A productive weekend

This was a productive, if not particularly restful weekend.

Yesterday morning I drove down to Hockessin, Delaware to do a site survey at a small law firm which needs a network installed so that they can share files among three users, and also use a cable modem. They currently use dial up access from Earthlink and AOL, which has become a major impediment to receiving large files. Based on their projected type of usage and the small size, I'm going to put in a proposal to install an 802.11g wireless LAN, which I'll lock down pretty tightly.

One thing I did so that I could see if any special configuration will be needed was to fire up my laptop with a Netgear 802.11g NIC in it, and see if I could detect any WLANs. I picked up 5 or 6, one of which was a wide open Linksys WAP which had been taken out of the box and plugged in. I didn't attempt to loging to the WAP, but the SSID was the default and I was able to get an IP, since WEP was off. I gave the secretary at the law office a few of my business cards to pass out. :-)

Today along with a colleague and a couple guys we paid per diem, I was at one of my client's to install LAN and phone cabling in their new office. We got all the cabling run -- 37 drops -- and partially punched down. My partner will rturn during the week to finish punching down all the phone and LAN jacks, and certify all the runs with a Fluke tester. My client will be moving in on October 30th, at which time I'll install three new Netgear 10/100 switches and a new UPS, plus general hand holding during the move.

This job is going a long way to paying for the new gutters and soffets I had to get for the house last month.