Saturday, November 15, 2008

Time Capsule update

Last weekend I went ahead and completed the switchover from my old LinkSys WRT54G to the new 1GB Time Capsule as the primary router for the home network.

On the Time Capsule, I had to set up port mapping to match the previous configuration of the LinkSys. I also set up static DHCP mappings to match what was already set up. Enabled PPPoE client and DHCP server.

LinkSys changes:
- reset to defaults
- disabled WiFi
- disabled internet/WAN connection
- disabled DHCP server

I also needed to connect one of the LAN ports of the LinkSys to one of the LAN ports of the Time Capsule.

After setting all this up, I noticed the AirPort menu extra started showing the connected time for the PPPoE connection, which is a bit annoying. Luckily I was able to figure out that you turn this off from a submenu that shows up from the network name in the AirPort menu.

Another discovery I made was that with Leopard it is now possible to have multiple computers on the home network set up to do video chats. The secret was to map different incoming ports to different computers. In Leopard, iChat will try port 16402 and then continue trying lower port numbers down to 16393. Given that the Time Capsule is more flexible with port mapping, it was easy to set aside 16401 and 16400 for the laptops, while leaving all the old iChat ports for the Mac mini.