what do you guys think about this router? (No more dlink.. they suck… LINKSYS is good right?)

(supports 802.11n)
Looks good to me. But you know what they say about assholes and opinions.
I had mucho problems with my Linksys WRTs until I went with a D-Link DIR-655 and have never had issues since.
I like my ZyXEL X-550. Had it for only 6 months or so and haven’t had a single low strength or dropped connection, absolutely no issues with it so far.

I’m using it in a 2 bedroom 920 sq ft apartment and have 2 hard-wired computers, 2 wireless computers, 1 wireless Wii, and occasionally 1 wireless phone.
I was going to buy that model, but went with the WRT100 since I have nothing that uses 802.11n. No problems with it so far.
so you had the router for 8 years before it started failing you and you think that sucks? sounds pretty good to me.

. same here

linksys would disconnect me 4-8 times a day, and wouldn’t work again via wireless until I cycled the power.

Returned it, bought a D-link for $50 and had no problems

That problem has been fixed.. although it took them 3 generations to fix.

in any case, I still will strongly recommend D-Link over linksys any day at this point in time
I went from linksys to the D-Link DIR-655. Great choice. 802.11n, GB Ethernet, decent control panel. Never drops, can cover my whole house and has zero interference from microwaves or cordless phones.

Was there ever a good one?

Over 3 billion people believe in something that can’t be proved….
Lately I’ve been using Catalyst::Rose::Controller::CRUD at work. You know it CAN’T DO CRUD on a table with a compound primary key? I began to empathize with the RAILS haters when that happened, as hacking around that limitation was so much harder than no framework at all.
Rails is great in theory, if it was able to do what is says. Active Record pattern is not implemented 100% and breaks a lot of shit when people want to run CRUD with more complex relationships.

Good god if you want to scale, it’s gonna pound you in the ass.

Sounds a lot like communism to me, great in theory too but fails epically!

no there arn’t that many mac users.
NetGear ProSafe firewall/vpn/router in the blue metal box. I think you can get one with a built-in wireless access point, but there’s no reason (cost aside) not to just get a separate ProSafe WAP. They have some nice auto-tuning features that make it easy to drown out all other wireless signals within your space, but not outside your space.
the netgear units WERE good, but i don’t recommend them any more. They don’t have the power to keep up with modern high-speed connections.
I use them in my office on a dual business DSL setup. The DSL is definitely the bottleneck. Their gigabit switches are particularly good.

The DSL would be the bottleneck compared to almost any ethernet device made this decade.

No, not the WRTs. They crap out.

not with dd::wrt

Supposedly. But I wouldn’t know, DD::wrt wouldn’t load on any of my revision WRTs.

what versions?
Fucked if I know, I threw the WRTs in teh garbage a long time ago.

Believe it or not, DD::WRT is not supported on all WRTs. It is not flawless limitless magical software any more than OS X is.
I used to be a huge linksys sackrider.. but they have failed me a few times now.. 4 of them, I believe.

Now I have an airport extreme and wouldn’t buy anything different.

and yet you couldn’t aswer a simple question such as "what was the version #?" so I’m gonna have to go with pebkac as the most likely issue.

most people have lives and don’t memorize the version numbers of their gear

That goes for anything short of a direct fiber connection, sparky. Even a T3 is slower than a gigabit switch.

I’m not defending my office’s cheap internet connection, but your point is still moot.

Look at the underside of the damn box already. It’s printed on a sticker.

after they’ve thrown it out?

Look at the insurance photos then.

(j/k)
I admit it. The fact that I don’t know the version number of a router I haven’t had for years indicates that I’m a fraud, and that even though DD::WRT didn’t work with that hardware because it didn’t work with that hardware, it was actually ALL MY FAULT.

Jolly’s got to win sometimes.

i had a WRT54G but it was like a version 6 or something so it would only allow DD-WRT micro. it was ok, but then I got a WRT54GL which is the linksys router built for custom firmware and I put tomato on it, it has worked great. these are the only two routers i’ve owned and neither has crapped out yet.
p.s., if you’re interested in a WRT54GL there’s a slickdeal going for them right now:
I object to having to mess with a router to get it to work. I just want them to work. So I got one that does.

Agreed
you guys talking about third party firmware? i mean cause the router works out of the box and linksys actually has a pretty decent default firmware, it’s just if you want some of those extra features that don’t usually come standard. the QoS in Tomato is freakin amazing.
WRTs for about a decade DID NOT WORK. They overheated and dropped connectons. Linksys did NOTHING to fix that for 10 years. I’m supposed to give them my business?

Fuck that.

i’m not saying you should… just speaking from my own personal experience, i’ve only owned more recent models of linksys products and they’ve done everything i’ve expected them to

well maybe they don’t trust you
I never did understand what was so bloody difficult about adding a small, low-speed fan to the design of the case. All the pro hardware has them, maybe there’s a reason for it.

or a bigger fucking heatsink?

Whats more… if DD::WRT fixed the problem, why the fuck didn’t they use that fix? This went on for a decade.

Heatsinks don’t do any good if there’s nothing to carry the heat out of the case. Since it’s a plastic case, there’s no way to conduct the heat, so that leaves convection as the only option.

Well, they could mold the case so the heatsink can protrude, then it could radiate heat out of the case, but they’ll never do that, so really, convection is the only way to make it work. Remove case, insert fan, connect wires, reinstall case, profit.

Bigger holes for heatsink to vent. The point being that a 3rd grader could have solved this problem in 10 years, and they couldn’t.

I solved it in ten minutes on mine.

Also, right now I’m using one of the new shiny black Linksys routers at home, and it’s been working nicely despite BT downloads and online gaming and multiple installs of Service Pack 3, so I’m content with it for now. If I had it to do over again, I’d still buy NetGear ProSafe hardware, though. Metal > Plastic.
you guys talking about third party firmware? i mean cause the router works out of the box and linksys actually has a pretty decent default firmware, it’s just if you want some of those extra features that don’t usually come standard. the QoS in Tomato is freakin amazing.
WRTs for about a decade DID NOT WORK. They overheated and dropped connectons. Linksys did NOTHING to fix that for 10 years. I’m supposed to give them my business?

Fuck that.

i’m not saying you should… just speaking from my own personal experience, i’ve only owned more recent models of linksys products and they’ve done everything i’ve expected them to

well maybe they don’t trust you
I never did understand what was so bloody difficult about adding a small, low-speed fan to the design of the case. All the pro hardware has them, maybe there’s a reason for it.

or a bigger fucking heatsink?

Whats more… if DD::WRT fixed the problem, why the fuck didn’t they use that fix? This went on for a decade.

Heatsinks don’t do any good if there’s nothing to carry the heat out of the case. Since it’s a plastic case, there’s no way to conduct the heat, so that leaves convection as the only option.

Well, they could mold the case so the heatsink can protrude, then it could radiate heat out of the case, but they’ll never do that, so really, convection is the only way to make it work. Remove case, insert fan, connect wires, reinstall case, profit.

Bigger holes for heatsink to vent. The point being that a 3rd grader could have solved this problem in 10 years, and they couldn’t.

I solved it in ten minutes on mine.

Also, right now I’m using one of the new shiny black Linksys routers at home, and it’s been working nicely despite BT downloads and online gaming and multiple installs of Service Pack 3, so I’m content with it for now. If I had it to do over again, I’d still buy NetGear ProSafe hardware, though. Metal > Plastic.

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*working on own home personal computer not a work issued one.
thanks
Depends on how you connect, no?

If he isn’t tunneling or VPN’ing in, can they still see him?
Yeah, it really depends. Generally speaking they can, but if you only have one subnet at work, then you don’t need to use their gateway – you can use your own. But by default, it goes through them.

If you are using the built-in Windows VPN app, I believe the default setting is use the remote default gateway like said above…

You can change that setting in the config, but it may be needed for certain tasks… For example, when I work at home I need to use my works gateway to send email.
thank again all, guess i’m gonna have to stop surfing or work on the desktop and surf on the laptop
see ya

Yeah, whenever using VPN just assume that all traffic is visible to your company. It might not be, but this assumption will always keep you safe.
If you’re not VPNing into your office at all they’ll have no idea as long as you’re not doing the surfing from the server you’re remote desktopped to.

Check your default gateway after you connect to work, if its the gateway on your office’s network they can see everything you’re doing, if its your local router on your local network they can’t. Pretty much as simple as that.

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My question is, how do I find the computer name/ip address of the computer?
Is it the IPv6 address in ipconfig?

that’s your address as it’s visible to the outside.
Does that change each time I reboot my computer or router?
Cable internet doesn’t use static IP addresses anymore, right?

it’s not static but mine hasn’t changed in a while (but it could without warning)

if you need to be sure, use this

Some routers come with built in updating of the Dynamic DNS entry. Don’t know how well it works though.

On the other hand, mine changes about once a year.
You’ll also need to tell the router to redirect incoming traffic on the RDP port (I don’t know the number) to the internal IP address of the computer you want to connect to.

The better option, though, is to use a router with a built-in VPN.

Port 3389

nice lookin’ out
forward port 3389 to your internal ip address of your computer
set up dyndns.com
most modern router will have dynamic dns settings for popular services such as dyndns.com…..my 5 yo linksys router does
set up remote desktop on your computer
done

forget that. disable windows firewall and set your computer to DMZ on the the router!!

jk. don’t do that.

While he’s at it, he should disable NAT and turn off the router’s firewall too. Firewalls only degrade connection speed anyway.

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I was thinking maybe I could grab a VMware virtual appliance and test that too, but that opens up a whole new can of worms, in that there’s about 20 of them and I can’t set up 20 damn VPNs just to see which one’s good. Then again, maybe I’m better off getting a hardware box, but that’s what the SonicWALL is, and it’s slow too.

Can anybody recommend a VPN solution they’ve used before, that can connect to LDAP for user logins, can support at least 20 users without bogging down, and can sustain at least 512kB/s throughput per user? I’m getting near the end of my rope with this project.

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2. Why do IPSEC VPNs cost money per user, while SSL VPNs are free? What’s so special about IPSEC that every VPN manufacturer charges extra for user licenses, on top of the cost of the box itself?

You set it up the same way as a PPTP VPN Server (actually you do it at the same time). The wizards are dead simple to follow – you only need to ensure that you forward port 1723 on the router to the server and allow pass through tunneling.

Well, I set up a policy on the firewall that allows ALL ports to communicate, but I didn’t enable NAT. Unless I need NAT enabled, that should be enough, even if it’s not as secure as I’d like.

The problem I have, specifically, is that encryption and domain logins keep failing. The VPN server relays DHCP requests to the domain controller, which is also the DHCP server for that network, but it’s not processing domain logins when I try to connect from a non-domain machine. Even if I use a domain machine, it still craps out when negotiating encryption, even though I’ve set up a certificate authority and all machines involved have certificates from it.

It’s really bugging the shit out of me.

EDIT: I should add that I’m not trying to use the VPN server as a gateway, so I just have one ethernet connection on it, which (theoretically) should be all I need.
Not yet. I was kinda scared of transmitting unencrypted data to my office network. I suppose I should give it a shot, though.

Just what I read online. As far as I could tell, you had to add IPSEC to the PPTP connection before it would be encrypted, either through a preshared key or a PKI certificate. Are you saying this is incorrect?
PPTP uses PPP encryption. This is an old doc, but it still applies:

Damn, and I thought I’d already read everything VPN-related on TechNet. I’ll give this a look.

In any event, is there anything special I have to do to run the VPN through a single ethernet port? Since I don’t need it to be a gateway, that’s how I’m trying to set it up, but the wizard forces me to use custom mode if I don’t have two ethernet ports connected to different subnets. Of course, as soon as I choose custom mode, it throws me to the proverbial wolves and gives me no further guidance whatsoever. In fact, ALL of the documentation I’ve seen abandons me when it comes to setting up the VPN server as anything but a gateway, despite the fact that it’s obviously a valid option.
Hmm don’t remember – my server at home only has one ethernet port, but I installed it years ago. I thought it just warned you about it, but it’s been a long time – I don’t remember.
Think about OpenVPN – we’ve used it across many OS’s across many continents – often with shit net access – and it is totally painless, really reliable – and utterly FREE.
I’m sure it has its merrits, but nothing beats something that’s already built into the OS for ease of use. It has the aded advantage of being able to log into the network with the same credentials at the same time, thus being able to apply policies prior to logging into the computer.
Sure – we use them between servers to create one big seamless network – so there are no sessions/logins to worry about.
We just use hardware IPSEC boxes to connect offices. Expensive little buggers, but they do alright.
There’s something to be said for a hardware solution, but I really like OpenVPN. I’ve used it on Windows, OS X, Linux and Solaris. Whenever the computer boots/user logs in, it just connects and works. The VPN connection is a virtual network device. Wherever I go on teh macbook (or any notebook… even a windows notebook) I am just on the company network. We have a central OpenVPN server at a colo, and everyone connects to that, as do the offices. It works out pretty well. To the point that I actually forget that I have openvpn running for long periods.

To me, it doesn’t get any more convenient than that. But I don’t do much windows networking.
I actually looked at OpenVPN at one point, but I need something that users can configure in five minutes or less, without having a single goddamned clue what they’re doing.

Any chance you can post a list of what the settings are on your VPN server? If I could just get any functional configuration, then I could modify it as needed.

There are GUIs that achieve that. However, its just a single config file and a key or two. You can easily script the setup, then its right click to connect.

Damn dude, that’s awesome. Thanks.

- – -

Okay, in this screenshot:

My "internal" connection isn’t configured, and it’s screwing up everything else that uses the "internal" connection. What is yours connected to? What is that "192.168.1.59" IP address for? I assume the "Local Area Connection" goes to your router, right?
.254 is the static IP address of the server. .59 was created when I created RRAS – it resolves to the same address. The only thing in the properties checked off is the first item.

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Any suggestions? Thanks.
At my last gig, one of the things I did was I built a point of sale for a cashless slot machine system, in a casino (i.e. you buy a ticket from a cashier, then enter a code to play the game). It was a Perl/Catalyst web app backed by MySQL with an on-site server. Printing was done with Java/OpenPOS and an ethernet thermal printer. Cashier stations were mac minis with USB barcode scanners running Ubuntu that booted direct to a Firefox you couldn’t escape.

We rolled our own because nothing was available commercially to do what we were doing. Reports were also Perl/Catalyst web apps and could be accessed via the VPN.

I don’t know what system you should buy, but you should almost certainly buy an existing system. Features I would look for would be easy integration with a central database for real-time reporting, and some seriously good usability. Just survey everything thats out there and pick whatever is the best fit. I would recommend going to similar businesses that are run really well and find out what they use and the determine if they can meet your reporting requirements as well.
The OpenBravo people have a very functional POS app.

There’s also the Adempiere/opentap solutions, but they’re not quite as good, imo.

All open source, though, so you can play around with them.
Been there done that, @ my last job I was stuck wuth using an ancient POS system running on db4 tables. I ended up using access to integrate and sync with my mysql web databases.

Wow, openbravo looks VERY interesting. Open source is great too, every POS system I’ve seen, you had to bend over and pay $250/hr (usually @ 3-4 hours for a 10 minute job) for every minor little modification you needed done
It looks promising, but I wonder if they’ve nailed ease of use since it looks ERP oriented? Anyone run it?

I’d be interested to hear from someone running it in production too. There’s no way it’s any worse than that piece of shit software I had to develop around. I know whenever I had to use it myself I’d end up sitting there writing SQL queries with the customer or vendor on the phone vs trying trying to find my way around the UI .

Check out all my "African" engineering in the queries list pic above

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