One Country, Three Systems

For the past few days, we’ve been on a road trip to tiny places without internet access, much of which seemed to Ray like the China he remembers from 1986.  Now we’re back in Touristia, in a nice hotel which has wired internet access in every room.  But, like all of the other places, it Didn’t Just Work.

In Beijing, it Didn’t Just Work because there was no DHCP server — someone had to come up and type manual IP information into the Network preference pane.

In Xi’an, it Didn’t Just Work because we needed a name and password, both of which turned out to be our room number.

In Xining, it Didn’t Just Work for awhile, but they fixed something on their end and then it did.

And now, here in Dunhuang, it Didn’t Just Work because I didn’t realize, and they didn’t know how to tell me, that it required using PPPoE on the in-room ADSL modem, something I’ve never had the opportunity to bother with before.  Once that got straightened out, things were fine.

So now that we’re connected, we’ll be able to post impressions of our road trip, and whatever touristy things we end up doing here.