Apple shoots customers in the foot with simplicity, again

Yesterday I had Verizon switch my FIOS from PPPOE to DHCP. I was an early customer so I was on the cruddy PPPOE equipment. That was a long process but Keith rocked and got me taken care of within a day. Awesome!

Last night I start my usual routine of testing the SonicWall VPN with the Apple Airport Extreme N, just to see if DHCP affects the process at all. I disconnect the Linksys, connect the Airport to the ethernet jack, reset it to DHCP and oops, no internet connection.

Hmm. No IP, nothing. Damn! This is just DHCP, what could be wrong?

I plugged the Linksys back in and sure enough, it works. Ok. A little googling later I find an obscure post that says you must release the dhcp before switching routers, because Verizon caches the MAC address with your IP. Ugh!

I go to the Linksys Status page and click Release DHCP. Plug the Airport in and yay! I have an IP! Awesome!

Well not so awesome.

You see, switching to DHCP didn’t fix my VPN issue, so back to bridge mode the Airport goes. Plug the Linksys back in. No IP. Ugh, here we go again.

Fire up Airport Utility. Hunt, hunt. Damnit Apple, no Release DHCP button! I guess they figured that is an “Advanced” feature Airport users would not need.

Apple constantly blows this one with it’s routers – Not putting in features like MAC address cloning, etc, in order to make the routers simpler to support and then we get burned at 3am.

I had to call Verizon. 15 minutes later I had my DHCP released and the Linksys was working once again.

So now I’m really screwed. The Airport does not work with Elizabeth’s VPN, the router is over 4 months old (Because I’ve been patiently testing things for Apple) and now each time they want me to try something, I’ll need to spend 15 minutes on the phone with Verizon.

Sigh. Apple – Get on the ball and make your routers first class, please. Make them easy to set up and then add an Advanced tab for those inevitable cases when we get hosed. The world of networking sucks and while I appreciate the effort to hide it’s ugliness, you’ve only harmed me when I need to advance beyond the minimal controls.