Bellsouth $10 DSL up and running

I got my Bellsouth $10 DSL up and running today with relatively little hassle. The “Sprint 660” DSL modem I purchased from Craigslist works just fine, too, in spite of not appearing on Bellsouth’s supported list of equipment.

I spent a little time at first just sorting out where my wiring goes in my house. I’ve got VoIP phones everywhere and so these “virtual” phone lines can be hard to tell apart from the real one. Once I found a good jack to use, I plugged in my DSL filters on my real phone line and cranked up my DSL modem.

Immediately the DSL light on the modem lit up, signifying a successful sync to the phone company’s DSLAM. It pulled an IP address from the Bellsouth DHCP server, too. I could ping three routers out from my house but could not go further. Something was wrong.

A call to Bellsouth FastAccess support was worthless. Searching the modem’s log file, however, provided the answer: I was using the wrong password to authenticate the connection. But where was the password? I couldn’t locate it and cursed myself for ordering this right before leaving town for business: a surefire way to forget any password.

Finally I got a hint of inspiration. I raced to fetch the packing slip from the “self-install” kit I was given. Voila! No wonder I couldn’t find my password: I was never given one! The packing slip had my password on it. If I’d simply discarded it I would still be drooling on my modem, waiting for something to happen.

Amazing what a difference using the proper password makes. Now I will switch all my internal PCs to use the new gateway and see how things work. If it can handle my web demos, I may drop my cable modem service for the 12-month term and evaluate options after that.