March 2010 - NANOG - lists.nanog.org

Wireless bridge
by Peter Boone 05 Apr '10

05 Apr '10

Hi NANOG, I'm looking for some equipment recommendations for a wireless bridge between two locations approximately 500-800 meters apart. The current setup for this company has been extremely unstable and slow. I don't have a lot of experience in this area so I was hoping someone could give me a few pointers. Currently, both locations are using Linksys WRT54GL's flashed with DD-WRT firmware (Yes, 802.11g. All extra bells and whistles are disabled in the firmware. They were set up for WDS so other wireless clients could connect to the same access point, with varying degrees of success. Not very important). They are connected to SmartAnt 2300-2500 MHz 14 dBi directional antenna mounted on the roof (extended pretty high for perfect line of sight). I'm not sure when they got these antenna exactly but I'm told it was when WiFi was very new. The network is very small so both locations share the same subnet (192.168.1.0/24). They have gone through numerous Linksys access points over the years. The wireless settings are tweaked as best as possible, and we have found the connection to be most stable when the TX is limited to 6-9 Mbps. We have explored other options as well. An internet connection at each location + VPN is out due to very slow upstream speeds (the buildings are in an industrial area, ADSL is the only option.) The max they offer on regular business accounts is 800 kbps up. T1 lines are even slower and even more expensive. They won't offer us any other solutions such as fibre. We have considered running fibre/coax but there is too much construction activity and other property in the way. I'm looking into RouterBOARD right now, considering a RB433AH and R52H wireless card, but I'm not sure this will actually solve the problem. It's difficult to determine if the issue is with the antennas or access points (for example, after a good thunderstorm, the wireless link will be down for at least 12 hours, but will fix itself eventually. Resetting either access point will keep the link down for at least 30 minutes. Using an airgun on the access points tends to make them more reliable, even if they are clean and dust free. From the admin interface, each access point will report seeing a very good and strong signal from the other, yet they refuse to communicate until they feel like it a few hours later.) Any suggestions welcome. I'm sure you can tell cost is a bit of a factor here but it will be easy for me to justify a higher price if I'm confident it will be effective. While I'm at it, I've been reading along on the list for over a year now; thanks everyone for sharing your real world experiences :) Peter

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Auto MDI/MDI-X + conference rooms + bored == loop
by Chuck Anderson 05 Apr '10

05 Apr '10

Anyone have suggestions on Ethernet LAN loop-prevention? With the advent of Auto MDI/MDI-X ports on switches, it seems way too easy to accidentally or maliciously create loops between network jacks. We have bored or inattentive people plugging in patch cords between adjacent network jacks. STP for loop-prevention isn't working so well for us. STP "edge" or "portfast" or "faststart" modes are required for end-station ports (with normal STP, DHCP often times out after 30+ seconds it takes to go into Forwarding state). Since the "edge" STP mode goes into Forwarding state immediately, there is a period when loops will form, causing havok with upstream gear until STP blocks the port (if it ever does see below). "Desktop" switches. You know, those 4 or 5 port Gigabit Ethernet switches. Apparently, many of them don't do any kind of STP at all. Recommendations on ones that do STP? RSTP: is it any better than traditional STP in regards to "edge" ports and blocking before a loop gets out of hand? Or perhaps blocking for 5-10 seconds before going into Forwarding state, hopefully preventing loops before they happen but also allowing DHCP clients to get an address without timeouts? Recommendations on "Desktop" switches that do RSTP? Thanks for your suggestions/discussion. -- - Chuck (354 Days until IPv4 depletion: http://ipv4depletion.com/)

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New Linksys CPE, IPv6 ?
by Jorge Amodio 02 Apr '10

02 Apr '10

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_033110.html Does anybody know what are the plans for IPv6 support ? Regards Jorge

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FTC / Nexband
by Colin Alston 02 Apr '10

02 Apr '10

Hi Wondering if anyone has some contact with FTC or Nexband or whoever. I can't find Someone without clue has decided it's a good idea to make almost all of 66.211.112.0/20 share the same PTR record. This has bad consequences, and is beginning to irritate me. [coffee ~]$ host 66.211.118.239 239.118.211.66.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer adsl.fultontelephone.net. [coffee ~]$ host 66.211.118.221 221.118.211.66.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer adsl.fultontelephone.net. [coffee ~]$ host adsl.fultontelephone.net | wc -l 4044 In the real world, the result is more like: [coffee ~]$ dig +short adsl.fultontelephone.net A ;; Truncated, retrying in TCP mode. dig: dns_rdata_totext: ran out of space So yeah... if someone wants to correct that, it would be great. And if everyone else in the world can please not EVER do something like this, that would also be good.

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192.0.0.0/24
by Lou Katz 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

We recently were told to contact a client (via ftp) at 192.0.0.201. IANA lists this as Special Use, but refers to "RFC 3330 for additional information. http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3330.txt". This RFC says that it might be assigned in the future. So, did the folks who sent us the IP address fat-finger, or has this been assigned? There does not appear to be any route to it. -- -=[L]=- `is not a sentence' is not a sentence.

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Home CPE choice
by Charles N Wyble 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

Hopefully this e-mail is considered operational content :) The recent thread on the new linkys kit and ipv6 support got me thinking about CPE choice. What good off the shelf solutions are out there? Should one buy the high end d-link/linksys/netgear products? I've had bad experiences with those (netgear in particular). Should one get a "real" cisco router? The 877 or something? Maybe an ASA or the new small business targeted ISR (can't recall the model number off hand right now). There is mikrotik but I'm not so sure about the operating system. Is there a market for a new breed of CPE running OpenWRT or pfsense on hardware with enough CPU/RAM to not fall over? Granted that won't cost $79.00 at best buy. However it seems to me that decent CPE is going to run a couple hundred dollars in order to have sufficient ram/cpu. My current home router is a cisco 1841. I keep my 6mbps DSL line pretty much saturated all the time. Often times my wife will be watching Hulu in the living room, I'll be streaming music and running torrents (granted I have tuned my Azures client fairly well) all at the same time and it's a good experience. Running that kind of traffic load through my linksys would cause it to need a reboot once or more a day. What are folks here running in SOHO environments that doesn't require too frequent oil changes :)

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[Fwd: [members-discuss] [ncc-announce] RIPE NCC Position On The ITU IPv6 Group]
by Adam Waite 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

I didn't see this on NANOG yet, but it's caused a stir on the RIPE list.

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Posting from freebie E-mail Accounts
by Andrew D Kirch 31 Mar '10

31 Mar '10

Is there anyone here who is legitimate using a freebie webmail account? I am proposing that the NANOG administration drop everything originating from commonly used webmail providers, and add further RHS filters as additional providers are identified as problems. Andrew

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Time for a lounge mailing list
by Daniel Senie 31 Mar '10

31 Mar '10

It's been clear for a very long time that the NANOG crowd likes to socialize. At NANOGs, social settings are where connections are made, beers consumed, sometimes scuba dives shared or other local attractions explored. It is certainly a good thing, and fosters much useful discussion among peers who become friends. That said, the nanog(a)nanog.org mailing list often is overrun with non-operational discussion. Certainly there are some good examples today, such as job titles, or arguing about the best way to rid the list of a troll. Creation of a second mailing list to handle non-operational, social traffic for the nanog crowd would be one way to keep the main list on topic. Might even boost productivity, as folks could more easily defer reading and responding to the non-operational stuff until their off-hours. So how about it? lounge(a)nanog.org? offtopic(a)nanog.org?

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IPv4 ANYCAST setup
by InterNetX - Lutz Muehlig 31 Mar '10

31 Mar '10

Hello, has someone experience in anycast ipv4 networks (to support DNS)? Regards Lutz

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