Rampid Byter

I can’t help but miss my Microsoft Intelimouse Explorer more and more. I bought a replacement Logitech mouse model M-BZ105A and the thing didn’t even last a full year. It’s been a huge disappointment as the mouse wheel caused a blister on my pointing finger, the wheel is difficult to get pressed directly down and often goes either left or right. Tonight the mouse acted as if moving the mouse was stuck unable to move left or right and finally just stopped responding. It’s the only mouse Logitech made that fits my hands even close to what the Intelimouse did. I can’t help but feel a bit cheated after spending sixty dollars on a device that can’t last even a year compared to the ten years of solid use my Intelimouse endured.

Thankfully I found that of all places NewEgg.com actually sells an older style Microsoft Intelimouse Explorer! I’m thrilled I hope to goodness it holds up to the standards of the last one. I just placed the order and am anxiously awaiting the new mouse. I really should have just bought another Magic Mouse and hooked it to Windows, but gaming would be difficult to adjust to the touch surface of the Magic Mouse.

Computer Hardware

Assuming that the internet service provider (ISP) is in fact Zoomtown, and the subscriber trying to setup the bridge is using a Westell router provided by Zoomtown. I want it noted that you should only follow these steps if you have the hardware and knowledge needed to both secure and maintain the network setup.

The ideal setup, in my opinion, is having the Westell router provided by Zoomtown going into another router that will be used as the central router used for the home in this case. The internal router should hopefully have intrusion protection, and at very least a firewall built in. If you’re questioning whether your particular network router has those capabilities you may want to skip the step related to disabling the Westell router’s firewall settings. See the diagram on the right for an overview of the network setup I described above.

To begin it’s best to have either the desktop near to or bring the Westell router to close proximity. A laptop is most likely the best solution in this case as you’ll be able to place the Westell router at it’s permanent location.

Step 1: Connect to the Zoomtown Westell router directly.

To do this you’ll need a cat5e network cable that you’ll plug directly into the Westell router’s network port, and the opposite end into either your desktop or preferably laptop. Please note ahead of time that you should have a working virus scanner running and a firewall package enabled on the computer used to connect to this router directly.

Step 2: Log into the Westell router directly.

IP Address: 192.168.200.1

In order to log into the Westell router open the internet browser of your choice. I prefer Internet Explorer, but FireFox works just as well. Enter the IP address listed above into the address bar of the browser and navigate to the internal Westell router configuration interface. If this does not work then identify the IP address the PC you’re using to connect to the Westell router is currently using. Enter the IP exactly as your PC shows except for the last three digits. Change the last three digits to simply 1. So if you have 192.168.500.233 then enter 192.168.500.1 into the browser’s address bar.

Step 3: Change the Administrative password.

People forget to change the administrative password all the time for internet accessible routers. In my neighborhood alone there are six unsecured wireless networks. Each one of them is easily accessible and has a very decent signal strength. Not say I’ve gone into them, but simply that this is often the most overlooked security vulnerability  problem.

Once logged into the Westell router you’ll be greeted with the friendly Westell logo and menu options displayed below:

Mouse over the “Maintenance” option and click on the “Change Password” menu option. You’ll be prompted to enter both a name and password twice for validation. Enter in something you’ll remember like ‘Admin’ for the name and at least a decently hard password to crack using any standard dictionary attack. All in all it’s better than the no user name and password to enter into this setup right?

Step 4: Turn off the Westell firewall settings. (optional)

Keep in mind this step is optional. In my setup there is a Linksys business class router with built in firewall, IPS, and other assorted mechanisms to secure my network. At that level having two routers providing firewall protection is overkill for my needs and most likely is just an added network delay. I also want to just make sure I am in total control of what the firewall blocks and does not block via my own personal router.

To turn off the firewall simply mouse over the “Configuration” menu option and click on the “Firewall Configuration” menu option. From the firewall configuration settings simply click the “None” radio button option. This will disable the internal firewall for the Westell router. The default is most likely set to “Low”, but this step is optional and up to the end user to decide.

Step 5: Set the virtual connection to bridge mode.

In order to set the virtual connection to bridge simply mouse over the “Configuration” menu option and click on “VC Configuration" menu option. A list of virtual connections will be displayed with the current status, and ability to edit the connections by clicking on the “Edit” button located next to the connection.

Locate and identify the enabled virtual connection, should be the only enabled connection by default. This connection it needs to be set to bridge mode from the default routed bridge mode. To do this again locate the enabled connection, and click the “Edit” button from the same row.

 

A pop-up configuration window will appear with the settings for the virtual connection. The only setting that needs to be changed on this window the drop down box next to “Mode” under Bridge Settings. Locate and click the drop-down menu for “Mode”, and select “Bridge” from the drop-down listing.

Click the “Set VC” button to save the changes and to close the configuration window.

 

Step 6: Turn off Private LAN.

The last step is to disable the private LAN functionality of the Westell router. The private LAN will provide to the internal router an internal IP address making direct forwarding a problem. To receive an external IP address mouse over the “Configuration” menu option, and click the “Private LAN Configuration” menu options.

From the “Private LAN Configuration” settings simply uncheck the “Private LAN DHCP Server Enable” also uncheck the “Private LAN Enable” settings. This will now allow the internal router to receive an external IP address instead of the private LAN IP provided from the Westell router.

Summary

There are many other ways to get the same sort of behavior. The Westell router could be used in combination with a switch as the primary router to divvy out DHCP IPs to connected PCs. The port forwarding and firewall option on the Westell are not bad at all so it should offer itself as a nice router out of the box.

For my purposes I already had a business class VPN router and would prefer to work with the Linksys configuration UI I've acclimated to over the years. So as far as the preference goes it’s in my opinion the best option available. From this point the internal router can be used to forward ports used for remote desktop on 3389, web servers on port 80, or any other general purpose port used externally.

Computer Hardware

Frustrating! That is the one word I'd use to describe the problem i’ve been having lately. First the wireless router is connected to a wired only Linksys business class router, and the wireless router is merely to provide connectivity throughout the house. There is typically at most two computers connecting to the wireless router. This is a new addition to the network, and was a replacement for my Linksys access point that i had blamed for the initial problem.

I have a folder shared on my desktop upstairs that is connected to the wired business class Linksys network router. The Linksys wireless router is set as a router and is on the same IP schema that shares the local network. I can connect just fine to the shared folder, run music, and play movies from the PC without any problems from the desktop from the wireless share. I can do all this while others are playing a LAN game of Star Craft, and all the while I'm listening to Pandora. So the connection is fine, no real latency, and everything seems fine.

The problem is when i start transferring large files (3-300 MB) to and from the shared folder, or even from within a remote desktop connection. The connection to the network then slows shortly after starting the transfer, becomes unresponsive, and eventually I'm disconnected from the wireless network. I’ve checked every router setting, I've upgraded firmware, and even went ahead and updated the intrusion protection files. I had the initial problem with my access point, and even after purchasing an actual wireless router still am experiencing connection loss on trying to transfer large files.

I’ve done some research to see if anyone else has experienced similar problems, and found one to many similar experiences. From what I've found it seems that when starting to transfer a large data file the router/access point is overheating because of poor air circulation and overhead imposed on the processing capacity to move large files. I even found one guy who cut the bottom out from the router, installed an 90mm fan, and a thermal heat sink unit to the router to keep from experiencing data loss. I may consider doing this in the future, and I'm really surprised that this would be the cause since I'd think a lot of people use the wireless router to move files back and forth from once pc to another over a wireless connection. It only comes from transferring one pc to another, and not from actually downloading large files from the internet. I downloaded SDKs, DDKs, IDE’s, and had absolutely no problems downloading files 500mb-1gig.

Computer Hardware

Bought some new ram to replace the crappy discount 20$ two one gig strips I bought from Microcenter. I guess discount RAM is still exposed to the same problem of just random luck of getting a bad batch of chips. I ordered some Corsair RAM tonight along with a new 160gig IDE 133 harddrive to add to my old desktop whose main drive went out. I think I’m going to put Windows Server 2008 on the old desktop and set it as a completely dedicated IIS server. Apparently with Server 08 you can configure it similar to what you would a Linux PC where select components can be installed or not installed based on the particular machines uses. At this point I think a good dedicated IIS box would be worth the investment because clearly the new machine is not working to fantastically for reliability, but I’ll give IIS 7 some credit. It’s not as horrible to configure as was/is IIS 6.0, but that’s a whole other story.

Computer Hardware

BlackNinja, what can I say about BlankNinja? Well, it’s completely black, no cd-rom drives, no disk drives, and the only distinguishing trait is the AMD x2 64 Athlon tag sitting on the front of the case down right under the power button. I thought after I had the initial problems with the backup server it might be benefitial to have a backup-backup. Also after going over to Ryans house to see his home-built DVR linux box the temptation to build my own home brand DVR system was overwhelming. I’ve been meaning to go for a Red Hat linux certification eventually to cover all my bases so I figured what better time than mother’s day specials to build one!

So the new system has the same 2 gigs of 6400 DDR Ram, a 320 WD Caviar SE16 gig hard drive that I picked up for $70, an MSI motherboard that supports the new AMD quad core Phenom processors, that was a return item for 80$ (originally 119$), and the AMD Athlon 4400+ processor. All told probably cost about 320$ after the rebates. I bought some speakers, 92mm fan, and a few other odd and ends pieces for the machine. I finally now have a good reason to use the 24” CRT monitor that’s been gathering dust on my dresser. Orginally it was used on my backup server, but after it moved under the nightstand it didn’t make much sense to use it. Remote desktop has made it obsolete. So no I’ve got BlackNinja my linux (perl/c) programming box that is providing the reentry into the open-source market I’ve been so estranged from. I can’t wait to see what is made of this new  box, and what silly projects I’ll be getting into soon.

Computer Hardware

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it yet, I’d be surprised if I have, but I built a new PC this past weekend. It wasn’t necessarily out of desire alone that I built this new PC, but more a combination of both desire and necessity. I had a bit of a problem with my old desktop system I built some number of years ago. Over the past few months I’ve noticed every once and a while the system looses the ability to communicate with the connected second hard drive. This results in a lot of event log system errors. It really got bad when I came home to find my system not responding to remote desktop connections (I don’t bother with connecting peripherals to it any longer), and was generally unresponsive. Come to find out when I did hook a monitor to it that it was complaining about not being able to find the boot sector.

 

That was it, luckily it was Friday, so I marched down to Microcenter with the intent to at least pick up a new hard drive somewhere in the 500 gig range to cover the 500+ gigs being stored currently on the backup desktop going non-responsive.

 

So I get to Microcenter, by myself, which is a bad idea, and I start wandering around. I find they’re having a mothers day sale in all the components that one could build a sweet machine with. So I’m standing around now contemplating whether to just build a new backup PC. I decide to give my old PC the benefit of the doubt and that it could be a faulty IDE cable since I hear no hard drive clacking, no obvsious signs of failure, but I don’t decide to temp my luck. I find they’re having a sales on WD Cavalier 500 gig drives for 99$ out the door. I decide to pick up the SATA drive for the new PC, and I see they’ve also got RAM on sale for 30$ for 2gig pack of 1 gig strips DD2 6400. So I go ahead and pick that up as well. I pick up some new IDE 133 cables for the old machine and I head on my way. Total price was 220$ out the door with the mail-in rebate being the only pain for the RAM.

 

I get home then tear into the old machine. Move the drive to give room for the new non stretchy cables. I also decide while I’m doing it that I’d might as well swap out the IDE cables for the CD-Rom drives too. So I get the old machine cables all hooked up nice and turn the machine on. It boots just fine. Get to the deskop, check ‘my computer,’ and sure enough my two drives are showing up. Computer management gives the drives a ‘healthy’ state and I’m happy with that.

 

I then turn my attention to the new computer XPS 720. I open it for the first time and behold the glory that is a well designed, easy to work inside, and it was very pretty to say the least. I pop in my two new sticks of RAM, and slide the hard drive into it’s new slot. Turns out the PC can take 6 hard drives or a maximum of 2.45TB of drive space.

 

I turn the XPS machine on. That’s when things started to get bad. The drive shows up as finding new hardware. It sits, and sits, and then sits some more. I check ‘my computer’ to find only the normal C drive and the stupid backup partition. I check device manager and see the new drive. Ok, things should be showing up as a new driver. In the drive instructions, in the XPS manual, and on the net everyone agrees it should show up. So I restart the PC into bios. I check the SATA controller to find the new hard drive is not on the SATA device listing. At this point I get frustrated. I start poking around the configurations, doing diagnostics, and checking again to make sure the cables were ok. Vista sees the drive in device manager but I have no connectivity to it. I finally do a harddrive diagnostic and baam Bios now sees and says that it now controls the drive. Happy days are here again. I boot back up and still find Vista not displaying the drive. Frustration! I even go so far as to setup the Dell support center mal-ware help. It gets into my system and starts asking for permission to connect Dell to my PC. No way jose!

 

Long story short with several long hours later on the phone with Dell I do my own thing with disk management to reformat the drive that took hours in itself. It was a long frustrating ordeal because the drive did not come formatted my bios was out of date version A03 compared to version A06 that was available. Dell didn’t know why SATA controller did not pick up the drive, even though this was listed as a problem in the XPS 600 series in on-line forums. The help was great. Bapi seemed very helpful and was a pleasure to work with. Both of us admitted without Google neither one of us would be very good at our jobs. Go figure. It was still pretty amusing. So while the drive was formatting I played some GTA 4, and chatted with Bapi about where to go from there. All in all a decent exchange, but still very frustrating the hardware caused me that headache. Formatting 500 gigs takes forever to accomplish.

 

Anyway, I’ll have to mention more about the new PC in part 2 of this blog. I will give you this detail. The new PC’s name is BlackNinja and it’s very fitting. Till then stay tuned for more specs and reviews of BlackNinja and his Fedora glory.

Computer Hardware