GL.iNet GL-MT6000 (Flint 2) Router on Sale for Prime Day

I have been using a GL.iNet GL-MT6000 (Flint 2) WiFi 6 router on my home network since last December and it's on sale for Prime Day. It's a good deal if you're in need of a new home or small business router for use behind a cable modem or similar connection.

The router supports WiFi 6 on the 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands, VLANs, and more than one WAN connection.

It has built in support for AdGuard but I'm running a Pi-hole VM on my Proxmox box for DNS-based filtering.

I've been very happy with it. Underneath it runs OpenWRT. GL.iNet provides a custom web GUI for it that allows you to handle most functions but you can also access the OpenWRT LuCI web GUI for more granular control. OpenWRT is extensible, which has allowed me to install extensions like fail2ban and also blacklist entire countries based on their IP blocks. E.g., any connection initiated from know hotspots for bad actors like Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, the PRC, Best Korea, and Iran are simply dropped by my firewall.

Give it a look if you want something more capable than the gateway provided to you by your ISP.

New Router

A couple years ago I installed an Asus RT-AC66U 802.11ac router at home. A few weeks ago it started acting flaky, requiring frequent reboots, and finally crapped out entirely yesterday. To get our home network back online I took my Comcast XB2 Arris TM862G gateway out of bridge mode, enabling routing and WiFi.

The performance stunk, largely because it's 2.4GHz only and I'm in a subdivision, so I get a lot of interference on that band. The fastest I could get on speedtest.net was about 20 Mbps down, totally unacceptable for what should be ~100 Mbps service.

So, yesterday afternoon I ordered a Linksys WRT1900ACS router from Amazon, selected one day delivery (I have Prime), and it was dropped off this morning while I was eating my oatmeal.

My initial impressions are generally favorable and setup was straightforward. Performance is plenty acceptable. After installing it I ran a test and got about 96 Mbps down. I just ran a test and got this:

I can certainly live with that.

The Linksys offers some features I'm unlikely to take advantage of, e.g., USB ports to serve files or a printer. However, it does support DynDNS and NoIP, so I may setup OpenVPN on it for remote access and possible as a private VPN for when I travel.

Some Hands-On Cisco Troubleshooting Today

Today I got to put into practice at work some of the stuff I've been reading up on. I was configuring the integrated lights-out management ports on some HP DL360 servers, but could not access them over the network. The network engineer I work with gave me access to the Cisco 4948 switch that the servers are connected to, and I experimented with port speed and duplex settings to no avail.

I pulled up the running config and noticed that the VLAN trunk port from the switch back to the Juniper MX480 router we're using was misconfigured. The original port config looked like this in part:

interface TenGigabitEthernet1/49
 switchport trunk allowed vlan 100-103
 switchport mode trunk

It should have looked like this:

interface TenGigabitEthernet1/49
 switchport trunk allowed vlan 100-104
 switchport mode trunk

Difference in bold.

In other words, van 104, which carries the iLO traffic, wasn't being trunked back to the router, so it wasn't accessible from anywhere else on the network. As soon as I added vlan 104 to the trunk port I was able to ping the iLO ports from outside that vlan.

I have to say, I feel pretty good about myself for catching that.

Cisco Lab

The equipment I ordered to use in my CCNA studies arrived yesterday. As expected, the switches and routers show some wear but overall, they look to be in good shape. The 12U rack is new and went together without too much trouble. It came with a bag of 8x32 rack screws.

I mounted the three Catalyst 2950 switches at the bottom. Incidentally, the auction description said that they would be 24-port switches, but as you can see from the picture, I was shipped 48-port units. I suspect that's what the seller had handy.

Because of how Cisco designed the 1841 router case, I mounted them backwards in the rack so that I have easy access to the ports. I decided to leave 1U between them for routing the power cords. I still have room for a couple more devices such as a server or a 1U power strip.

ASSuming I get the CCNA, if I go on towards my CCNP I'll probably replace at least one of the 2950s with a Layer 3 switch that can route traffic between VLANs. That's a little while down the road, however.

I plan to fire up everything after work tomorrow.

Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks

One of the challenges of a career in IT is keeping up to date and learning new skills. For the past 14 months or so, I've managed the primary lab/data center at my employer's corporate HQ, but have relied upon a couple other guys to handle the network. I'd like to take over the network, which mostly runs on Cisco equipment. So, I decided it's time to get my CCNA certification as a way to get my feet wet.

For texts, I went with Wendell Odom's CCNA Routing and Switching 200-120 Official Certification Library. Additionally, the Free CCNA Workbook site has a variety of lab exercises to do.

Although I'll be able to work on real equipment I felt it would be prudent to learn on gear completely separate from my lab network. My first step was to download and install the GNS3 router emulator on my laptop. I was able to find some usable Cisco images by exercising my Google-fu.

But I also wanted physical hardware to bang on. eBay is full of used Cisco gear. This post on Reddit was helpful in deciding what to buy (and what to avoid). Using that, I ordered a kit off eBay containing three Catalyst 2950 switches and three 1841 routers, plus various cables and T1 WICs, and a desktop rack.

One thing you need when working on initial device configuration and sometimes for troubleshooting is a console cable. Most laptops no longer have a serial port, so I and my coworkers have been relying on USB-to-RS232 adapters, mostly the Keyspan USA-19HS. However, I recently found FTDI chipset based USB-to console cables and got one of them. So far, it's been working fine in OS X Yosemite and El Capitan.

"Technical Glitches." Uh huh.

Unless you were under a rock, you know about the following three things:

1. The Chinese stock market dive.
2. "Technical glitches" grounding all United Airlines flights in the US yesterday.
3. "Technical glitches" causing all trading to be halted for several hours on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday.

On Tuesday, this was tweeted by Anonymous:

Unless the network and system admins at UAL and the NYSE are totally incompetent, they have major redundancy in place to prevent shutdowns like this from happening. There's simply too much money at stake to have single points of failure.

Now, was Anonymous responsible? Perhaps it was someone looking to divert attention from the Chinese stock market meltdown. Whatever really happened I doubt that the powers that be would share the truth, for fear of upsetting the apple cart.

My tinfoil hat feels a bit warm. It would be a good time to revisit your emergency preparations.

Strange VMware vSphere 4.1 Issue

I ran into a weird issue over the past couple of days while trying to deploy a couple of CentOS 5.5 virtual machines onto my vSphere 4.1 server.

I created a VM to serve as my template for future VMs, then exported it as an OVF template to my laptop.  (I do not yet have a vCenter management server, so I'm stuck running the vSphere Client inside an XP VM running in VirtualBox on my MacBook Pro).  Probably due to our network, the export took a couple of hours.

I then deployed two VMs from the OVF file.  Import went much more quickly than the export, thankfully.  When I ran the "system-config-network" tool to configure the IP address, subnet mask, gateway, hostname, and DNS settings, I noticed there was a duplicate of eth0.  The dupe wasn't present in my original VM.  If the dupe was not removed, running /sbin/ifconfig displayed that eth0 had all the correct info, but the machine could not reach the network.

Through trial and error, I discovered a workaround.  Upon running system-config-network, if a duplicate eth0 is present, select it.  Then blank out all values, save and quit.  Next, reboot the VM and once again run system-config-network, and configure eth0.  After doing all this networking worked properly and I was able to SSH into the VM from my laptop.

Once we get a vCenter Server I shouldn't have jump through these hoops.  vCenter includes the ability to clone a VM without doing an export and import, so setting up new VMs should be much simpler and faster.

Dropbox on Android Phones

A few months ago I mentioned that I started using Dropbox for backing up some of my critical files, and syncronizing them between my MacBook Pro and my MSI Wind netbook.  I recently installed the Dropbox application on my Droid and was impressed with it this morning.

Using my Droid, I took a picture of a screen to record a firmware revision.  I figured that I would then email it to myself.  Instead, when I went into the Droid's picture gallery and selected the "Share" menu, not only was I given the opportunity to send it via email, MMS, Facebook, Twitter or Picasa, but to add it to my Dropbox.  I chose Dropbox and by the time I was back at my desk, the photo was in my Mac's Dropbox folder.  Compared with email or MMS, this eliminates the steps of addressing and sending an email.  And it's certainly more convenient than digging out a USB cable to connect the phone to my computer.

A basic 2 GB account is free but if you refer someone you'll get an extra 250 MB of space, up to 8 GB total.  You can also get a free 250 MB by 5 of the 6 tasks listed in the "Getting Started" tab viewable when you login to your Dropbox account on the web.

{Blantant self promotion.}If you're interested in this sort of product and want to try Dropbox, please click on my referral link, here.  I could use a little more space.{/Blatant self promotion.}

Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud-based file backup, storage, and sharing site which uses Amazon's S3 service as the backend.  I've recently started using it as a way to keep certain files and folders automatically synced between my MacBook Pro and Hobbit, my MSI netbook.

You can access a Dropbox account via a web browser or applications which install on Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux.  So far, I'm using the OS X and Ubuntu versions and they work very smoothly.  On a Mac you can access your Dropbox folder just like any other folder in the Finder.  On Ubuntu, I'm using the Nautilus file manager plugin.

If you allow the Dropbox app to run automatically when you login, it will automatically sync the local folder with the one in the cloud.  If you have Dropbox installed on more than one computer it will automatically sync the folder across all of them.

The free, basic Dropbox account gives you 2 GB of storage.  Additional storage is available for a monthly fee.  {shameless plug}Also, if you sign up by clicking the links in this post or in my sidebar to the right, I'll get an additional 250 MB of space (up to 8 GB), and you'll get additional space, too.{/shameless plug}

New Home WiFi

This past week and a half has been a real PITA at Chez Markowitz.  All of us, except my younger daughter, came down with some form of sinus/bronchial crud.  I missed two and a half days of work last week, a half day this week, and still have congestion and a cough.  So, when Judith called me up Monday afternoon to let me know she couldn't get online at home, and that one of my UPSes was beeping, I was not too happy.

Something caused one of our breakers to trip.  After getting the UPS back online I found that the SMC 802.11n WiFi router which I've been using as an access point for the past couple of years was dead.  No lights, no nothin'.  So, after getting a bite to eat I took a trip down to Microcenter.

I looked over the various WiFi routers and access points they had on hand and wound up getting a Cisco-Linksys WRT54GL.  I could've gotten it cheaper at Amazon or NewEgg but didn't want to wait several days for it to arrive, since we all use wireless access daily.

I chose the WRT-54GL for a couple of reasons.  First, it has a very good reputation for reliability.  Second, there are several projects which are dedicated to providing open source firmware which extends the box's functionality.  E.g., dd-wrt, OpenWRT, and Tomato.  As explained below I'm using it only as a switch and a WAP for the time being but this might change in the future.  (Note: If you're interested in putting 3rd-party firmware on a Linksys router, make sure you buy the WRT54GL.)

Why an 802.11g router instead of a new 802.11n router?  Even with the 802.11n SMC, I had to keep it in g/n mode, since we have a few g-only devices.  E.g., Judith's iPod Touch, my Droid, and an Apple iBook.  In g/n mode I wasn't seeing any better performance than with it in n-only mode.  Also, I the Linksys's Fast Ethernet ports are not a handicap for my needs, as they are plenty fast to handle my Internet connection.  Internet speed tests give results about the same as before.  We don't do any major file transfer between systems on the LAN.  I just don't need Gig-E now.

One advantage of the SMC box was that you could put it into bridge mode, which disabled the routing functions.  My router is an SMCD3G DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem/gateway, so I don't need the WiFi box to do routing.  The WRT-54GL does not support this, so instead of connecting it to my SMCD3G via the WAN port, it's connected using a LAN port.  The DHCP server is turned off on the Linksys so there's no conflict with the SMC's.

After using the WRT-54GL for a few days it seems like the WiFi signal coverage is a bit more uniform than the dead SMC gave me.  So much for 802.11n as a range extender.  Aside from wireless protocol, antenna design and transmit power play a big role in the range of one's WiFi device.

My home webserver, showebox.davemarkowitz.net, is plugged into the Linksys box.  The web server has the same publicly-routable IP it's always had, while the Linksys has a private IP on the same subnet as the SMC's private LAN interface.  There's no problem with running more than one network on the same wire.

Finally, along with the WiFi router, I bought a new APC UPS Monday night.  My old Back UPS 650 was due for a replacement.  This time I got a 1000 VA APC box, which will provide backup power to shoebox.davemarkowitz.net and the Linksys.  I have another Back UPS 650 powering the SMCD3G, my Arris eMTA, and our cordless phone base unit.  I can wait awhile before I'll need to replace that one.

Mac OS X to Droid Tethering Over USB

I occasionally find it handy to tether my laptop to my Droid for Internet access.  I've used PDANet for this in the past but due to some kind of an update, USB tethering to my Mac broke and I have not been able to fix it.  Blutetooth tethering works but it's slow.

Today I did some googling and ran across these instructions for tethering using free software.   It requires a more involved setup than PDANet but it works and the speed is pretty decent, about 1.5 Mbps down x 0.45 Mbps up.


I noticed that when I terminated the tethering session, before I could reconnect I had to physically disconnect my phone from my laptop and restart the azilink program on my phone.  That's a bit inconvenient but  I'm willing to put up with a little quirkiness when dealing with free software.

Edit 5/23/10:

I'd call this pretty darn acceptable:

My New Home Server

Back on January 24th I mentioned that I'd ordered the components for a new home server.  I received the parts from Tiger Direct in a timely manner and the box has been up and running for around a week now.  The server consists of the following components:

• Intel D945GCLF2 Atom motherboard, with a 1.6 GHz dual-core Atom 330 CPU
• Apex MI-100 ITX case
• Kingston 2048MB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz RAM
• Western Digital 320 GB hard disk

After putting it together I first installed 64 bit CentOS 5.4.  I found it to be a bit unstable when running X11, so I blew away the disk and installed 32 bit Debian Lenny.  I figured that with only 2 GB of RAM, having a 64 bit OS wasn't going to offer any significant advantages.  I'm pleased with Debian.  So far it's been stable and its package management is top shelf.

To get the OS installed I used an LG USB DVD burner.  You could also make a bootable Linux USB stick for the install on similar hardware.  See Unetbootin for an easy way to do that.

I named the new machine shoebox.davemarkowitz.net, due to its size and shape.  Compared with the MSI Wind barebones system I was also considering it's a little noisier, but not what I'd call, "noisy."

Currently, shoebox is setup as a LAMP box hosting The Shooters' Bar, my list of pro-RKBA attorneys, as well as a "parking" page for Flintlock.org.  I've also used it as an SFTP site for a project at my gun club.  It's handy having an Internet-accessible server at home again.

Shoebox's small ITX format is great for my needs.  I currently have it on a separate IP space from the rest of my home network, but a similar box, maybe with two hard disks in it, would be a good choice for a SOHO file server/NAS box.

One More Network Change

Another home network change I forgot to mention in my last post is related to DNS on my home LAN.  For some time I've been using OpenDNS since their performance is consistently fast.  Last night I finally created an account with OpenDNS and implemented their DNS-based content filtering.

My impetus for this is that my daughters now have computers in their rooms.  They go to only a few sites for now but I don't want them clicking on something and going to Internet nastiness.  So, I set up custom filtering to block porn and phishing sites.

One thing that anyone considering a similar course of action is that it's only a supplement to proper adult supervision.  For one thing, they aren't foolproof.  Secondly, kids are a lot smarter than many adults give them credit for, and as they grow up with technology learn it very well.  I wouldn't be surprised to see my girls pick up networking rather easily and learn how to bypass controls I put in place. (To be honest, part of me would be pleased as punch.)

Home Network Changes

For the past few months I've been using an SMC-D3G DOCSIS 3.0 cable gateway for my Internet service at home.  It's a solid box but unlike my SMC8014 DOCSIS 2.0 cable gateway, I wasn't able to get it provisioned with a static IP.  The bottleneck in my Internet access isn't the gateway so much as my WiFi LAN, so I decided to go back to the 8014 with its static IP.  Which leads me to my second change ...

Today I placed an order with Tiger Direct for an Intel 945GCLF2 barebones kit.  This is a Mini-ITX format system on which I'll be installing Linux to run as a headless web and email server.  The dual core Atom should provide more than enough horsepower for my needs, and the 2 GB of RAM will also be plenty.

To round out the box I also ordered a 320 GB Western Digital SATA drive.  I won't be installing an optical drive.  To install Linux I'll use an LG USB DVD burner I picked up last Fall from NewEgg, and I'll temporarily connect the box to a monitor and keyboard.

When looking at hardware I wanted something small, cheap, quiet and with low power consumption.  The other main contender was an MSI Wind nettop barebones system from NewEgg.  Based on experience with a similar machine I built for my MIL towards the end of 2008 it would have worked just fine.  However, but after adding 2 GB of RAM and a hard disk the combo deal at Tiger Direct was cheaper.

My intended use for the new system will be to host a couple of low traffic web sites, email, and general experimentation.  For the distro I'm leaning towards 64 bit CentOS, which from what I've read runs well on this hardware.

For security, the new machine will get assigned a routable public IP (it'll still be firewalled), while the rest of my home LAN will run on a private, RFC-1918 compliant IP space.

I haven't run a server at home for a few years, this should be fun.

Application Integration

Here's a good example of application integration:

This Sunday I'm planning to attend a shooting match at the New Holland Rifle & Pistol Club.  I entered the event in my Google Calendar, including the address.  After I saved the event I reopened it and I saw that Google Calendar had automatically pulled up a map of the location.

A minute or so later I pulled up the event in the Calendar app on my Droid, which is heavily tied-in with my Google account.  With the event open I am able to pull up the map and tap a link to get driving directions.  Additionally, the Droid has a built-in GPS and will be able to give me turn-by-turn directions.

Slick barely begins how cool this is.

PDANet for Android

I think I mentioned PDANet in a prior post.  If not, it's a program that installs on several different kinds of smart phones enabling their use as cellular modems (AKA "tethering").  With my Blackberry I had to pay VZW $15/month for this privilege but with PDANet on my Droid there's no recurring charge.

Today I was notified of an update to PDANet for Android.  It now supports USB tethering on Macs.  Previously, Mac tethering was supported only via Bluetooth, which is slow.  When I tried Bluetooth tethering my download speeds were in the 350 kbps range.  Via USB it's around 2 Mbps, quite an improvement.

I sent the developer an email requesting clarification on licensing.  Depending on which machine I'm using I may need to tether either my MacBook Pro or Hobbit, my MSI Wind Netbook running Windows 7.  I need to know if I need to buy one or two licenses, since a desktop client is required for USB tethering.  I'll post an update when I have an answer.

In the meantime, if you have a smartphone and the need to use it as a cellular modem, PDANet is worth checking out.

Edit 12/22/09:

I received the following reply from June Software regarding my desktop client licensing question:

Hi,

As long as you have PdaNet on only one phone device, you can install it on as many computers as you like.


Thanks,
June Fabrics PDA Software Support
http://www.junefabrics.com

Wolfram Alpha

Neat idea, haven't played around with it much yet.

This damn head cold is hanging on.  I did make it into the office today but wound up bailing out early at 15:00.  I did manage to get one of the SMC DOCSIS 3.0 commercial gateways provisioned and hooked up this morning to start evaluating.  It's currently connected in lieu of the SMC8014 which I've had at my desk since last year.

The SMC D3 gateway is physically larger than the 8014 and has four Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports in place of the the Fast Ethernet ports of the older, D2 model.  The web GUI is the same custom one that SMC loads for us on the 8014, with the addition of 1000BaseT in the LAN switch config screen.  Some work was being done on our lab infrastructure today so I haven't been able to do serious performance comparisons yet.

I also reinstalled Virtualbox on Rohan, and installed Windows 7 RC into a VM.  With only a gig of RAM allocated to it it's a little pokey.  Changing to the Classic theme helped but it looks like 2 GB will be a realistic minimum to run W7.

After I got home I saw the UPS had dropped off the 2 GB stick of Crucial RAM I ordered through Amazon.com last week.  It's for Rohan, my MacBook Pro.  MBP's of Rohan's vintage accept a maximum of 3 GB of system RAM, I'd been running it with 2 GB.  (Current Apple laptops take up to 4 GB of RAM.)  With the goal of maximizing the machine's useful life I decided to max out the RAM.  I'm hoping it'll improve performance when running a virtual machine.

The next thing I may do to upgrade Rohan is a bigger hard disk.  It has the original 120 GB hard disk, which is on the small side.  With a larger disk I wouldn't mind allocating 20 or 30 GB to a Windows partition, for which I'm now lacking space.  Unfortunately, the pre-unibody MacBook Pros are not designed for easy hard disk replacements.  I'll basically have to take the thing apart, which based on the experience I had when upgrading the disk in my G4 iBook, will be a PITA.

Busy Saturday

This morning I stopped over at a client's house to fix his wireless network.  It was working the last time I was there but at some point in the last week it died.  All it turned out to be was that his Linksys WRT54G2 needed a reboot.  Once we did that his wireless clients came back online.  Since he's a good repeat client and I was there for only about 15 minutes and he's only a couple miles away, I didn't charge him.

BTW, I do NOT recommend the Linksys WRT54G2 wifi router.  He bought it when his old Linksys WRT54G died after several years of use.  The G2 is a different beast and frankly, it's a POS.

After that I drove over to Harbor Freight to pick up a broken screw extractor kit.  Last week I bought a 2 gallon Campbell-Hausfield air compressor at Wal-Mart, and managed to snap off the tank drain valve through being stupid.  I ordered a couple replacements from C-H and they arrived in a few days, but I needed something to get the remnants of the old valve out.  It's a brass fitting that screws into the tank and allows you to drain out accumulated water (which condenses from the air as its compressed into the tank).  With the broken screw extractor kit I was able to get out the old broken valve without too much trouble.

With that fixed, I played with the girls for a little while then took a drive up to Seneca Arms in Green Lane, PA.  It's a nice, old fashioned gun shop where I've picked up a couple guns over the years.  John, the proprietor, is also one of the top High Power match shooters in PA.  He had some interesting pieces* but nothing I really wanted to drop money on now.  If I wasn't worried about the economy I might've snagged a Savage 23D or Winchester 43, both of which were in .22 Hornet.  I noticed he had a good supply of Brownells 30 round AR-15 magazines for about $17 each, plus some 5.56mm ammo from both Winchester and Prvi Partizan.

* One of the most important guns for any person who is preparing for emergencies should have is a good .22 rifle.  They are good for small game hunting, vermin control, marksmanship practice, and can be pressed into service for self defense, though they aren't ideal for that.  John had several used .22 rifles made by Marlin, Mossberg, Remington and Winchester in stock, in semiautomatic, bolt action, and lever action varieties.  All were reasonably priced at from $120 to $180 (a couple of the Winchesters were more).

Tonight I'm going shooting with my dad.  I'm bringing the Springfield XD-9 I bought a few weeks ago along with 200 rounds of Brown Bear 9mm 115 grain FMJ and 50 rounds of CCI Blazer Brass 115 grain FMJ loads.

Review of 5 Powerline Networking Devices

There's a good article over at Computerworld reviewing five Ethernet-over-powerline devices.

I have limited experience with this type of networking.  All of my small business clients use Fast or Gigabit Ethernet over CAT5e wiring.  Most home users I've worked with have been content with WiFi.  But, for some home networks, installing CAT5e is too expensive, while WiFi is subject to too much interference.

Case in point, one of my clients has three computers in his home (two Macs and one PC), all sharing a cable modem.  There's also a Brother printer which plugs into his router, providing print services to the three computers.  One of the Macs is located in the Florida room out back, while his Linksys WRT-54G WiFi router is located downstairs in his den, near the front of the house.

We first tried get the Mac in the Florida room onto the network via WiFi but the signal kept dropping.  It was pretty marginal and as time passed he was seeing more interference as well.  So, I had him get a Linksys PLK200 Powerline AV Ethernet Adapter Kit.   One of the Linksys adapters was connected to his router while the other one was connected to his Mac.  It's been working well and allows whoever is on the Mac to reliably access the Internet at speeds over 10 Mbps.

If you go with Ethernet-over-powerline networking, and you own an older home, I recommend testing to make sure that your outlets are properly grounded, to prevent damage to your equipment. This GFI OUTLET TESTER will tell you if it's correctly grounded or if it needs to be fixed.