Nook, Verizon or just plain stupidity?

Just recently, I bought both my son and wife a Nook. You know the device; it is an Ereader. Well, the Nook is supposed to connect to the internet via your home wireless network, and it does so the first time and then not again. Some of you may have experienced this phenomenon. It turns out that the new Nook Simple Touch readers will not reconnect with Verizon based home wireless systems after a few days of connection. And it does not matter what you do with your Nook because it will not work. It will not work unless you understand how to work around the problem.

If you contact Nook (Barnes and Nobles) about this problem, you are more likely to get the wrong answer as the right one and you may end up having a non-working Verizon wireless to boot. Fortunately, I spent some serious hours figuring this out. Honestly, it would not have taken hours if I had just done what I thought I should do straight away, but I really did not think I needed to make such a specific correction when the Nook had previously found and connected to my wireless when first booted up.

So if you have this problem, listen up, cause this is the answer. I will walk through the setups here in order and it is my hope that your Nook will connect to your Verizon wireless when you are all done.

1. Open your Nook wireless settings and click on the wireless network you are trying to connect to.
2. Click on "forget" the wireless connection.
3. Turn off the wireless on your Nook and set your Nook aside for the moment.
4. Go to your computer and type "192.168.1.1" into your web browser address.
5. This should open up your Verizon router login page.
6. If you have never logged in to your Verizon router before, do not worry. The name is "admin" and the password is "password".
7. On the top window bar, click on "Advanced"
8. It will ask if you want to proceed. Click "yes"
9. Look for and click on "IP Address Distribution"
10. Click on "Connection List"
11. Look in the list for your Nooks MAC address. You will find your Nooks MAC address by going back to your Nook and looking it up in Nook/Settings/Device Info/About Your Nook.
12. In the Verizon router page, find your Nook MAC address and under action click "remove"
13. Click on "New Static Connection" at the bottom of the list.
14. Give your Nook a name (something like Nook), give it an IP address (192.168.1.xxx). The "xxx" can be any number that is not already being used by your computer from 1 to 254. I like to use the number 192.168.1.253.
15. Type in the Nook MAC address exactly as it is in your Nook (in the "About Your Nook" Settings area).
16. On your Verizon screen, click "apply".
17. Now turn on your Nook wireless and see if it sees your Verizon router.
18. Once it does, type in your Verizon wireless WEP address and connect to your Verizon router.
19. Everything should work from now on!

Barnes and Noble dropped the ball with this one and they should have a software fix at some point in the near future. But this post allows you to fix the problem immediately.

Good luck!