Gareth Jones

Well, the D-Link 655 router that I ordered a few days ago arrived from PIXmania. First off, the router is a French SKU. The manual, the software CD and the guarantee are all French. The alarm bells rang when I first opened the box and found a UK mains adaptor converter, though my first instinct had been that PIXmania had shipped me an American SKU which was how they make their profit margin. But no, it was French. I don’t think I’ll buy from PIXmania again.

Thankfully the router’s webmin was in English so I wasted no time in setting everything up. Or at least, to a point because I quickly discovered that there was no in-built modem and I’d have to use an external modem to connect to my ISP. That’s not really a problem because the Netgear DGN2000 that I’ve used for two years has been great in every way apart from it only being a 10/100mbit unit which is too slow for the Thecus – but obviously fast enough for internet access. I thought I’d set up the network with the D-Link and then connect that to the Netgear for internet access – should be easy enough, right?

Without an appropriate manual, I was left to Google to troubleshoot when my initial attempt failed. The D-Link seemed to connect to the internet as it was successfully checking for the latest firmware, but nothing that was connected to the D-Link could get out.

Over an hour was spent reading various forums, reviews and articles to try and get the information I required, when I then concluded that the internet is FULL of people who have NO IDEA what they’re talking about. One person would claim that the way forward was to disable DHCP on the D-Link; another to disable it on the Netgear. One person would claim that you put the ISP settings into the D-Link and use the Netgear as a pass-through; the other that you put the settings into the Netgear and let the D-Link piggy-back on it. In short, no-one had a clue.

While searching for answers I also found this thread on the D-Link support forums where someone else was experiencing problems with the 655. I was distinctly unimpressed to see such a haughty attitude on Lycan, the “Technical Engineer Global Moderator” of the forum, as he proved particularly unhelpful to anyone who asked any valid questions about the unit.

In the end I stumbled across a short discussion about Netgear. Some guy was looking for a way to set his router as a modem but couldn’t find the necessary option, and someone posted a link with a “try this” suggestion. The link was http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?next_file=mode.htm, and opening this link myself brought me to a minimalist page with nothing other than router mode: modem/router or modem only. I selected modem only and immediately the machines connected to the D-Link had internet access. For some really stupid reason, this page is only available to you on the navigation pane once you’ve already set the router to modem-only – when in router/modem mode, you’ve got to type in the address which means you need to already know it’s there. Who’s the Einstein that came up with that idea?

As for the other settings that I’m using, the Netgear has a LAN IP address of 192.168.0.1, DHCP and wireless are both disabled and the ISP details are specified. The D-Link has an IP of 192.168.0.10, DHCP is enabled with a range of 192.168.0.50 – 192.168.0.254, the wireless is enabled and the ISP details are also specified (manually). The internet port is connected to one of the Netgear’s LAN ports.

Hopefully this post will prove useful to others who find themselves with zero documentation and an internet-full of useless guesses!

With the launch of the PSPgo, Sony has also launched a new range of game available only though download – the minis. These titles all cost less than £10 and are designed to be quick bites that run on both the standard PSPs and the PSPgo.

Having upgraded my PSP 3000 to firmware 6.1 today I was eager to take a look at these minis and see if there was anything worth buying, but I ran into a problem in that I couldn’t find any reviews for these games. Google yielded plenty of news and opinions on the new option but nothing in the way of actual game reviews.  I certainly wasn’t going to buy anything from PSN without reading some reviews first, so I was relieved to finally find pspminis.com – a site that has been specifically set up to bring you minis news, previews and reviews! They currently have two reviews on there – for Fieldrunners and Kahoots – and I did end up buying Fieldrunners as a result of reading that article.