It was kind of a pain in the butt.

I put in the CD and skipped through all the crap about DSL filters, because I already had DSL filters from my EarthLink DSL. I installed the new SpeedStream 5100 DSL modem, but the software refused to detect it. After uninstalling 8 or 9 programs that were EarthLink or networking-related (e.g.: ZoneAlarm, Cisco VPN, etc…) and rebooting 3 or 4 times, it suddenly started detecting the modem. So then I proceeded with the rest of the install, creating my sbcglobal account and such but then the installer just hung towards the end. After 5 minutes of staring at the hourglass, I decided that it wasn’t going to do anything and so I killed it, rebooted, and started the install again. This time I got a prompt that I hadn’t even seen before telling me to enter the modem access code from the bottom of the unit. Did that and then I got some weird error that said something had failed and I should hit Retry and if it fails a few times, I should call SBC. Luckily, I hit Retry and it worked and then on the next step, I got another error saying “We apologize that the SBC Yahoo! servers that are needed to obtain your new User Name and Password are temporarily unavailable.” I hit Retry and then it worked and I was able to get through the rest of the install and I had my one PC connected to the Internet (at this point, the DSL modem was hooked up directly to my PC as the instructions had told me to do).

Then I tried hooking up the modem to the router, so I could get the other computers on the Internet. No dice – the Linksys could not connect over PPPoE. After a little research on the Web, I discovered that the SpeedStream 5100 has built-in PPPoE. The recommended way to hook up a router is to disable the built-in PPPoE by accessing the modem configuration page at http://192.168.0.1, selecting “PPP Location” and setting it to “PPP on computer” (the default is “PPP on modem”).

After doing this, I could then get the router to connect and now both of our desktop PCs in the office are on the Internet! Yay!

Let’s see…it was around 12:30 AM when I got this all working. I started the process at around 9:50 PM. Two and a half hours. Ergh. But then again, now we’ve got Internet for $14.95/month for a year, so I’ll be saving around $35/month for a year or $420. Not too bad.