Of Networks and Bandersnatch

Recently, AT&T VPN caused a problem at my house. I bought a new Linksys SRX 200 wireless router but regardless of my attempts and calls to Linksys support, I could not get my VPN to work with it. So, I would disconnect the rest of the household to work during the day. This caused problems due to the fact that
a) A tech person today seldom works an eight hour shift and
b) Teenagers are addicted to myspace.com

The solution turned out to be to use the old router connected directly to the cable modem the attach the new, high speed router to the first. I had to subnet them differently (added a 1 to the third network octet) but it seemed to work. So now I have a DMZ in my home network. Computers attaching to the old router have one firewall between them and the outside world while the folks using the newer network have two firewalls between them and the evils of the open internet.

As I tried out the new setup I discovered that the folks on the second segment of my LAN were very slow retrieving web pages. The solution seemed to be to turn off the wireless setting on the older router (which has no wireless clients). After that things sped up considerably.

If you want to run your own speed test, I recommend http://www.speedtest.net/

The have cool graphics and its the service Time Warner uses to test their cable modem connections.

If anyone else finds the solution to the Linksys SRX200 and AT&T VPN dialer client let me know.