Tag:

Network

The Hunt for the Best Wi-Fi: Netgear Orbi Testing

by Philip Sellers May 17, 2018

written by Philip Sellers

Since moving into our new home, I have been on the hunt for better Wi-Fi. The one downside to our nearly brand-new home was its lack of structured wiring. The entire house has 5 or 6 cable runs, which is not bad, and 3 Ethernet runs that are terminated in the usual locations that a phone would be placed – the office, master bedroom and the kitchen. Seriously, an Ethernet jack by the stove. That left me looking at lots of wireless alternatives.

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start">?</span>After reading lots of research online, I decided to spin the wheel with a Netgear Orbi kit. The reviews for wireless mesh were very mixed, but of all the systems, Orbi seemed to have the best reviews. But the price tag was high, so I decided to go with the Orbi WiFi System (RBK50) AC3000. This kit comes with the base station and one satellite unit. It is rated to cover . up to 5000 square feet and my home is much less than that.

Initial Install

Installation was a breeze. The Orbi system has both an iOS and Android app and the traditional web interface to setup the units.

To setup the Orbi, Netgear recommends restarting your modem then plugging it into the Orbi and powering on the system.
Take the Satellite unit and find a central location for it, plug it in and then wait for the ring on top to turn white. If it turns any other color, go to the Netgear knowledgebase to interpret your color and troubleshoot.
Orbi systems come with a pre-defined Wi-Fi network and password that is included in the wrap and documentation on the unit – connect to that network ID from your phone or computer.

Visit http://orbilogin.com and follow the on-screen instructions to set up your Orbi network. The Orbi router’s ring LED turns off after the setup is successfully complete.

That’s it folks. But its also not all there is. While the Orbi is setup, there are advanced settings that can be tinkered with – including VPN Service to allow you to VPN back into home from your mobile phone or laptop (handy when traveling and you want to stream Netflix or other services!).

Orbi Satellite Placement

Moving the Orbi Satellite around the home was needed to provide the best coverage in my case. My base is in a laundry room, which is in the middle but to one side of the house, where my Internet is brought in from the service provider. I don’t have a choice where this unit is located.

After several locations, I found that having the satellite in the family room provided the best coverage for the open areas of my home and into the master bedroom. The base station, appears to offer good coverage to the bedrooms above it.

After several months, I noticed that some of my smart switches were not cutting on and off with their schedule. Turns out the Wi-Fi signal to them was low. That was a simple fix, just add a Orbi Satellite. But man, the cost was steep. A single satellite was nearly the cost of my original base 2 unit kit.

I placed the new Satellite near our desktop computer upstairs, allowing the satellite to bridge our network and provide the desktop with Gigabit connectivity to the rest of the network. This also allowed for coverage to our my outdoor smart switch for landscape lighting.

With Circle

A recent firmware release brought the features of Circle directly to the Orbi system. I like this as opposed to needing a separate device plugged into the network. But it comes with some disadvantages > check out this post for more details.

May 17, 2018 0 comments

Datacenter Networking

Aruba Networks talks intelligent workspaces during HPE Discover

by Philip Sellers December 22, 2016

written by Philip Sellers

Aruba Networks co-founder Keerti Melkote thinks the future of workspaces is all about augmenting technologies and the Internet of Things to assist workers to get their jobs done. During the Day 2 keynote at HPE Discover, Melkote shared a model of the intelligent workspace while sharing the stage with Özer Dondurmacioglu, general manager of Meridian apps for Aruba, to show off the capabilities.

Melkote unpacked three key areas that are required for an intelligent workspace – 1) pervasive and ubiquitous WiFi, 2) Security and 3) Location.

WiFi is the critical building block and Melkote walked attendees through a brief history of the company and WiFi capabilities. Wireless has gone from a convenience to a requirement in most offices, as workers become more collaborative and transitional in their workspace. Workers are no longer tied to a specific desk or workspace and instead need to be able to work wherever they are. Enabling technologies like Skype for Business and soft phone capabiltiies allow works to be decoupled from their desks and work anywhere. Today, he says, the demands of the wireless network are greater than ever with the introduction of mobile devices – like phones and tablets – in addition to the traditional laptops.

Even in his historical reflection, Melkote acknowledged the most companies realized the need for security as they extended their networks outside of their physical walls when first deploying WiFi. The RF signal bleeds past your physical barriers and could allow unwanted intruders onto your network – so security is a key component of any intelligent office solution. But beyond wireless, the Internet of Things has changed the requirements for network security – with the introduction of additional devices that are network connected. From thermostats to lighting controls, IoT devices are increasingly common, however, each of these devices should have a specific communication pattern that it adheres to. HPE wants to tap into those expected behaviors and be able to apply policies around where these IoT devices can communicate and close the gate for any potential hacker exploiting these devices.

HPE introduced a new Universal Profiler product that allows full discovery and classification of network devices. Once a network device is found, it is fully inspected and identified and a set of policies can be set around it. When a device acts unexpectedly, it can be shutdown automatically. Temperature control systems may only need to interact with building management systems, so if Universal Profiler sees it talking to database servers and other devices, it can signal the problem and stop it.

The third key point of an intelligent workspace are location based services. While GPS works great in exterior situations, its useless in most interior spaces. However, Aruba Networks has previously shown off its location services utilizing Aruba Beacons to be able to do proximity based location services in interior spaces. By deploying Aruba Beacons, users can give the same ‘blue dot’ experience the users get on maps with their smartphone in exterior settings.

In previous demos/case studies from the company, beacon technology was used to push content to users based on proximity to a beacon. They could also be used for creating experiences such as tours and basic directions for users in places like stadiums and museums.

With intelligent workspaces, HPE’s Aruba unit is looking to extend that experience to users in their business. One of the ways location can be leveraged is with intelligent printing. With location based printing, all your print jobs can be placed into a personal queue that is accessible by your smartphone. When you are ready to retrieve a document, you walk to a printer equipped with a beacon and your smartphone can automatically detect the printer. Through a mobile app, you may confirm and print your document. This has many applications for confidential documents or regulated documents.

But location is useful for other things. In collaborative workspaces, people roam and so locating someone in the office can be difficult, but with beacons deployed, employees can share their real-time location with coworkers and allow them to even get turn-by-turn directions to where they are in the office. Maps and ‘blue-dot’ capabilities in the office are also used for locating offices or conference rooms in facilities where you aren’t familiar.

The demo also utilized the Meridian application platform to power the maps and BluDot, which is Aruba’s brand name for the ‘blue-dot’ location technology. Meridian allows for point and click ease for setting up interior, location-based maps in smartphone apps.

Melkote and the Aruba team is not only responsible for its mobile-first vision but also the complimentary HPE networking portfolio in the future. Since HPE acquired Aruba Networks, the company reorganized and took all of its 3COM and traditional HP networking technologies and group them with the Aruba Networks assets. Melkote said that he sees these networking technologies as complimentary to the Aruba Networks portfolio. The HPE networking assets are used for the core wired network and connectivity to extend and enable the wireless vision that Aruba clearly has.

A full video of the keynote is available now online and I’ve embedded it below so you can watch the demos for yourself. The intelligent office starts around 25 minutes into the video.

More information: https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/news-archive/featured-article/2016/11/Intelligent-Spaces-Adapting-to-the-Way-People-Work.html

Disclaimer: Although HPE invited me to attend HPE Discover in London and paid my expenses to attend, any opinions or analysis in the blog post above are completely my own. HPE was given no editorial say or influence over the information in this post.

December 22, 2016 0 comments

Home Lab Home Tech Networking Personal Virtualization

The Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite is a Swiss Army Knife for Home Lab networks

by Philip Sellers July 27, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

Building out the networking side of my home lab has been the most challenging part of my home lab. I’ll be the first to confess – I’m not a networking guy – at least, that’s not a primary focus for me. I rely on my network folks at work – but I understand enough to handle networking in vSphere, but when it comes to routing and things like OSPF and Spanning Tree, I let the professionals handle it.

I’ve written several times about the hardware and plans for my home lab systems. But, to mock up the enterprise environments that I’d like to in my lab, I needed a more powerful router – something capable of carrying multiple VLANs and routing for each. I have always relied on an integrated router with WiFi for my home, but this just wasn’t getting the job done. Last week, I wrote about upgrading my WiFi and this week, the router is in the cross-hairs.

The primary goals I had in my network were:

A dedicated home network for my wife, kids and TV’s to connect to Internet
Separate set of VLANs to mock up production vSphere environments
Separate video network for multicast traffic from an HD HomeRun to my MacPro with EyeTV

The MacPro needs to be on my primary, home network but also must route to the other VLANs to manage vSphere, VMs, and the HDHomeRun.

There are some software solutions that would help me like VyOS, the open source distribution of Vyatta which is owned by Brocade. I looked at VyOS a couple times, but I disliked this method because everything would still come back to my primary home network. I wanted a cleaner solution – so I looked at hardware. There are several flash-able, hardware routers and I looked at several running DD-WRT or Tomato. I was very close to purchasing one of these solutions when a coworker suggest I look at an Ubiquiti’s EdgeRouter Lite.

The Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite is an under-$100 hardware router running a flavor of Vyatta. If offers 3 ports on the Lite model with your choice of more ports if you needed them on higher models. There is also a Power Over Ethernet variant of the Lite model. The device is router only – no WiFi or other converged functions. The router is rated at 1 million packets per second, but not being a network nerd, that only sounds impressive to me – not sure how that stacks up versus the competition. It is certainly better than my Apple AirPort Extreme.

With this hardware router, I can have a dedicated port for my primary home network and one for home lab systems, with multiple VLANs, multiple DHCP zones and keep everything separate. It also means I had a host of other things capable from command line on the small, hardware box.

This wasn’t my first Ubiquiti network purchase. I had recently purchased a Ubiquiti UniFi AC wireless access point, which I wrote about last week. What I have discovered is that Ubiquiti makes good quality hardware, with enterprise-like features at a home cost. So, let me recap how this hardware hit my list of must-haves.

Step 1 – Dedicated Home Network

Out of the box, the EdgeRouter Lite comes with DHCP enabled on port 0 so you plug in the router, plug in a computer and go to the web interface on 192.168.1.1. You login with the generic ubnt/ubnt password combination and off you go. There is a wizard that allows for quick configuration of 2 LAN and 1 WAN ports – I used it to setup the EdgeRouter Lite as I intended to use it. Ports 0 and 2 became LAN ports and port 1 became my WAN port. Plug in my internet to port 1 and then uplink the EdgeRouter from port 0 to my network switch and my primary network was back online. This hit the first point on my list – a dedicated primary home network that is a no tinkering zone.

Step 1a – OpenVPN from EdgeRouter

Not long after getting my EdgeRouter, I began having some issues getting to Hulu. I was able to leverage Vyatta to setup an OpenVPN tunnel for my Apple TV only, thanks to instructions from Larry Land, to get around some sort of routing or blocking issue. Another great feather in the EdgeRouter’s cap. This configuration required some command-line action, but it was simple to configure and get running.

This exercise also taught me a bit about special routing tables and utilizing the Vyatta firewall features to redirect a single IP on my network to a specific set of routes or location. It was a bit of a crash course for me. But I can appreciate the flexibility that Vyatta brings under the covers of this device.

Step 2 – Separate VLANs for Home Lab

Next came setting up the separate VLANs for the home lab. That was a piece of cake. Within the EdgeRouter Lite’s web interface, you can add a VLAN interface onto a port with the click of button. Within 5 minutes, I had all 5 of my VLANs that I wanted for the home lab created on port 2 of the EdgeRouter. The add interface allows you to set an IP for the EdgeRouter on the new VLAN while defining it. After adding the VLAN, you have to create a DHCP scope within Services for each of the VLANs.

Step 3 – Separate Video Multicast from the Primary Network

While the EdgeRouter allows me to create a dedicated VLAN for video to keep multicast off of my primary network, I finally had a different light-bulb moment. I decided instead to direct wired my HD Homerun into the Mac Pro where I run EyeTV. The one problem that I ran into was getting an address for the HD HomeRun. I hard coded an IP on a different subnet on the secondary NIC of Mac Pro and then added DHCP on the Mac for that NIC only to hand out an address to the HD HomeRun.

Other Capabilities

This is a router, after all, so static and dynamic routes along with a host of network routing protocols are included – like OSPF, RIP and BGP.

Under Services section in the web configuration tool, you will find both DHCP and DNS forwarding. The DNS forwarding allows the router to serve as a local DNS server and then forward out those requests to specified servers. This is particularly great for what I want to do, where one VLAN may need to point back to my internal DNS server for the management and VM VLANs while others need to point to Google’s DNS or my ISP.

The built-in web interface allows for a lot of configuration without ever needing to go to the command line, but both methods are possible. The built-in firewall allows for different rules to be built based on groups or individual systems behind the router.

The EdgeRouter Lite also has Quality of Service (QoS) settings so I hope to be able to prioritize traffic from my AT&T MicroCell to have highest priority in the network, though I have not set this up yet. I will need to put in some research and see how to do that.

You may setup Dynamic DNS directly from the GUI of the EdgeRouter, assisting in resolution back to your network from remote locations.

Vyatta also allows you to setup VPN server on the device for remote access. I wrote about using the EdgeRouter Lite as a site-to-site VPN for OpenVPN, but it can also become a VPN server to allow you remote access back to your network. Rackspace has a great guide to setting this up in Vyatta. There are lots of other options within the VPN space – including having the EdgeRouter become its own OpenVPN server.

Verdict

I couldn’t be happier with the outcome and decision to purchase this router. The Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite is small and fits nicely into my structured wiring box. It is fast and capable and has kept up with everything I have needed. It has provided additional capabilities that may have been more difficult with other flash router solutions. It is quiet and it was also fairly inexpensive.

July 27, 2015 0 comments

Home Lab Home Tech

Upgrading to a better class of home Wifi – the Ubiquiti UniFi AC access point

by Philip Sellers July 21, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

unifiapac-hero-01 A few weeks ago, I purchased and installed a Ubiquiti UniFi AC access point in my home and its the best WiFi coverage that I have ever had. The UniFi AC is an 802.11ac access point that supports both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz simultaneously. At the 5Ghz frequency, the device is rated for up to 1300Mbps throughput and 450Mbps throughput over 2.4Ghz. It supports client devices on 802.11a/b/g/n & ac. All of these standards are supported over the same SSID, meaning your device can prefer 5Ghz when close enough and 2.4Ghz when further away.

The AP has two Ethernet ports, with one being PoE to power the device. There is not a separate power connector, but the unit does come with a PoE injector that accepts the uplink and then provides power and uplink to the access point.

The UniFi AC is a dedicated access point only, so you will need a separate router. If you are like most customers, your DSL or cable modem comes with an integrated router. The WiFi on these carrier provided devices is often anemic, at best. So adding a more powerful access point can be a great solution for solid WiFi while leveraging your modem/router from your Internet service provider, that the ISP fully supports.

Installation

Installation and configuration is simple. Plug in the PoE injector into a power outlet, connect the network uplink network into the LAN port of the injector and connect to the PoE port into the access point. This allows you to easily hide or disguise the power injector in a different location and all you need is an Ethernet cable where you want to locate the AP. For larger deployments, Ubiquiti offers PoE switches and routers that remove the need for the power injector or use any PoE enabled switch to power the AP.

Configuration is all handled through a software called UniFi controller. There is no on-board interface for configuration, you install and launch the Java/Tomcat based UniFi controller on a computer and it allows you to configure one or more UniFi AP’s. You may upload a map or pull in a map from Google Maps and place our AP on the map to see coverage expected.

Features

The UniFi AC allows for a separate guest network, including a separate VLAN all together if your network can support this. For businesses, you can setup hotspots with integration into billing portals and voucher-based authentication. In addition, you can limit the bandwidth of guest users.

The UniFi is capable of performing wireless uplink from AP to AP to extend range.

A beta version of the UniFi software is introducing a zero handoff feature where users can move from AP to AP in larger environments seamlessly like it were all one large AP.

Once configured, all of these features are available and continue to operate without the UniFi controller online. This is a huge plus since most standalone or enterprise-grade access points require a software or hardware controller to function. The UniFi line does offer enough brains to operate, even if the configuration requires the controller software.

A full rundown of all the features is available on the Ubiquiti website.

Verdict

You don’t have to spend much time on my blog to realize that I love Apple products. Recently, my Apple AirPort Extreme began exhibiting some flaky issues. After talking with technical support at my ISP, my router was determined to be the problem. Apple tech support was great and replaced my router under warranty, but in the meantime, I decided to invest in an upgrade.

At almost $300, the UniFi AC is not a cheap upgrade. 802.11ac is a very new standard and it is the fastest possible WiFi you can invest in. If you don’t need the speed of the AC model or want something more budget friendly, Ubiquiti also makes an UniFi AP 802.11n at a much more affordable price and I initially tried one of these from a coworker. I was so impressed, I went ahead and purchased my own 802.11ac model.

July 21, 2015 5 comments

Home Tech Networking

Solarwinds converts DNSstuff from subscription to free service

by Philip Sellers July 10, 2013

written by Philip Sellers

SolarWinds announced today that its subscription-based DNSstuff will now be offered as a free service to customers. The DNSstuff site offers customers with many tools to quickly troubleshoot and solve DNS issues on the internet. Some of the tools are fairly straight forward – like webified versions of Whois and Dig, but others provide more insight to the user about potential problems with their configuration.

According to a press release, one of those tools is the DNS Report, which is an “all-in-one troubleshooting tool that performs 55 diagnostic tests to show the health of DNS records and help pinpoint issues reaching the site.” I ran this tool on my site and it reported back 4 warnings, including notes about changes to SPF, only having a single mail server and other things that could be potential problems (screenshot linked to the right).

Although the name might show that the tools are all DNS related, that’s far from reality. Inside of the professional tools, DNSstuff has tools for HTTP examination, basic traceroute and IP lookup, CIDR calculators, SSL examination, speed tests, and email tools to look at SPF, DKIM, open relays and RBL look-up tools.

In basic testing, it seems the service is available for a limited number of uses per visit without registration. Users are able to register for a free account with DNSstuff and once logged in, the user can continue to the tools for free. As part of offering the free toolset, SolarWinds also unobtrusively suggests other tools from their offerings that may help you with monitoring or troubleshooting problems.

In addition to the professional toolset, DNSstuff also offers a Mail Server Test center which will lookup the mail exchangers for a particular domain, report back the records and then run a set of tests against each server listed in MX – tests like trying to connect on port 25, DNS records, Open Relay, SPF and the number of RBL’s the server may be listed on. There are additional tools for testing antivirus filtering and email path.

DNSstuff has been around for a while and was previously a subscription service. The new, free-service site was redesigned to a degree and includes links to Thwack, the SolarWinds community site, and links to other free trials and free tools offered by SolarWinds.

July 10, 2013 0 comments

Datacenter Networking

SolarWinds launches new VOIP quality monitoring suite

by Philip Sellers August 3, 2012

written by Philip Sellers

On Wednesday, SolarWinds announced the VOIP and Network Quality Manager, formerly known as SolarWinds IP SLA Manage, aimed directly at quality control of Cisco IP telephony systems today with support for additional vendors in the future. But beyond the core phone system software, the monitoring suite watches the entire VOIP environment holistically, including the transport, servers and software.

SolarWinds is certainly a stalwart in the network monitoring space. The Orion products are used throughout many telecommunications business, including my employer, to keep a handle on network performance and highlight transport and connectivity problems quickly.

As telephony and network solutions converge, complexities increase and troubleshooting becomes exponentially more difficult for the system admins. Visibility is the key to reducing the complexities and shedding light onto the cause of any system issue. SolarWinds is seeking to do that with the VOIP and Network Quality Manager. The suite monitors call quality statistics, network bandwidth and latency across the infrastructure, and service performance for the VOIP environment. It provides both real-time and historical views of the statistics it has collected and exposes them to aid in troubleshooting and isolating problems efficiently.

VNQM Search Screen, source: SolarWinds VNQM VoIP Call Details, source: SolarWinds

As a relative newbie to VOIP deployments, I know the critical things that I want to watch in our VOIP deployment, which would include latency, jitter, failed calls and packet loss. Unlike historical network monitoring, the servers and applications are also a critical piece of the puzzle for VOIP deployments, so keeping an eye on the performance of the server and the application is critical. Fortunately, the VOIP and Network Quality Manager does all these things and much more. The software does a good job of summarizing health through the call monitoring screen which includes software performance, the number of phones registered and unregistered, and some basic system health statistics.

One of the shining features I found in this release is the call search features, helping to identify and investigate the behavior during a particular call when a user reports problems. This visibility is huge towards finding and squashing any problems that may be cropping up in the environment. Issues like buffer exhaustion or flaky connections between sites can wreak havoc on a VOIP deployment and traditional troubleshooting can be time consuming due to the number of components and potential causes of any given problem. But most powerful of all is the ability to search for a particular call and inspect what happened or was happening during the context of that call. When users report an issue, seeing the environment’s behavior during that time period is key to preventing future problems.

One of the biggest advantages of a monitoring solution like VOIP and Network Quality Manager is the ability to get summary data while not losing the depth of a specific statistic. The software offers the ability to dive into a particular statistic and graph point-in-time information for critical statistics like jitter and latency. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so a full set of screenshots are below in a gallery so you can explore the screens and functionality.

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated with medium confidence

August 3, 2012 0 comments

Datacenter Networking Storage

Converging network with HP FlexFabric and FlexManagement

by Philip Sellers August 22, 2011

written by Philip Sellers

This week, we shine the spotlight on network convergence and management in the FlexNetwork portfolio, specifically the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric modules and the Intelligent Management Control (IMC) software. Networking is generally not my forte, so some of this is a stretch for me, but I use and understand Virtual Connect. FlexFabric is an implementation of Virtual Connect while IMC has been branded as FlexManagement in the portfolio and is used to encompass management for all of the FlexNetwork portfolio.

Some Basics on Virtual Connect

FlexFabric is a particular type of Virtual Connect module and fits into the FlexNetwork portfolio. Virtual Connect attempts to address many problems, but primarily it is about reducing the amount of physical wiring and switch ports required to cable a blade system, about reducing human-caused errors due to complex cabling, and about adding the ability to pre-wire the entire enclosure for life and pre-allocate all Ethernet and SAN requirements during first install.

August 22, 2011 4 comments

Datacenter Networking Storage Virtualization

Monitoring challenges moving critical systems in virtual infrastructure

by Philip Sellers June 3, 2010

written by Philip Sellers

Like many shops, we have finally attained buy-in from all our stakeholders for virtualization. As a result, we’ve pushed more and more into our infrastructure. And while VMware is the most datacenter ready solution for virtualization, it is not without its shortcomings — monitoring and visibility into the infrastructure being one of the biggest.

While we were first deploying VI3 and performing our consolidation, the primary focus was on the non-critical systems and moving them into the virtual infrastructure to get the best utilization of hardware. Since completion of this phase, the next focus became moving some of our mission critical systems to VMware in order to establish disaster recovery for our non-clustered systems. Disaster recovery through VMware is accomplished by 1) relocating the boot and data onto SAN storage which is replicated to our secondary data center and 2) by the ability to utilized VMware HA in the event of hardware failure to establish resiliency we do not have on a single-server, hardware deployment.

As we have expanded VMware’s role in our data center, new challenges have emerged. First, when a network issue is occurring, we don’t have our traditional monitoring tools (like PRTG) in a position where they are able to alert for large changes in traffic. In our physical environment, HP agents are run and PRTG is able to query against these systems with SNMP to retrieve information about traffic. In the virtual environment, we don’t run these agents (because they are largely non-applicable since these are virtual boxes). Our preferred way to monitor is through something that can look directly into the virtualization layer and retrieve information.

June 3, 2010 1 comment