MountainNetworks
IS-IT--Management
- Apr 24, 2003
- 74
Hi:
I just got off a nightmare project that I'd like to warn everyone about.
Customer wanted me to set up wireless. Customer assured me she had DSL. She neglected to tell me it was AOL DSL. Not that it would have made any difference because I thought DSL was DSL, plain and simple. But AOL is back to their old tricks of rewriting the operating system behind their AOL client software, thereby making a computer completey non-functional outside of their versioned software.
You can't simply put in the customers DSL login and password for PPPoE like you can with other providers. First, you have to make sure that stupid "Enable AOL Parental Controls" available under the security tab is enabled. If you don't check this firmware option, it just won't work.
And it wouldn't work anyway. After several hours of trying to configure the wireless, and even non-wireless with an SR41, I was unable to successfully get two computers on a network. Pretty pathetic for a guy who spent five years as a Sun Microsystems systems administrator!
Just to do a sanity check, I brought in another tech. He couldn't get it working either. Conclusion...AOL Still sucks. Further research reveals the cause to be AOL changes the ipstack and doesn't use the operating systems native tcp/ip.
I hope this saves someone from the aggravation I've had to endure, and the lost profits. Until AOL behaves like the rest of the community and simply provides its customer base with a plain ol' PPPoE login and password, it is my opinion you'd do well to not support AOL.
I just got off a nightmare project that I'd like to warn everyone about.
Customer wanted me to set up wireless. Customer assured me she had DSL. She neglected to tell me it was AOL DSL. Not that it would have made any difference because I thought DSL was DSL, plain and simple. But AOL is back to their old tricks of rewriting the operating system behind their AOL client software, thereby making a computer completey non-functional outside of their versioned software.
You can't simply put in the customers DSL login and password for PPPoE like you can with other providers. First, you have to make sure that stupid "Enable AOL Parental Controls" available under the security tab is enabled. If you don't check this firmware option, it just won't work.
And it wouldn't work anyway. After several hours of trying to configure the wireless, and even non-wireless with an SR41, I was unable to successfully get two computers on a network. Pretty pathetic for a guy who spent five years as a Sun Microsystems systems administrator!
Just to do a sanity check, I brought in another tech. He couldn't get it working either. Conclusion...AOL Still sucks. Further research reveals the cause to be AOL changes the ipstack and doesn't use the operating systems native tcp/ip.
I hope this saves someone from the aggravation I've had to endure, and the lost profits. Until AOL behaves like the rest of the community and simply provides its customer base with a plain ol' PPPoE login and password, it is my opinion you'd do well to not support AOL.