Setting Up AT&T Yahoo DSL and a Dlink DIR-615 Wireless Router
Posted on December 26, 2007
Filed Under Tips, gadgets |
I was engaged by a non-tech savvy friend of mine to set up a wireless router to work with his Yahoo DSL service so that he and his neighbor could share his connection. I happily accepted thinking that this would be a 30 minute task, and that I would look like a hero. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly turn out that way.
First, we needed a router, so we bought the Dlink DIR-615 (Draft-N) wireless router for a reasonable $60+tax. I went with the Draft-N since we needed range for this application (connecting neighbors in different buildings).
Having never dealt with AT&T Yahoo DSL before (I have Comcast broadband internet in my home), I thought the task would be as easy as connecting the modem to the router, and voila, wireless internet. However, after trying to make this work for several hours, I fugured out this wasn’t going to work. After some research, I discovered that the connection from AT&T was PPPoE, not simply DHCP as with broadband internet. My friend had no idea what his PPPoE username and password, so we called up AT&T and they actually pointed us to the username (on the bill in the internet section), and reset our password. This process went through amazingly quickly - i.e. I was only on the phone for about 20 minutes - (kudos to AT&T!).
I logged into the routers admin window at 192.168.0.1 (through Internet Explorer), set up the username and password, and hit the connect button, and after 30 seconds or so, I was connected (as verified by the status tab), and everything was working, including the wireless! So, after 3 hours or so, I thought that I was done… but more trouble lurked.
After about an hour or so, the internet connections (wireless and wired) both stopped working. Then they came back. And then stopped again. Clearly something was wrong. I checked the settings, even played with the PPPoE connection settings and changed it to stay always connected, but nothing worked. Finally, I checked Dlink’s website for updated firmware, and there was one (version 1.1). I should have looked here in the first place - every engineer knows that version 1.0 has bugs! 
So I downloaded the firmware and attempted an update through the web admin interface… and the web page died (404 error). Thinking I had hosed the router, I rebooted in manually (unplugged the power, waited a few minutes, then reconnected it), and luckily it came back. This time the firmware upgrade took. Since then, things seem to have been working very smoothly, for my friend and his neighbor - it has been about 3 days, and no complaints so far. The neighbor is now going to drop her DSL connection and save about $20 a month.
So - here are my take-aways from this project
- AT&T DSL is PPPoE (at least the $19.99 version)
- You need the PPPoE username and password, and if you forget them, AT&T customer service can help
- Check to make sure that you have the latest firmware for your equipment
- This is not exactly plug-and-play, almost more like plug-and-pray!
- Patience is required!
- Once it works - it’s worth it, and will save you money
- Why don’t more people share an internet connection? If you’re in an apartment building, why not talk to your neighbors, share a connection and split the bill??Makes sense to me!
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3 Responses to “Setting Up AT&T Yahoo DSL and a Dlink DIR-615 Wireless Router”
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Very good and helpful article….I was also going through same problem and this solution worked for me also
Awesome…but as for why sharing a connection with your neighbors is a bad idea: if the connection dies, the person “hosting” the connection has to be home to either a)fix it or b)call the ISP. Also, what if the “host” forgets to pay the bill on time? then the neighbor gets shafted.
I am also trying to set up a D-Link router for my ATT DSL. I can log into the router to enter the username and password, but after I do this, I can no longer get to the internet. Do I need to change the ATT modem to bridge mode?
Also, do I need to enter on the router the IP addess that I see on the modem, if I will change it to bridge mode?
Thank you,
Newbie