• Search for:
• 
  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.

• Similar Posts

  • Telus DSL “Broadband” - Not so much.
  • Hotels and Price Gouging
  • LaCie Big Disk Extreme back in action
  • Rogers, iPhone, and Consumers
  • Subscribe like it’s 1999!

• Pages

  • About
    • Bookshelf
    • Colophon
    • Comment Community
    • Contact
    • Music
    • My (not so) Secret Identities
    • Presentations
  • Archives
  • Asides
  • Photos
  • WordPress
    • Akismet Credit Inserter
    • Post Revision Display

• My Other Places

  • Mindfulseeing.com (photoblog)
  • Flickr/dnorman
  • Teaching & Learning Centre
  • The University of Calgary

• Recent Comments

  • Rich on WordPress 1.6 + Flickr Integrated into Media Manager
  • Scott Leslie on WordCamp Education Vancouver 2009
  • dnorman on WordCamp Education Vancouver 2009
  • dnorman on what should I read while offline?
  • Scott Leslie on what should I read while offline?

• Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

I’ve been struggling with this all day. Haven’t found much help on the Telus website, and their tech agents haven’t had much in the way of helpful suggestions.

I use Telus DSL at home, recently switching to the TelusTV service (which apparently also affects the internet service, as the internet guys keep forwarding me to the TV department for support. wtf?)

My old Linksys 802.11a router has been acting up, so I splurged on a new Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n base station. I have it hooked up to the ethernet switch installed by the TelusTV guy the other day.

DSL Modem –> ethernet switch –> Airport Extreme –> Computer

If I run the AE in “Bridge” mode, with no DHCP service (so it’s essentially a hub, not a router), I can get an IP address if connecting via ethernet to the AE. If I try wireless, there’s no joy. If I try to “share a single IP address” - turn on DHCP and routing - the AE complains about pulling an invalid IP address (even though it’s the same one that was pulled by the computer when running the AE in Bridge Mode). No joy in connecting to the Internet via ethernet or wireless in that mode.

I’ve registered the MAC address for the AE via Telus’ registry app at http://oca.ab.hsia.telus.net - no joy.

Lazyweb request: has anyone configured an Airport Extreme to run over Telus DSL via TelusTV? This really shouldn’t be an all-day ordeal. Any tips? Is there a magic phone number or email address to contact to make things work the way they’re supposed to?

I’ve been seriously considering ditching Telus for internet to get it via Shaw, where this balogna apparently doesn’t happen. But that would likely mess up the whole TelusTV thing…

Update: here’s a kicker - I’ve entered both the AE ethernet and wireless MAC addresses into the 2 slots provided on oca.ab.hsia.telus.net to register my computers. My laptop’s MAC address is not registered. But, if I set the AE to “Bridge Mode”, the laptop can surf the web happily while connected to the AE via ethernet. If I set the AE to “Share a single IP address” mode, so that its MAC addresses are visible, then I can’t get off the LAN. WTF? There’s got to be a secret handshake somewhere… Haven’t been able to connect to the internet via wireless at all, no matter what mode the AE runs in.

Update: a handy dandy OmniGraffle diagram of the network topology:

Update, the third: Finally got it working, with “share a single public IP address” running. Looks like the AirportExpress wasn’t reading the DNS values provided by DHCP, so nothing was resolvable. And Telus doesn’t appear to like off-Telus DNS servers, so I couldn’t just manually add others. Seems to be working now, after setting the AE internet panel to use “manual” and providing the info.

For future googlers: the DNS servers I use from Telus are

• 199.185.220.36
• 199.185.220.52

I’ve been thinking about the moronically shortsighted DOPA doowackie that got passed South of the Border. Basically, if I understand correctly, it attempts to protect children from online predators (which is a Good Thing To Do™). But, it wants to do this by banning minors from websites that let them contribute. They won’t be able to use MySpace. Or Blogger.com. Or Wordpress.com. Or Flickr.com. Or any other social “Web 2.0″ stuff. Kids will be protected by locking them out.

Which is akin to protecting your children from harm by locking them in the basement.

Sure, they’ll be safe, but they’ll be completely isolated and unable to function in a connected, online world once they reach the arbitrarily decided “safe” age of 18 or 21 or whatever silly number got picked from the hat.

You don’t protect kids by locking them away from danger. You cripple them.

And, this assumes the clever kids aren’t aware of anonymizing proxies, or something as difficult as clicking the wrong/right box on a web form, to gain access to verboten sites. Groups are working hard to provide these freedom tools to the oppressed civilians of China, unfairly locked behind the Great Firewall. While simultaneously allowing their government to impose the same arbitrary limitations on their own children.

Thankfully, there has been no word of a Canadian copycat legislation. Yet.

There are better ways to protect kids. The best, and most effective (but most difficult) way is to actually educate them. If they are aware of the issues (in whatever age-appropriate manner) they will be better able to safely cope with dangers. There’s already a handy group forming around this issue.

It’s better to teach kids to swim, than to trust a fence around the swimming pool. Or the lock on the basement door.