The saga of Rural Ireland WiFi part 3 t's the baby's fault
Discussion
I'm gonna write a book about this one day....
So, Saturday evening I get a call fro mone of my customers that his broadband connection isn't working. He lives just across the field so it's no big deal to nip round and take a look, but like every network engineer will tell you you start off at your keyboard and prod the system to see what's up.
Sure enough I log into the access point and his radio is linked, but when I check the DHCP server it's not listed.
Strange thinks I and reboot the radio that has the DHCP server, probably got its knickers in a twist.
I get him to run some simple (well simple for me but obviously, frightening for him) ping tests. Eventually we get a DOS box open and I get hi mto type in a ping command. He gets a bit confused when I ask him to press 'Enter' as he's not sure which key that is. I'm beginning to describe it as the one with the arrow that points back wards but the God of numptyism taps me on the shoulder and tells me 'he'll press backspace...'
Eventually we locate the 'key to the very far right at the bottom' - 'you mean CTL' he asks, no no no a bit further... it has 'enter' written on it.
But sure enough the pings fail. We try a few more, whilst I prod and restart various services around the place.
'Now press the up arrow please... and tell me what it says'
It say what it said before
'C:\Documents and Settings\Family with a flashing cursor' he informs me.
'Did you press the up arrow?'
'No I clicked it'
'Sorry what did you click?'
'The up arrow'
'You clicked the up arrow? How did you click that?'
'With the mouse..'
'Ahhh... I need you to press the up arrow key on the keyboard... its between the main group of keys and the numeric pad... see four arrow keys, press the one pointing away from you'
'Ahh ok'
I swear it would've been quicker just to ask him to type 'ping 192.168.0.1' again but I digress.
It's not working, it's 9pm at night and I tell him I'll be round in the morning to look at it from his end, so off he trots.
I reboot a few more radios that might be causing the problem and leave it at that.
Mrs Ex now brings Diddy Ex fro mthe bedroom and we settledown to watch the TV with a glass of wine. Before bed, around 22:30 I make one last check and everything is going fine. I'm a bit stumped but I guess his radio finally got its assocaition and claimed an IP Address again.
I call him and let him know it's all working and he's very happy, though I can't giv him a valid explanation.
Then comes today, I get another call... 'Again, it's not working'. Ahh humbug so I repeat all the reboots fro mlast night, still not working, don't need this right now.... head off down to his place and sure enough the radio settings look fine, and his radio can see the access point. It's running in Client mode so the AP can't see and SSID broadcast from it.
I put his radio into AP mode and try to set up a WDS link back to the AP.
[techie bit]Where possible I run the customers in Client Mode rather than WDS - Every node on the network that is in WDS mode halves the bandwidth[/techie bit]
Even in WDS mode, it won't connect and I'm thinking what the hell is going on. His radio see's the access point but the AP won't see him. I@m thinking replace the radio... dah di dah... more money....
Occaisionally when I get his radio to do a scan the noise level is right up there with signal level, I've already had to move everything onto a mid band channel - CH9 to overcome other noise problems that plagued me before so I ask have you recently bought a DECT phone, new microwave? Nope nothing.
I get home, his radio under my belt and think to mymelf, not a wonderful world, but we've got a baby monitor.... Sure enough it's switched on, last night Mrs Ex turned it off before she came down to watch telly. Just turned it off again and everything is a peach.
It isone noisy as hell bit of kit. For all those people that don't want mobile phone mast next to their houses... how many have a baby monitor right next to the cot? My Wifi links use highly directional panel antennas, the energy levels are turned down to the point where by the just work, and yet this liilte box the size of two fag packets, behind a thick coattage wall can bleed all over the spectrum to the degree where an omni antenna 30 metres away cannot communicate with a panel antenna 150 metres in the opposite direction.
AP--------------150m------------------------------Client
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|30m cable - remember the elctric fence saga
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Ex's house with baby monitor
With WiFi beware the baby monitor!
So, Saturday evening I get a call fro mone of my customers that his broadband connection isn't working. He lives just across the field so it's no big deal to nip round and take a look, but like every network engineer will tell you you start off at your keyboard and prod the system to see what's up.
Sure enough I log into the access point and his radio is linked, but when I check the DHCP server it's not listed.
Strange thinks I and reboot the radio that has the DHCP server, probably got its knickers in a twist.
I get him to run some simple (well simple for me but obviously, frightening for him) ping tests. Eventually we get a DOS box open and I get hi mto type in a ping command. He gets a bit confused when I ask him to press 'Enter' as he's not sure which key that is. I'm beginning to describe it as the one with the arrow that points back wards but the God of numptyism taps me on the shoulder and tells me 'he'll press backspace...'
Eventually we locate the 'key to the very far right at the bottom' - 'you mean CTL' he asks, no no no a bit further... it has 'enter' written on it.
But sure enough the pings fail. We try a few more, whilst I prod and restart various services around the place.
'Now press the up arrow please... and tell me what it says'
It say what it said before
'C:\Documents and Settings\Family with a flashing cursor' he informs me.
'Did you press the up arrow?'
'No I clicked it'
'Sorry what did you click?'
'The up arrow'
'You clicked the up arrow? How did you click that?'
'With the mouse..'
'Ahhh... I need you to press the up arrow key on the keyboard... its between the main group of keys and the numeric pad... see four arrow keys, press the one pointing away from you'
'Ahh ok'
I swear it would've been quicker just to ask him to type 'ping 192.168.0.1' again but I digress.
It's not working, it's 9pm at night and I tell him I'll be round in the morning to look at it from his end, so off he trots.
I reboot a few more radios that might be causing the problem and leave it at that.
Mrs Ex now brings Diddy Ex fro mthe bedroom and we settledown to watch the TV with a glass of wine. Before bed, around 22:30 I make one last check and everything is going fine. I'm a bit stumped but I guess his radio finally got its assocaition and claimed an IP Address again.
I call him and let him know it's all working and he's very happy, though I can't giv him a valid explanation.
Then comes today, I get another call... 'Again, it's not working'. Ahh humbug so I repeat all the reboots fro mlast night, still not working, don't need this right now.... head off down to his place and sure enough the radio settings look fine, and his radio can see the access point. It's running in Client mode so the AP can't see and SSID broadcast from it.
I put his radio into AP mode and try to set up a WDS link back to the AP.
[techie bit]Where possible I run the customers in Client Mode rather than WDS - Every node on the network that is in WDS mode halves the bandwidth[/techie bit]
Even in WDS mode, it won't connect and I'm thinking what the hell is going on. His radio see's the access point but the AP won't see him. I@m thinking replace the radio... dah di dah... more money....
Occaisionally when I get his radio to do a scan the noise level is right up there with signal level, I've already had to move everything onto a mid band channel - CH9 to overcome other noise problems that plagued me before so I ask have you recently bought a DECT phone, new microwave? Nope nothing.
I get home, his radio under my belt and think to mymelf, not a wonderful world, but we've got a baby monitor.... Sure enough it's switched on, last night Mrs Ex turned it off before she came down to watch telly. Just turned it off again and everything is a peach.
It isone noisy as hell bit of kit. For all those people that don't want mobile phone mast next to their houses... how many have a baby monitor right next to the cot? My Wifi links use highly directional panel antennas, the energy levels are turned down to the point where by the just work, and yet this liilte box the size of two fag packets, behind a thick coattage wall can bleed all over the spectrum to the degree where an omni antenna 30 metres away cannot communicate with a panel antenna 150 metres in the opposite direction.
AP--------------150m------------------------------Client
|
|
|
|
|
|30m cable - remember the elctric fence saga
|
|
|
Ex's house with baby monitor
With WiFi beware the baby monitor!
Common problem - loads of things use the same unregulated frequency as wireless networks. So you are contending with baby monitors, Cable tv extenders, remote CCTV, wireless burglar alarms - even wireless doorchimes (get a lovel big spike when someone presses mine!)
Its pretty safe to assume that anything you buy now that is wireless will share the wifi frequencies - some are ok and just block a few channels but most of these cheap devices just flood the entire spectrum.
This is becoming a big problem in town centres where the hotspot companies are setting up - they are finding that some hotspots are being totally flooded out by other devices. In once case I recall the shop had wireless tills using a proprietary encrypted wireless communication system on the wifi band that made it impossible to use wireless within 50 metres.
Its pretty safe to assume that anything you buy now that is wireless will share the wifi frequencies - some are ok and just block a few channels but most of these cheap devices just flood the entire spectrum.
This is becoming a big problem in town centres where the hotspot companies are setting up - they are finding that some hotspots are being totally flooded out by other devices. In once case I recall the shop had wireless tills using a proprietary encrypted wireless communication system on the wifi band that made it impossible to use wireless within 50 metres.
bigdods said:
wireless doorchimes (get a lovel big spike when someone presses mine!)
I can ring my mate's doorbell by locking the Volvo with the remote!
Funny thing is, he always knows its me because the doorbell plays a different chime when Volvo-activated than when someone presses the push button on the front door.
bigdods said:
Common problem - loads of things use the same unregulated frequency as wireless networks. So you are contending with baby monitors, Cable tv extenders, remote CCTV, wireless burglar alarms - even wireless doorchimes (get a lovel big spike when someone presses mine!)
The only items in this list likely to be using the same frequency as WLANs are the video devices. (Microwave ovens do too, but they're not on the list...) Baby monitors are on 173MHz IIRC and wireless alarms/doorbells on 433MHz. The problem seems to be cheap shit transmitters radiating lots of out-of-band energy... or it could be cheap shit super-regen receivers acting as wideband noise radiators. Cheap shit certainly seems to rule with SRDs...
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