So I'm back [1] installing the router [2]. I told Smirk to tell the customer it would take two hours, even though I was expecting it to take at most half an hour.
Good thing too—because just as I was finishing up, 45 minutes after starting (due to some driver issues on my laptop, I could only use the serial port (to configure the main router) or the ethernet port (to test the network) but both at the same time—sigh) the customer asks if the wireless portion still works.
Excuse me?
You see, they were using a consumer grade wireless access point (with four ethernet ports) to handle their office, and much to my surprise, they were actually using the wireless portion for a few devices. I wasn't aware of this.
It turns out neither was Smirk.
So I spent the next hour reconfiguring the wireless router (which I had to completely reset because the administrative password had long since been lost) to work on their network. Fortunately, the customer had saved some critical information (WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol) keys) that made the process just a tad less painful for both of us.
Total time: two hours.
Fancy that.