Internet World 2001: A network odyssey

I was never a Boy Scout, but I try to be prepared, anyway. When traveling, I try to anticipate possible problems and plan for contingencies. This week, I failed. But luckily, the story has a happy ending.

I brought my favorite ultralight notebook, a Sony VAIO PictureBook, with me to Internet World this week. I love this notebook because it doesn’t weigh my shoulder down, and it includes my favorite pointing device, a TrackPoint nubbin. It includes a Transmeta 600MHz processor, but I haven’t found that to be a big battery saver; I get about two hours of life, just slightly more than a much larger and heavier ThinkPad provides.

Along with the PC, I brought four–count ‘em, four–PC Card connectivity devices: a Xircom CreditCard Wireless Ethernet Adapter and Orinoco Silver, both 802.11b wireless devices that depend on having a wireless access point nearby; a Linksys PCMPC100 that requires a wired network connection; and a Sierra AirCard 300, which needs only radio access.

You’d think I was covered. You’d be wrong.

The Orinoco card has been a little flaky ever since I got it. My computer doesn’t recognize it unless I flash-update its BIOS, after which it works just fine. Anybody know what’s up with that? But it didn’t matter–the wireless adapters proved to be useless. There was no wireless connectivity anywhere at the show, not in the press room, not near the show offices, not on the show floor. What does this say about the real state of wireless adoption?

The Linksys adapter might have worked fine, had I brought along the proper driver for it. In fact, I should have picked up another PC Card adapter for which I already had a driver installed when I left my office. My mistake.

The AirCard worked fine, at first, and I used it to download the right driver for the Linksys. Unfortunately, even with the driver installed, the Linksys adapter wouldn’t work.

I turned back to the AirCard. Though it’s glacially slow, it worked–until I needed it, that is. At that point, it quit. The little LED on the side of the card turned red and refused to change to a happier color.

At that point, I would have been happy to turn to a dial-up connection. The PictureBook includes a built-in modem. But once again, I had failed to anticipate the need for dialing in to the corporate network. While I had installed the VPN client we require to access corporate resources, I had neglected to install the dialer application for our service provider.

I was at an impasse. I brainstormed. How could I get back on the network?

I postponed lunch and walked from the Javits Center up 34th Street to the nearest Staples, where I picked up a D-Link DSB-650TX USB network adapter. USB equals plug-and-play, right? I brought it back, set it up, and discovered I still needed a tiny driver. I should have known.

I was back to square one.

As a workaround, I used an Internet e-mail account to communicate my situation to my editor. But the fundamental problem remained: the stories I needed to file were on a machine with no Internet connectivity.

I resorted to begging, depending upon the kindness of strangers. I borrowed an adapter from the president of Kryptosima, an Internet payment service provider, and from a representative of BusinessWire. I lacked a driver for the first adapter. The second seemed to install fine, but I still couldn’t establish a connection. Was it because of a bad cable to the hub? A problem with my PC Card slot?

Just when things looked bleakest, my Fairy Godmother appeared, in the form of John Taschek, the director of eWEEK Labs. He heard my plight and took pity on me. He put a wireless adapter in his computer and configured his computer and mine so I could use his computer as a proxy server.

At last I had e-mail access! I quickly sent in my stories. But my problems weren’t over yet.

For reasons neither John nor I could figure out, I still had no Web access, which I needed in order to download the driver for my USB adapter. We talked about trying different things, until I asked if John happened to have a USB storage device. Just as good, he had a PC Card storage device. He downloaded the driver, popped out the card, I plugged it in to my notebook, and voilà, I was in business! John, I owe you a huge debt of thanks.

So what have I learned? Next time, pack my USB DiskOnKey device, and download the modem dialer application, just in case. In short, Be More Prepared.

Hmm–sounds like a good motto for any IT professional.

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