I had to perform somewhat of a retreat on a troublesome installation today. Background first: The client called in mid-December, wanting help getting high-speed Internet and a wireless network setup for him and his wife. I’m already pretty familiar with the client as I set up their son’s wireless network last Fall, not to mention the fact that the husband is the CEO of the company my wife works for. I figure this would be pretty straightforward. Wrong!

First thing was getting Comcast HSI ordered and installed. Check. I scheduled my first visit (early January), and came loaded for bear with all my Wi-Fi gear in tow. I had to do the pain-in-the-neck Comcast cable modem authorization first, since the Comcast tech was unable to do it. The laptop nearest the cable modem was an antique Toshiba running Win95 and had no ethernet capability. I’ve done the modem auths before, but sometimes the Comcast server can be dog slow. The whole process took nearly an hour just to get the modem functional.

Once the cable modem was authorized, I plugged in the D-Link DI-514 router, cloned the MAC address first used on the modem (Comcast never used to require MAC address cloning, but they do now, at least in my area). Set up WEP. Check. Things were moving along. I attached a new Hawking Technologies wireless signal booster to the router’s antenna port to give me better range, as the second wireless client was several rooms away in an older house with very solid construction.

Speaking of the second wireless client, it was also somewhat of an antique. An IBM NetVista, I forget which model, but it was interesting because it was an all-in-one CPU with integrated LCD (Sorry Apple, IBM had you beat on that idea). But it was a low-end PIII running Win98 SE. I had two brands of USB Wi-Fi adapters, a Hawking and a D-Link. The D-Link was the only one I could get running.

The antique Toshiba Tecra was replaced with a shiny new IBM ThinkPad X40… w/ built-in 11b Wi-Fi. I got the ThinkPad set up for the new WLAN easily (it was inches away), but the owner wanted to be able to roam around. Once the wireless connection was established, I started to download some updates. I noticed the connection drop several times, then come right back. Hmmm… OK, having a 2.4GHz cordless phone base station within several feet of the router is probably not helping matters (for either the phone or the router). There were also at least 4-5 other WLANs in range within the neighborhood, so I took care to set up mine with the most unique channel I could.

The next problem was a combination of client expectations and an outdated corporate infrastructure. These folks had been direct dialing their corporate LAN for Exchange server access. When I was approached to set them up on broadband, I had assumed they would have a VPN infrastructure to tap into. Wrong. I should have checked on that before proceeding with the install. They did have Outlook Web Access (OWA) on their Exchange 2000 box, but that was not the client’s preferred e-mail interface; they were too tied to the full Outlook client. And the only way they could use Outlook over their new high-speed connection was in Internet e-mail mode to send/receive only.

And they had Outlook 2000 on the ThinkPad, which was having major difficulties accessing their server in a POP configuration. I experimented on my laptop, which has Outlook 2003, and using all the same server settings, I had no problem. So I upgraded their Outlook and presto, they were able to download mail.

But after sitting with the client some more and understanding how she uses e-mail, it became clear to me that Outlook running in POP3 mode wouldn’t cut it. She was dependent on having access to the Global Address Book, and her admin assistant would make frequent changes to her contact folders.

I also saw continued wireless drops on the ThinkPad. They had at least four 2.4GHz cordless phones on the floor, which had to be a contributor to the connection instability. So I made an executive decision to put them back on dial-up. She was used to it from the way she’d previously worked, and she could have the full Outlook client access Exchange in Workgroup mode.

I had a conversation with the person at their head office in charge of IT, and as fate would have it, plans are in the works for a fairly sweeping infrastructure upgrade including Exchange 2003 Server and some new Cisco equipment, which can come with VPN capabilities.

So all is not lost… I will have to strategize about how to deal with the cordless phone issue. The phones are barely a year old, and I don’t want to tell them the only option is going out and getting 5.8GHz phones. I might try a different router; perhaps the new Linksys Wireless-G SRX with MIMO technology. Although now that I think about it, you can get a 2-line 5.8GHz multi-handset cordless phone (Panasonic, I think, is the only one that has a two-line unit) for around $200. But if you get three more handsets at about $80/unit, it’s still much more expensive than the Linksys SRX Router.

I have a couple months, at least, to plan things out. It will take at least that long for them to get their VPN up and running (if they get the project approved).