David's World

December 3, 2008

Verzion DSL - a few tips

I got Verizon DSL for my new apartment in Pittsburgh. Their little-advertised "dry-loop" product is a great deal for someone who doesn't need hundreds of worthless TV channels or a land-line that is easily replaced by Skype, Gizmo and/or a cell phone (which one keeps around either way). And they're not stupid: the sales agent was a friendly lady from right here, Pittsburgh, who gave me her supervisor's direct extension, so I could call her back. As soon as you're a customer, you end up with 24/7 tech support, probably in India. They are friendly, don't treat you as idiot customer, and they're usually able to help, but they also like to repeat their formulas over and over a again. Thank you so much for holding, David. I can help you with this.

What Verizon doesn't tell you is that their product gives techies a hard time. Having set up more than a dozen wireless networks and DSL/Cable modems, you know the few standard configuration steps.

Not so with Verizon. Their free-with-the-contract "Westell" modem/router includes, luckily, a 802.11b/g wireless base station. But unfortunately it makes you jump through a lot of hoops to get it set up: before allowing any access to a website (or anything else on the internet), it requires you to "Activate" your computer using a custom program. That's intended to work on the Mac as well as on Windows, and, using Firefox, it even went so far as to install a special plugin in Firefox, only to install the real activation software.

Activation software? I sure don't want anything installed on my system that I don't know. On a spare Powerbook, I tried it - and failed.

Here's the simply solution: http://192.168.1.1/verizon/redirect.htm

This link will activate the router without requiring the installation of any software.

(Of course, this cost Verizon a call to their tech support.)

Here's some more intricate knowledge, found out during subsequent calls:

• Do enable WPA encryption on the Westell VersaLink 7500 router, but do not do so without disabling WEP encryption first. Of course, the two are mutually exclusive, but some router bug will cause authentication errors and failed connection attempts if WEP and WPA are enabled at the same time.

• The Westell 7500 router is a bit picky about allowing you access to the "Advanced" panel, which allows you to configure DNS, VPN, uPNP (won't work, sorry), the DHCP server. Just use this link to get there.

Have fun. Once set up, Verizon DSL turned out to be affordable, fast and very reliable (for me).