Netgear - two strikes

[Jonathan Hutchins]

So the pub over hear has one of those nifty Netgear MP101 players, connects wirelessly
to your PC and plays all your MP3's into your stereo.  Handy little simple remote to
control it.

Problem is, the "server" runs on an XP box with a USB DSL Modem on it.  XP thinks this
is the primary network device.  There's supposed to be a configuration button that lets
you tell the Netgear software to listen on a different subnet, but the button doesn't
show up (because it's a USB device?  I dunno).  (The secondary connection is a standard
NIC connected to a Cisco WAP.)

So I had a Wireless router en-route from the states.  Unfortunately, the 7-10 days
shipping ended up being 16 days, and I only have a couple of days left.  I open the box,
and I see "Netgear".  Uh-oh.

Sure enough, I set this up on the home network, and as soon as I access the
configuration pages on the router, it goes offline.  Won't respond to "ping" any more. 
I can unplug it, it will start up and supply an IP address via DHCP, but as soon as I
hit the web pages, poof!

Wireless connectivity on it defaults to "off", so I'm pretty well sunk here.  Oh, it
won't pass packets through on the home network either.  It would be double-NAT by
default, which is probably why.

NETGEAR refused to reply to support email unless I registered the music player.  I
couldn't guess a purchase date their registration site would accept, so that's sunk.  I
registered the router, but what are the chances that they're going to get right back to
me on a Friday afternoon, and that I'll get it worked out by Monday when the movers
come.

Ah well.  Soon I'll be back in the U.S. and I can take this router back and tell 'em
where to stick it.  The pub's on their own.