New Router Project

Little Kat complained that our Internet speeds were slow. He said the cause was that we opened up our wireless router to anyone. I told him to put a password on the network access. He could not. Then he proposed I buy an expensive new router.

I looked at the specs of the new router. They were impressive. But they were overkill. I only pay for a certain low bandwidth from our Internet Service Provider (ISP). Higher speed access to our router will only get jammed up in the pipe to the ISP. I did agree to buy a new cheaper router that Little Kat could lock down.

The router came quick. Little Kat added encryption that required a password. That way nobody could use the wireless connections without knowing the secret password. Next step was to update all the devices in the house to use the new router. Easier said than done.

I gave Little Kat the CD-ROM that came with Momoko's laser printer. He tried and tried but could not get it to work with the new router. Momoko was inconvenienced because now she could not print to her printer. I told Little Kat that he needed to get that printer to work before messing up any of the other printers.

Eventually Momoko could not take it any more. So I had to help Little Kat. We reset the settings on the Momoko's printer to factory defaults. We were able to verify that you could print to it if you connected your computer to it directly. None of the normal install programs allowed us to set up the wireless access.

We decided to connect the printer directly to the new router with a cable. Then I used an optional utility from the manufacturer to spy on the printer network settings. I also tried a back door I knew about, and we got lucky. We were able to set up the printer using a browser.

Had to figure out things such as the printers internal password. We also needed to recall what the security settings for our new router were. But now we can print wirelessly to Momoko's printer using the new router. Next I plan to let Little Kat set up the other printers in the house. Hopefully we can then move all the other devices over to the new router, and retire the old router.