OpenWRT Alarm Clock

Geeks, programming 1 Response »
Dec 292008

I wrote a short piece about OpenWRT and it’s apparent issues with WDS a few weeks ago.  Even though I was struggling with packet loss using WDS, I’m still a big fan of OpenWRT as a whole, mainly because I like anything that gives me an alternative to the mainstream.  I can load OpenWRT on an old WRT54G or certain other vendor/models, and have a whole new range of possibilities.

One idea I’ve had, that I’m not 100% sure can be done, is to create an alarm clock based on a WRT54G or equivalent device, running OpenWRT.  I have this idea of a clock with WRT54G internals, a basic LCD screen and integrated speaker.  The clock automatically DHCP’s an IP from a home LAN and the IP can be viewed through the LCD display.  Once it has an IP, it can be configured via web interface, where things are set up such as a network share where sound files are stored, time zone, etc…  Alarms would also be configured via web interface.

The idea is that once set up, the clock would be configurable for a wide range of alarm options.  It seems to me that people who sleep through their alarms or hit snooze buttons are doing so because they get used to the sound of their alarms and don’t really wake up all the way.  This clock would have a random mode where it grabs a sound file from the network share at random and blasts it out.  The owner could add their own sound files to the mix, remove others…  I even thought if it went over well enough, an online service could be had where the clocks would update their own sound files once a week or so to keep things fresh.  Maybe an ambulance siren one day, a rooster the next, a car crash, symbols, elephants trumpeting….  the possibilities are endless.

I look at it this way….  a WRT54G with OpenWRT already has a basic operating system.  It can sync time with an NTP server.  It has built-in wireless that can be used to connect to a home/business wi-fi LAN.  Scripts can be written for it that would connect to a network server for access to sound files.  The only missing pieces are basically an LCD display for a visible clock and an audio output for playing the sound files.

So, if someone thinks they can take my idea and turn it into reality, let me know.  Maybe we can make a bunch of money together! :)

Posted by jason at 9:35 pm

Google Analytics for Wordpress

General 1 Response »
Dec 212008

When I first decided awhile back to start up a few websites and become a blogger, I looked around for suitable software.  It wasn’t long before I determined that WordPress is the only way to go.  Widely used, many plugins and templates, full-featured – what more could I want?  After all, what always stopped me before when I tried to build websites was getting the look-and-feel aspect going, and WordPress has all that ready to go.

So, I’ve been doing this for a few months, and I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the visitors to start coming to my sites.  WordPress has a plugin called StatPress that I installed so that I could see the traffic stats of visits to my sites.  All these nice graphs that seem to show more visits some days than others, search terms, referrers.  I seemed to be making progress.

Then I talked to my brother Aaron who’s been doing this longer than I have.  He pointed to Google Analytics.  Another free solution for tracking website traffic, all you need to do is add some Javascript at the end of each page and use Google Analytics to look at the results.  It turns out that WordPress even has a plugin called Google Analytics for WordPress that will insert the Javascript at the end of each page for you.

So, I installed the new plugin, got set up with Google, and waited for my new results.  Wow.  Depressing.  The Google results are much less impressive than the StatPress results.  For example, for one of my sites, StatPress said I had 13 visitors on Dec 19.  Google says I had 2.  I don’t know for sure yet, but somehow I think StatPress is counting the various search engine robots as visitors, whereas Google is filtering those out and only counting real visitors.

So, I’ve got a ways to go before I get some real traffic to my sites.  I’ll keep plugging away, writing things that I think are interesting, and hopefully things will pick up!

Posted by jason at 12:16 am

Bug fever

Cisco, Internet, redundancy, routing No Responses »
Dec 162008

Well, it’s been a week for Cisco bugs.  A couple ASA5510′s that I manage succumbed to a bug that causes a gradual performance decrease until they are no longer usable or accessible remotely.  Luckily it was a known bug that was fixed in a newer firmware version.  A quick upgrade after-hours and things are up and running smoothly again.

One thing I found out, upgrading 2 ASA’s that are set up for active/standby failover is SLICK.  Cisco has a “zero-downtime” upgrade process whereby you upgrade the standby unit, failover to it, upgrade the primary, fail back, etc…  Everything’s upgraded and noone noticed because the failovers are so seamless.

On a related note, I got confirmation from Cisco regarding me MGRE bug.  They want me to try another workaround for the initial bug, and they found another bug that I was hitting having to do with clearing nat translations that is fixed in a later IOS version.  So I’m supposed to upgrade the IOS to fix the second bug and re-try the workaround for the first bug to see if the problem.  The only problem is, it’s for a customer, and I hate testing a fix on a production router.  Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to re-produce the bug in the test lab – maybe because I can’t simulate the same kind of constant traffic the production system is seeing.

We’ll see, maybe it will all be fixed and everyone will be happy.   I know I will.

Posted by jason at 10:59 pm

OpenWRT and WDS

Geeks, routing No Responses »
Dec 142008

I’m kind of a geek at heart, so years ago when I found out about OpenWRT, I had to use it somewhere, anywhere.  OpenWRT is an open-source third-party operating system built to run on consumer-grade broadband routers like the Linksys WRT54G wireless router.  If you’ve got some tech skills, it’s not too difficult to hack the Linksys to boot from tftp, and then provide the OpenWRT image via tftp server.  If things work out right, you get a Linksys on the outside, and OpenWRT on the inside.

OpenWRT is Linux-based, so there’s a shell interface and a limited web interface.  It’s limited, but that’s to be expected because the hardware itself is limited.  You can, however, do some cool stuff that the original vendor didn’t let you do, like assign the individual switch ports to vlans, run different dhcp servers for each vlan, firewall using iptables…  You’ve got much more direct control over the wireless functions as well.

I have been running 2 of these on my home network.  The first is my main router, and is configured for a few firewall pass-throughs to my internal machines.  It’s also set up for wireless.

When I decided to put another computer on the other side of the room, I at first installed a wireless adapter in that computer.  But then when I wanted to work on a customer’s computer on that same desk, I had no connectivity unless I installed a wireless adapter in their computer as well.  The simpler solution is to be able to hardwire to a network jack, since most computers already have network cards built-in.  For the heck of it, I decided to test out the WDS functionality of OpenWRT.  WDS is wireless distribution. 

Here’s the basic idea.  Configure your main WRT54G w/OpenWRT for WDS and give it a WEP key.  Set up another WRT54G w/OpenWRT for WDS and give it the same WEP key.  The two devices will bridge across the wireless connection and also act as AP’s on each end.  Set the SSID’s the same and you’ll move from one to another with a laptop or PDA fairly smoothly.  You’ve also got 4 LAN ports on that far-end device that are bridged all the way through the network, so you can plug in any hard-wired device on that far end as well.

Neat, huh?  Well… yeah, it IS.  The only problem is that I tend to see a lot of packet loss through the wireless when I have it set up this way.  I’ve strugggled with corrupted binaries on downloads to computers on the far end of the link.  I’ve done my research and haven’t been able to find a solution, but then again, it’s free software on a $50 router – can’t expect it to be iron-clad and gold-plated.

Posted by jason at 4:53 pm

Cisco Bug

Cisco, Internet, redundancy, routing No Responses »
Dec 072008

Well, apparently there’s some issue with the Cisco 2801, 12.4(20)T IOS, and DMVPN with MGRE tunnels.  It starts spewing errors, goes into a CPUHOG, and eventually crashes unpleasantly.  Switch back to normal ipsec tunnels managed with crypto maps, and the problem goes away.

Cisco tried to tell me it was due to ping packets over 1500 bytes going across GRE tunnels over my cellular interfaces.  Well, I don’t have any cellular interfaces, but I do have GRE tunnels across my Tunnels.  So, I tried turning off virtual-reassembly like they said, but the router still crashes.  I’m waiting to hear back from them with another workaround or something.  Hopefully I’ll have time to do some stress-testing of my lab setup to see if I can get it to fail in the same way with heavy traffic loads.

Posted by jason at 11:54 am

Nothing ever goes smoothly

Cisco, General, Internet, redundancy, routing No Responses »
Dec 042008

Just when I thought I had everything all figured out, the world bites me in the butt.  I had all my gre tunnels, route-maps, ipsec and isakmp transport-sets, DMVPN hub and spoke, EEM applet…..  Put it all into production and the hub router starts crashing periodically.  Opened another TAC case, got a suggestion, but that [...]

Posted by jason at 4:39 pm

Cisco EEM - the Holy Grail of NAT failover!

Cisco, Internet, redundancy, routing No Responses »
Dec 022008

It’s almost like I wished for it and it was dropped into my lap.  EEM – Embedded Event Manager from Cisco.  It’s a tool that in it’s most basic form lets you trigger a series of commands based on a track condition. So, create an SLA that pings the default gateway through the primary interface [...]

Posted by jason at 10:20 pm

DMVPN continued....

Cisco, Internet, redundancy, routing No Responses »
Dec 012008

Well, back to work today after a long-needed 4-day weekend.  I managed to avoid working on the whole DMVPN thing the last few days, so I’m diving back in with new energy and an open mind.  Time to lick this whole thing once and for all. Working on it here at home I was a [...]

Posted by jason at 6:49 am
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