Categories
Parenting WiFi

Parenting via WiFi

If you think technology has no place in parenting, then I bet you’ll rethink after reading this article. Technology has become the mainstream vehicle for communication, entertainment, education and workflow these days that it’s becoming more difficult to deny our children access to it. It’s easy to keep technology away from the young ones but once they hit their teenage years, it becomes more difficult. Teenagers like to negotiate and/or argue their way out of doing their jobs. If you’re like me, and don’t like to talk very much, then you’ll like this parenting advice.

If you want your teenager to do something, communicate to them via WiFi. Here’s how you do it:

  1. You want the birdcage cleaned and the bird put to bed and your teenager won’t get off his/her butt to do it and you already asked once to do it. Most parents would ask again (and again) to no avail. Some parents will begin to raise their voice and get angry and it might eventually get done. Some parents avoid conflict and it never gets done.
  2. You’re different though. You’re one of those tech-savvy parents that only ask once to get things done. If it doesn’t get done immediately then you rename the WiFi name (geek term “SSID”) to “Clean Bird Cage & Bird to Bed” and change the password (geek term “Security Key”) as well. If you don’t know how to do this then learn it, it’s not that hard. You paid for it, make it work for you.wifi
  3. Once the task is done, sure enough, your teenager will ask for the WiFi back, so you revert the WiFi back to its original settings.too_fly_for_a_WiFi

Easy as baking a pie.

Categories
Modem VoIP VoIP Gateway

NetComm NB9WMAXX Drops Out When Using IVR (or when dialled number is forwarded)

NetComm NB9WMAXXI’ve just bought myself a NetComm NB9WMAXX, an ADSL2+ Wireless Broadband Modem Router with VoIP gateway. I wanted to fully utilise my broadband account by making phone calls through the internet. Expensive equipment (AU$279.00) but I figured it would pay for itself when I start making big savings on my telephone bill.

I signed up for a VoIP account with Internode because I heard good things about it from a work friend. I installed my brand new modem, configured it with my VoIP account details, and at first, everything was great.

That was until I realised that the modem didn’t handle IVR or call forwards too well. IVR, Interactive voice response, is the interactive technology that allows a computer to detect voice and keypad inputs (eg. “press 1 for this, press 2 for that” OR “say yes if this is correct” etc.). This default configuration also cannot handle phone calls to a number that is diverted to another.

In both scenarios, the phone call “drops out”, ie. the call goes silent all of a sudden (can’t hear anything at all). I searched high and low for a solution online but to no avail. One particular site, however, hinted the problem. The following page http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/532842.html suggested to “have a look at your RFC2833 Outband DTMF options. Maybe ask your Voice Service Provider what settings they support”.

So I did. NetComm NB9WMAXX modem by default sets the “RFC2833 Outband DTMF” attribute to “Auto Negotiation”. I found that this configuration is what causes the problem with IVR and forwarded calls. Unfortunately, I tinkered with every possible configuration on the modem to no avail. NetComm NB9WMAXX is just not compatible with Internode VoIP and vice versa. Don’t bother calling NetComm or Internode support either because they won’t listen to you. NetComm does not have support for Internode VoIP.  Internode VoIP does not support NetComm NB9WMAXX. The hardware and service provider is just not compatible with each other.

To resolve my issue, I signed up with MyNetFone, which one of the many service providers supported by NetComm. I didn’t get the problem again and I’m one happy customer!