Exclusivefocus Summer 2012.pdf - National Association of ...

separate Modem and Router and Combined theminto one unit.(Provided By Telephone Company)3Cable Service Modem Provided by Local Cable Company or National Cable Company ISPIncoming Cable ServiceLineCable SplitterRG-6 Line to otherCable Services such asTV or Phone ModemRG-6 Cable to Cable Port onModemIn this Diagram you would have to add an additionalRouter in order to have Wireless service in your office.Wireless Router not usually provided by your CableCompany. This is shown in the next diagram.CableModemThese Lines Represent the Cabling in youroffice with Patch cables from the Wall toyour PC’s on the PC End and Patch Cablesfrom the Wall to your Router on theRouter End4Cable Service Modem Provided by Cable Company ISP with Wireless Router AddedIncoming Cable ServiceLineRG-6 Line to otherCable Services such asTV or Phone ModemCable SplitterRG-6 Cable to Cable Port onModemIn this Diagram shows an additional Router in order tohave Wireless service in your office. Wireless Routernot usually provided by your Cable Company.Cable Modem(Provided By Cable Company)Patch Cable from anyEthernet Port OnCable Modem toInternet Port OnWireless RouterWirelessRouterThese Lines Represent the Cabling in youroffice with Patch cables from the Wall toyour PC’s on the PC End and Patch Cablesfrom the Wall to your Router on theRouter Endwireless service, you usually have to adda wireless router yourself, as depicted inDiagram #4Diagram 4: Shows cable modem servicewith a wireless modem added. Inthis case, if you have four or less PCs inyour office you would connect all PCsinto the wireless router in order to havethem all on the same network.Diagram 5: Shows that if you havemore than four PCs, how you would usethe hub or switch to connect all of yourPCs together also with a wireless routeradded.Diagram 6: Shows how you could connectall of your PCs together if you havemore than four PCs, but this is NOT thecorrect way to connect because it putsthe PCs on two separate networks; onenetwork controlled by the router sectionof the cable modem, and one networkcontrolled by the wireless router.In this example, all PCs would haveinternet access, but if you use the “P”drive, or public drive, to share files orshare printers in your office, only the PCsconnected to the network that includesthe file sharing PC would have access tothose files, and only the PCs on the samenetwork as the PC sharing the printerwould have access to the shared printer.I’ll talk more about the correct networksetup in future articles to be published inthis magazine.Troubleshootingyour Internet ConnectionI get many calls from agents who callto tell me they suddenly lost access to theInternet. They usually tell me that theAgency Gateway has stopped working.There are many reasons that could causethis; rainy days with lightning, theirISP decided they needed to reset someequipment, and power outages are themost common culprits. When I get thesecalls, I usually have to determine if it’s aproblem with one computer or all of thecomputers in the office. The next step isto ascertain if it is the Gateway programsthat are experiencing the problem or ifit’s the Internet that is down. The agentor support staff can usually answer thesequestions right away. If all the computersin the office are affected, I ask if they areable to open Internet Explorer and go todifferent websites. If they say no, and allthey get is a message that Internet Explorercannot display the web page, thisusually can be resolved by power cyclingyour data communications equipment.The key is to know the proper order topower everything back up.If they can go to different websiteswith no problem, the problem is mostlikely that the Allstate servers are down.In this case, all they can do is wait forAllstate to get the servers back up andonline. This is very rare, but I have seenit happen once or twice. If they callAlstar Support, they usually receive amessage that the support center alreadyknows about the problem and are workingto resolve it.Now back to our troubleshooting. Ifwe determine that the problem is withonly one computer, rebooting the computerwill usually resolve the problem. Ifthe problem is that all computers in theoffice have no internet connection, weusually can power cycle the Data communicationsequipment and this willrestore service. After power cycling thedata communications equipment, I generallyhave them reboot all of the PCs inthe office, just to start out fresh. Whenpower cycling the data communicationsequipment, we have to determine if thereis only one unit we have to power cycle orSummer 2012 Exclusivefocus — 27