Wireless Woe
Wireless networks are fantastic. They’re technological marvels, really. Who’d have thought we’d be transferring data at 50 megabits per second across thin air, when most wired networks only operate at 100 megabits?
So, yeah, wireless networks are fantastic. Until they break.
My wireless NIC started acting up even more than usual a few weeks ago, having huge problems staying connected to the wireless network. Every time it lost the connection, I had to get off my chair, crawl underneath my desk and jiggle around the aerial for about 10 seconds for it to even think about re-connecting. This kept happening every few minutes, so naturally I got a little annoyed.
So annoyed, in fact, that when it started doing it every minute, I decided to give it a piece of what it deserved. Knowing that the aerial’s hinge was positioned so that it would just flip to the side, I hit it hard, so that it would smack into the side of the computer with force. Computers need to know who’s boss.
The only problem was that the aerial’s hinge wasn’t, in fact, positioned so that it would flip harmlessly against the case. The hinge was postioned exactly opposite to how I thought it was, so that when I hit the aerial it snapped clean off, ripping out the mounting assembly from inside the network card and snapping the aerial into two pieces at its weak points.
Oops.
So, some new network gear was in order. I decided to go with a different method of connecting to the wireless network, in that instead of using a wireless NIC in the computer I bought a wireless ethernet bridge, which in turn connects to the computer’s network card via some good old CAT5.
While this may seem like an overly expensive solution (and it was, by about £20), it’s better in the long run, since my next purchase will be an ethernet switch into which will connect the ethernet bridge. This’ll allow me to connect all my computers to the wireless network using just the wireless ethernet bridge (via the switch), avoiding hassle with dodgy wireless NICs.
Anger helps to get the ball rolling sometimes, I guess. Either that, or get the money flowing.
