Tales from Techsupport

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mileron

plus more-and-more devices that simply piss out wireless broadcasting, it makes it quite difficult to keep a "clean" wireless environment.

---

Yep.

When even having christmas lights too close to the AP, or turning on a microwave can disrupt a signal, it's a sign that it's not reliable.

I mean, you can get the same thing with an ethernet cable if you wrap a 110 volt power cord around it, insulated or not, but at least that's physical and easily rectified if you trace the cable.

Wireless signal bands are so horseshit these days that I can hear big box store walkie talkies on my FM radio as I drive by. The "encrypted" police scanners are the worst, because every time a cop drives by, the radio blows static in my ear instead of the AC/DC song I was listening to.

It even happens when I'm listening on my mp3 player in my car.

THAT is how powerful the local interference is.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mileron

Before I moved in with my now-wife, it was no problem, because my mom's house is so old, the wiring and shitty ass 1940s foil-backed insulation basically turned my house into a radio free zone and wireless signals couldn't get in or out. Sure, this made it difficult to use cell phones indoors sometimes, but we almost never got wireless interruptions due to neighboring APs.

---

LOL! a Faraday Cage!

One of my friends lives in an old farmhouse where the walls are made of chickenwire and actual plaster. She can't get a cell signal indoors to save her life.

She also has no internal wireless problems.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mileron

But now, in a cul-de-sac where the houses are less than 60 feet apart, approximately 200 feet from my front door to the across-the-loop neighbor, my Wifi analyzer app on my phone picks up 8 different wireless signals (at least 3 of them are xfinity guest hotspots. I turned mine off months ago.) Two are printers.

---

The xfinity stuff, as much as I dislike the reasoning behind it, has proved useful to me a few times.

Some people balk when the big bearded guy says "what's you're wifi id and password" because they think I'm trying something surreptitious. As a result, it allows me to get online in case I have to search for something I'm being friendly and fixing for free.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mileron

I used to think bridging and duplicating SSIDs between APs was the way to go for spreading a wireless signal across an area but since having a second AP with a duplicate SSID seems to be causing more problems with the phones etc I may end up just getting a signal repeater.

---

Okay, never, ever, EVER duplicate SSID's.

It leads to pain.

If connection does not happen at a layer 2 level, you do NOT want to involve layer 3, which is what most home wireless devices are. That's called "routing" because, like a traffic cop, it routes traffic.

Basically, the stoplights are all blinking and everyone behind the wheel is honking their horns at each other and wondering wtf is going on.

Connect them, that's fine, but name them differently.

Windows will sort out the wireless network it should be connected to, and in the case of the printer(s), it will stick to the one you tell it to, instead of looking for a different one that doesn't have a strong enough connection to allow it to function.

TCP/IP stack calls can be fickle, and if there's even a HINT of an acknowledgement (ACK, and in SYN/ACK) you can end up with something that THINKS it's connected on the network level, but isn't actually doing a damned thing.

OSI model.

1 Physical
2 Datalink
3 Network
4 Transport
5 Session
6 Presentation
7 Application

You can easily have datalink (layer 2) without an actual network routed connection (layer 3) and your average home device tends to try to behave in layer 3 by default.

Because most people only have one.

With some judicious googling you can probably disable the routing functions on the AP's and run them as signal repeaters instead of firewalled routers.

You only need one of the latter.

Dont the Ubiquity systems use the same SSID across their multiple APs?

Just curiious how that works since in say a hotel the SSID never changes. Even the local supermarket it never changes and you know even a supermarket is big enough to need more then one to be reliable just due to the scale of the place.

Quote:

---

Dont the Ubiquity systems use the same SSID across their multiple APs?

---

Yes, but through the CAPWAP protocol.
http://searchnetworking.techtarget.c...-Access-Points

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Merrick ap'Milandra

That's called "routing" because, like a traffic cop, it routes traffic.

Basically, the stoplights are all blinking and everyone behind the wheel is honking their horns at each other and wondering wtf is going on.

---

Pfffft. We all know that it's not like a truck, it's like a series of tubes, y'all!

id say a Router is more like a complex freeway interchange... Because when everybody decides they want to get on the same freeway all at once the whole thing backs up for hours.... Packets are blowing horns and raising middle 1s at the other packets.

then you have the switch which is like a well controlled intersection with well timed stoplights. traffic is forced to take its turns and does not generally jam things up too badly...

Finally we have the simplistic hub...
Attachment 5172

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FilanFyretracker

Dont the Ubiquity systems use the same SSID across their multiple APs?

Just curiious how that works since in say a hotel the SSID never changes. Even the local supermarket it never changes and you know even a supermarket is big enough to need more then one to be reliable just due to the scale of the place.

---

The difference here is you had TWO routers with no knowledge of each other's SSID, each also independently broadcasting the same one.

Same SSID only works when the devices are configured to realize that there IS only one SSID, and they're all authorized to use it, AND are smart enough to pass the signal around from point to point when a device moves.

There *are* consumer-grade devices that can do that now, but having two separate devices, each attempting to route traffic as though it were the only device having the same SSID is trouble.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FilanFyretracker

id say a Router is more like a complex freeway interchange... Because when everybody decides they want to get on the same freeway all at once the whole thing backs up for hours.... Packets are blowing horns and raising middle 1s at the other packets.

then you have the switch which is like a well controlled intersection with well timed stoplights. traffic is forced to take its turns and does not generally jam things up too badly...

Finally we have the simplistic hub...
Attachment 5172

---

Which is why, unfortunately, hubs are so hard to find these days.

HORRIBLE for production use across the whole network, but FANTASTIC for sniffing traffic on a subsection of it.

Dont some managed switches allow mirroring? Naturally a bit more costly than a normal switch.

But yea I have not seen a hub in a store for awhile.

Quote:

---

Dont some managed switches allow mirroring? Naturally a bit more costly than a normal switch.

---

Yeah, Cisco calls it "SPAN"
or RSPAN if you want to mirror to a port on a completely different switch.

Otherwise you can poison the whole ARP tables too. (Not Recommended).

MORONS!

Backstory we have a server that connects out to someplace else on the Internet; Suddenly stopped making it's connection around the first week in December. Naturally it's blamed on my firewall changes of course. (none made on that one since Oct) and of course the connection is allowed. The Usual back and forth (we'll look into it further blah blah blah). Get an email today (routed through a different department) again blaming me & my firewall. "As it's their best guess, and your Local IT people are big meanie Poopie-heads."

We can make the connection manually but only when we accept some certificate error; So it's gotta be your firewall blocking authentication.

:wtf:

You just told us the problem morons, Go back and read what you wrote... "We have a certificate error".

not educated enough in this stuff...

But a cert error would mean something was up between them and the remote server wouldn't it? and they should contact that IT department to inquire about the cert on the remote and make sure its in line with what their server is trying to auth with?

Quote:

---

But a cert error would mean something was up between them and the remote server wouldn't it? and they should contact that IT department to inquire about the cert on the remote and make sure its in line with what their server is trying to auth with?

---

most certificate errors are pretty minor; Expired, from a Non-trusted authority (usually Self-signed, meaning they didn't pay somebody to verify their identity to themselves), or using an IP address where it expects a Hostname (or the wrong hostname) will all error the certificate. but not really have any impact on the actual security of the encrypted connection.



I didn't explain well I was trying to obfuscated and failed miserably; I work for a county, We house a State Server with state data that transmits to another State server. They administer both ends.
I just provide an internet connection to them.

They blame the internet connection. while admitting the connection works. But it's still gotta be that "cause we're fucking stupidheads".

Usually an incorrect date on the computer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Melcar

I just provide an internet connection to them.

---

But if it were the internet connection it would mean they didn't have to fix anything so that MUST be the issue!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eremius

But if it were the internet connection it would mean they didn't have to fix anything so that MUST be the issue!

---

when I worked tech support for a large cable company... People called us to clean their computers because apparently if someone gets a virus it must be from the cable modem because that is where the internet is to them.

[quote[\] People called us to clean their computers because apparently if someone gets a virus it must be from the cable modem because that is where the internet is to them.[/quote]

Sure, but in my Instance I'm dealing with our IT people who can't read the error right in front of their faces.

Wow screwed that post up.


Dealing with "Other " IT people.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Melcar

MORONS!

Backstory we have a server that connects out to someplace else on the Internet; Suddenly stopped making it's connection around the first week in December. Naturally it's blamed on my firewall changes of course. (none made on that one since Oct) and of course the connection is allowed. The Usual back and forth (we'll look into it further blah blah blah). Get an email today (routed through a different department) again blaming me & my firewall. "As it's their best guess, and your Local IT people are big meanie Poopie-heads."

We can make the connection manually but only when we accept some certificate error; So it's gotta be your firewall blocking authentication.

:wtf:

You just told us the problem morons, Go back and read what you wrote... "We have a certificate error".

---

OMFG.

I always love the "So I'm telling you nothing changed on our end, and you're telling me something changed on yours AND that it's giving you an error, but somehow it's my fault?" bullcrap.

It's even worse when it's someone who's JOB IT IS TO TROUBLESHOOT STUFF.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Merrick ap'Milandra

OMFG.

I always love the "So I'm telling you nothing changed on our end, and you're telling me something changed on yours AND that it's giving you an error, but somehow it's my fault?" bullcrap.

It's even worse when it's someone who's JOB IT IS TO TROUBLESHOOT STUFF.

---

I don't think there's a sysadmin alive who hasn't dealt with that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eremius

I don't think there's a sysadmin alive who hasn't dealt with that.

---

Oh, yeah, it's nearly a daily occurrence.