of your identifying information.

The TG582n router. Do yourself a favour. Plug it in, configure it, make sure you can get online with it. Then box it and put it in a cupboard. Then if something happens (lightning strike, power surge, whatever) to knock the new router out of commission, you can simply plug in the TG582n to act as a replacement until PlusNet can issue you with a new router.

That’s what I have done here. I bought a Livebox for about twenty euros in a vide grenier and have set it up identically to the one that I currently have – right down to the same WiFi password and SSID. So if something should happen to my proper Livebox (rented for €3/month from Orange), I can plug my one in until I get a replacement from Orange. Because the security on the backup Livebox is more lax (doesn’t need authentication for new devices) and the SSID and password are identical, all of my equipment will just connect without knowing any difference.

Oh, and while I’m here – do yourself a favour. Turn WPS off.

Do yourself a favour. Plug it in, configure it, make sure you can get online with it. Then box it and put it in a cupboard. Then if something happens (lightning strike, power surge, whatever)

Yeah, had that. Turned the strike from an inspect, go shopping, return, configure and call ISP to plug in replacement and call ISP. Fortunately it was Pipex at the time and the replacement of the DSLAM at the exchange happened within 2 hours.

The old unit was no use as a paperweight as the burnt bits were a touch smelly.