More Speedstream 4200 & Windstream

I spent the whole day until just the last half hour jumping through Windstream hoops with that dratted horrid thing called speedstream 4200 from them.

To be fair, it may also be the Belkin wireless router at fault to some degree, but the only thing I can attest to is that connecting directly to the speedstream 4200 with a computer has not allowed it to connect to the internet everytime. The Windstream Broadband Installer activation page would show up sometimes, forcing me to go through things with it to let me online at all. After all that, following directions found on windstream.net as well as directions elsewhere found via google … I successfully put the speedstream 4200 into Bridged mode. Only then the Belkin N+ wouldn’t connect, or couldn’t, or something. So I then would have to reset the modem to access it in IE by direct computer connection again.

I did follow some instructions that promised that by connecting like a dial-up to it bridged and being successful in such a PPPoE connection that would prove it was indeed bridged and would then work with the router when hooked up and credentials put into the PPPoE interface. Fine, that worked. I figured it would since jumping through all the Activation hoops all day long I knew by then that computer connecting to modem wasn’t a big deal anymore, it was working to connect to the internet right away, or at least bring up the activation windstream pages, like I said, at the least.

In this case, online right away. So I disconnected, put the cables back to the router as is proper. The router just bleeped those orange lights at me. The modem just sat there with power, ethernet, dsl nice and solid green. Now earlier today I had restored the router to factory default and had the same reaction afterwards, I tooled things up here and there and did more and reset to factory again, still no internet connection.

Well I got to that point then to restore to factory default AGAIN. And wouldn’t you know it. I input my PPPoE credentials and voila! Data was populating the “almost connected” fields on the home page, and the lights were all blue on the router face, and the bottom one was blinking. Almost connected, yes, yes, connected!

Since then I reapplied my wireless settings, and such and here I am on my laptop is online and that’s the first time today it’s been online as properly should be routed through my Belkin.

So I must find out if it’s the Belkin that’s the biggest part of this problem, or the Speedstream 4200 or Windstreams DSL or if it’s all of them together.

I would like to get a different router, this one is new, but since I’ve had all this trouble right before and more ever since …

I would like to see about buying a modem that isn’t such a “walled garden” as the Speedstream 4200 is, as long as it’d be a modem that would work and be just that, a modem for our dumb DSL that we need SOOOO much.

I have done everything correctly over and over and over. This is such a stupid thing, not even a mystery. I’m tired of it. I’ve spent more time on this for the last couple of weeks that anything else at all, except sleep, maybe.