Fios YouTube Problem

[Lordhumungus]

Close. There are two possible scenarios on integrating routing equipment out of the box:

1. Is they are BOTH on the same subnet.
A. They either have the same default management IP (collision)
B. They have separate management IP (OK)
C. They have DHCP turned on
1. Possible same scope distribution (possible client collision)
2. They have complimentary scopes allotments (OK)

The first thing to always do is get the vendor documentation together on the OOB defaults and plan accordingly.

If on separate subnets you simply statically assign two IP address to the network card (multi-homed adapter) and connect the non-routing device to the routing device, plug in your computer, adjust the non-routing device to be compatible on the piece that needs to perform the routing and disable it's DHCP server. Layer two doesn't care how many subnets you have so no problem having two routers plugged into a common LAN port.

If you pick up two devices that have the same subnet and therefore managment IP you will configure a static on the computers adapter. Connect to the device to be configured as an AP and simple change it's IP and disable DHCP. Then plug into the LAN on the routing device.

The point behind having the computer statically assigned with addressing is if you don't remember if you applied settings you can still try the old address to get back to the router you need to modify.

The issue with DHCP and turning it off last is that your computer isn't going to pull two difference DHCP assignments. It is imperative that you statically assign and potentially multi-home the adapter. Trust me it is easier in the long run and you are not left scratching your head on which network assignment you leased.

With static addressing you know what networks you are on. In Cisco parlance you are on a multi-armed (as in an octopus) configuration.

All very true. To your first point, I have taken great care to attempt to verify all stock vendor settings, so the info I have given him takes all that into account. I think generally speaking assigning static addresses to all parts of the chain is the way to go, but because of Alex's limited experience with all this, I believe I was able to eliminate the need altogether by disabling DHCP last instead of in the middle. I did this because for you and I, we can easily fix our mistakes by retracing our steps or using an alternate method that we know will work, but for inexperienced users, if we don't provide the exact correct instructions for every step, there will be a complete breakdown and failure at whatever step last worked. Best solution in my opinion is the famed K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) methodology with as few extraneous steps as possible.

For anyone who is reading this and has no idea what we are talking about, this is a lot like trying to tell someone with no mechanical experience how to fix their car, without actually being able to see it

 

[Alex2507]

For anyone who is reading this and has no idea what we are talking about, this is a lot like trying to tell someone with no mechanical experience how to fix their car, without actually being able to see it

In car mechanic terms I would be at the 'what's a wrench?' stage.

My g/f thinks I'm good with computers. Don't anybody tell her otherwise.

EDIT: Oh, BTW ... is there a book out there that would sort of take me from my 'what's a wrench?' stage to a 'how come there's metric wrenches?' stage but with computers. It might not do any good but without hope ...

 

[jinjuku]

I believe I was able to eliminate the need altogether by disabling DHCP last instead of in the middle. I did this because for you and I, we can easily fix our mistakes by retracing our steps or using an alternate method that we know will work, but for inexperienced users, if we don't provide the exact correct instructions for every step, there will be a complete breakdown and failure at whatever step last worked. Best solution in my opinion is the famed K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) methodology with as few extraneous steps as possible.

For anyone who is reading this and has no idea what we are talking about, this is a lot like trying to tell someone with no mechanical experience how to fix their car, without actually being able to see it

I guess for me the only issue with DHCP on through the process is a single adapter attempting to request a lease. I don't want the adapter doing anything implicit. When working with end users if I can get the computer setup for the two networks that I have to merge taking the guess work out of the current lease is a big problem solver for me. Less automated crap firing off and causing me heart ache.

Remember, never change or firmware update a Cisco router on a Friday night

 

[Lordhumungus]

Keep in mind that enterprise class gear has WAY more configuration options to work with than the what we are using. I don't even know if the Westell has an Address Reservation Table (I could look, but laziness is winning at the moment). Not that it would actually be necessary, but I've seen problems with home gear assigning IPs willy-nilly and getting conflicts.

In any case this setup is far from optimal because Verizon is using the MoCa connection instead of the ethernet from his ONT and he has FiOS TV service. I'd much rather have been able to disable the crappy Westell router altogether and just bridge it into the D-link. That said, we do what we can with what we've got and I think this is as close as we can get to an ideal solution under the circumstances.

I haven't done any enterprise router configuration since I was in high school 14 years ago. Bringing up the Cisco routers, I can sort of remember why that is the case. Now all I can think about is network topology and segmentation and the OSI model. I'm not sure if I'll be able to sleep tonight

 

[Alex2507]

LH PM'ed me some re-tooled directions for getting this done. It worked !!! An interesting thing was that I was able to get back in the D-Link after I disabled DNS and DHCP Server to go from invisible to visible to let my laptop see the D-Link to hook up to it and IIRC I went back in after that to make it invisible but now I can 'see' D-Link on my laptop and I can't get back into the D-Link ... oh, wait ... it just let me back in. I'm able to get into both routers now. I'm not sure why it seemed like I couldn't ... probably user error. I figured out how to password protect the D-Link log in.

1. It seems that when I'm invisible my wireless connection to my laptop doesn't work.

2. How come on the Westell log in every character I enter for the password produces like 4 or 5 of those black dots and I can't use 'remember password'?

3. Sholling's test video in 720p before delivered smooth audio before but the video did stutter (sometimes). I tried it just now and the video was smooth. Another video from there in 1080p first played smooth and upon playing it a second time it paused to buffer. It needed to be played twice for test purposes. Rick would understand because he like me is stickler for scientific methodology.

Bad news on the speed test front though. It went from ~20/5 Mbps (I think ) to less than 10/4 on the laptop ... is that because of WPA/2? I guess I could test it out by going back to WEP but laziness has set in. The desktop is still at ~ 20/4 Mbps. It's weird that those videos play as smooth as they do. Maybe I'll do a clean up and a defrag and see what happens but I just wanted to say that this has worked. I could turn the wireless back on in the Westell and try that too but the laziness is still strong with this one.

Anyway, thanks LH for taking the time to see me through all this. The instructions were good and I printed them. I'll email them back to you with a couple of notes if you want before you post them here. That's an amazing set of instructions. Check your User CP to see the flood of rep points. I hope you stick around the forum. You are now officially my new best friend.

 

[TLS Guy]

Can I just say, I'm very glad there is no FIOS here. Following this thread has "made my head hurt." I can't believe they foster such a half baked bockerty system on the public.

I appreciate the courteous people at out local consumer owned coop, Paul Bunyan telephone.

Their gear woks well and if there is the odd occasion that a problem occurs they fix it promptly. Actually there has been zero problems since going onto fiber about a year ago.

The old copper connection would give trouble now and again because of the number of relay stations involved.

After this thread I'm really grateful for my service.

 

[Alex2507]

Following this thread has "made my head hurt."

I provided a belly dancer! You don't get that in every computer thread.
... but even that can't make up for Derailing Doug's bad manners.

Okay, so I did the speed test thing that our good doctor provided the link for early on with the Westell and it was much faster. 2 tests came in at 24.6/4.3 Mbps as opposed to the D-Link's 15.9/3.8 and 10.9/4.4 Mbps. I've tested a few more times with results mimicking these. I even tried setting the D-Link for 802.11n only. That looked like it might have helped but the numbers consistently favor the Westell for wireless and beyond that the graph is always an even block without the jagged ups and downs of the D-Link.

Are there maybe some settings in the D-Link that could be responsible for this?

The best part of this is that I'm able to go in on my own and turn either router's wireless stuff on or off and I've also learned my way around the security encryption thing. I realize that's just kid stuff but just a few days ago it was beyond my understanding so even though Mark needs an aspirin I'm glad to have gone through this.

Mark, Verizon FiOS has provided me with higher internet speeds and a better TV service for a little less money not to mention the land line phone that we didn't have with Cox Cable. I really can't complain. This entire thread is the result of the Verizon installer and me not being as smart as the people who helped in this thread.

 

[Alex2507]

I looked up the D-Link DIR-655 and saw all the firmware revisions available for it (top right corner of that window). I have v.121. The very next update warns that there is no going back and I'm hesitant to plow forward without some reassurance considering the high power (to me) mods performed on this so far. If I were to update this would I just shoot for the last available version? Am I correct in thinking that even if an update altered these recent mods I would be able to reset and redo them?

Another thing that caught my attention in that link was the Securespot End of Life notification. Should I be downloading that Bsecure CloudCare® Internet Filter?

 

[jinjuku]

I looked up the D-Link DIR-655 and saw all the firmware revisions available for it (top right corner of that window). I have v.121. The very next update warns that there is no going back and I'm hesitant to plow forward without some reassurance considering the high power (to me) mods performed on this so far. If I were to update this would I just shoot for the last available version? Am I correct in thinking that even if an update altered these recent mods I would be able to reset and redo them?

Another thing that caught my attention in that link was the Securespot End of Life notification. Should I be downloading that Bsecure CloudCare® Internet Filter?

Always backup your config. Also manufacturers will have several versions for the same product name. There are two for the 655. Make sure you pick the correct firmware.

Page 53 of the user manual for Rev B of the 655 shows you how to backup your configuration.

It would be a good idea to update the firmware.

 

[Lordhumungus]

I agree with backing up before you do the firmware update (although, I rarely practice what I preach, but that's another conversation altogether). I doubt you'll have to recall any of the settings or have any issues, but you might as well have it at ready just in case.

It seems this little exercise has given you the confidence to jump in and play around with settings a bit, which is fantastic.

I had intended to answer the questions you posted yesterday, but accidentally erased my response about 3/4 of the way through and didn't have time to re-write them.

1. When your SSID isn't broadcasting (invisible) your laptop should be looking for it periodically in the background and auto connect when it is in range. This is of course assuming you have told it to do that. You may want to try removing the network, turning broadcasting off (make it invisible) and then re-adding it manually if you haven't done this already.

2. I'm not sure why the Westell has multiple character entries. Is this a new occurrence or has it always been that way? Either way it's probably a security "feature" so people don't know how many characters you are typing, but unless it interferes with something I wouldn't worry about it. As for not remembering your password I'd place that in the hands of your browser. What web browser do you use and do you have it set to no remember passwords and/or disabled cookies or have any extensions/add-ons that are security related and might be stopping it from getting stored? This is just a guess at this point.

3. If you are running a bandwidth test, whether you are wireless or not shouldn't ultimately effect your speed as it should be your external bandwidth that you are checking. There are some caveats to this like if you are getting a terrible signal on your laptop (are you?), but since the wireless should be symmetrical for upload and download, I'm not sure why both speeds went down. My guess is, something is being reported incorrectly and you won't notice any real world difference. Happy to help investigate though if you are seeing issues.

Jin, I'd love to hear any ideas you have on this last point. I can't think of anything else that would kill his speeds like that, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything.

As for FiOS, consider yourselves lucky. I would love to have options besides Comcast for my internet service provider, especially the hotness that is FiOS. I am currently bugging a local start-up ISP called MonkeyBrains to see if they can get a wireless link directly to my house. So far, no luck, but I am going to keep bugging them until we can make something happen. Symmetrical bandwidth, here I come!

 

[Alex2507]

Always backup your config. Also manufacturers will have several versions for the same product name. There are two for the 655. Make sure you pick the correct firmware.

Page 53 of the user manual for Rev B of the 655 shows you how to backup your configuration.

It would be a good idea to update the firmware.

I believe only the manual was revised and not the router but all I see on my router is D-Link DIR-655. I reset the router and went through LH's instructions again because of the slow speed test and because somehow the router had configured itself for a Dynamic IP Address instead of the Static IP Address.

I'll read the FAQ and snoop around D-Link's site but I'll ask here again if it's okay to just download the latest version of the firmware. I don't have to download each version beyond mine, do I? Now that I've got my desktop wired to the D-Link again, I can proceed with a firmware update. They warn you about not doing it through a wireless connection and as a reminder to myself I'll deselect 'Scan All Downloads' in MSE but just not tonight. Cheryl made me clean house today. I find that exhausting and humiliating.

I agree with backing up before you do the firmware update (although, I rarely practice what I preach, but that's another conversation altogether). I doubt you'll have to recall any of the settings or have any issues, but you might as well have it at ready just in case.

It seems this little exercise has given you the confidence to jump in and play around with settings a bit, which is fantastic.

I had intended to answer the questions you posted yesterday, but accidentally erased my response about 3/4 of the way through and didn't have time to re-write them.

I'm beyond grateful. This for either you or JJ is a little exercise but to me it's huge. Even though I am more familiar with the landscape I still don't really get what just happened but I am marginally less dumb that a week ago.

1. When your SSID isn't broadcasting (invisible) your laptop should be looking for it periodically in the background and auto connect when it is in range. This is of course assuming you have told it to do that. You may want to try removing the network, turning broadcasting off (make it invisible) and then re-adding it manually if you haven't done this already.

Not quite sure how to add a network manually but for right now I'm good leaving it visible until I do all the reading I possibly can on the firmware update. I figure it works and my security encryption is improved so this sleeping dog gets to lie.

2. I'm not sure why the Westell has multiple character entries. Is this a new occurrence or has it always been that way? Either way it's probably a security "feature" so people don't know how many characters you are typing, but unless it interferes with something I wouldn't worry about it. As for not remembering your password I'd place that in the hands of your browser. What web browser do you use and do you have it set to no remember passwords and/or disabled cookies or have any extensions/add-ons that are security related and might be stopping it from getting stored? This is just a guess at this point.

The Westell has always been like that. I'm using Firefox on both the machines. The newly reformatted XP desktop remembers the multi character password which of course doesn't work so I delete the automatically entered password and start fresh finger banging with the appropriate entry. The Vista laptop doesn't remember passwords. I try to have the same settings on both machines but they act differently anyway ... yep, it's another area that kicks my @ss with the whole computer thing.

3. If you are running a bandwidth test, whether you are wireless or not shouldn't ultimately effect your speed as it should be your external bandwidth that you are checking. There are some caveats to this like if you are getting a terrible signal on your laptop (are you?), but since the wireless should be symmetrical for upload and download, I'm not sure why both speeds went down. My guess is, something is being reported incorrectly and you won't notice any real world difference. Happy to help investigate though if you are seeing issues.

I think it was the Dynamic IP setting being used instead of the Static IP setting that caused the slow speeds. I don't have symmetric speeds from FiOS. I'm suppose to be getting 15/5 Mbps but after this reset I'm at 23/4 Mbps on Vista wireless and still around 20/4 Mbps on the older XP desktop. I've always had great signal strength from both routers. Just a note to self to look up external bandwidth.

Symmetrical bandwidth

I'm going to look that up too. I emailed you the instructions back with notes just in case you wanted to see them. Take some pic's of your gear and start a thread in Pros and Joes Gallery forum. You'll get good tips on system set up that way. GranteedEV (sp) and Firstreflection are good guys to get info from in your first thread even if they are Canadian. I'd like to hear your take on the EMP's too.

I suck at typing too so this for me has been brutal.

 

[Lordhumungus]

You should be able to just download the latest firmware version and not go incrementally. You need to do it with a wired connection because if you used wireless and your connection dropped while it was transferring/updating, you would be what the French commonly refer to as "Le Screwed".

Glad you are learning new things. Hopefully it's all useful info to be placed in the bat-tool-belt of your brain I unfortunately can't recommend any books because I hate reading, but google and the internet are an endless ocean of knowledge at your disposal.

I'd be surprised if it was the dynamic IP setting that was killing your speeds, but a win is a win (I'd like to take this opportunity to make a shout out to Vin Diesel) and I won't argue with it if it's working.

Symmetrical bandwidth just means that the upload and download speeds are roughly the same. With your connection, your upload bandwidth is roughly 1/5 the speed of your download bandwidth. Normally this isn't a problem, but if you do a lot of file sharing and/or uploading of large files, it can cause slowness. For my personal use, I want it so I can stream all of my media to any internet connection anywhere I am. I can basically do it now, but the limited upload bandwidth + my usage cap makes it less than ideal.

I haven't had a chance to look over your notes yet, but I'll do that sometime within the next week or so and hopefully re-post for anyone who is interested.