Saturday, April 01, 2006
Routers and viruses and idiots, oh my!
We've been having internet troubles all term. Flakey wireless connection, router going up and down like a demented yoyo, cable modem seeming like it needs viagra... the whole works. The stupidity of at least one housemate has been causing this, over and over, despite our attempts to remedy it:
1. We swap routers, the net starts working. Then, someone comes and swaps it back. It stops working. Bright one.
2. We daisy chain the routers, the net starts working. We did this because we found out that someone's computer is a nest of malware, and spends its days trying to bring our network, and the rest of the net, down. Anyway, the net starts working again, somewhat. It's flakey, but better than before. Anyway, of course, someone comes and swaps it around again, making the net stop working.
3. I fix it and put it back to working order. Next day, I find it changed again. Except this time, one of the routers is connected TO ITSELF. There's three people connected to the LAN jacks, and the WAN port is connected directly by patch cable to the fourth LAN jack. No wonder the net was down. *sigh*
4. I finally connect enough logs about what's happening to the router to pinpoint precisely which machine is doing it. (I know it shouldn't have taken this long, but I've only taken one networking class, so sue me.) I send out an email telling everyone this. Then, I turn on MAC filtering for everybody who's on the router, except for that guy. BAM the internet starts working, and pretty much hasn't stopped yet. I also put a note on the router saying to contact me if their net isn't working, not to screw around with it. (This doesn't work, someone does mess with it, but only minorly)
Sounds great, no? Our saga is almost complete. Turns out I accidentally blocked two people from the net, not just the one. The guy who lives next door is a CS major. He comes to me, a few days later, looking morose, asking how to fix it, telling me that he doesn't know how to get viruses off, and is ready to format his computer. After some quick checking, his girlfriend and I find out that his computer wasn't actually the one killing things, so I apologize, and put them back into the filtering scheme.
As for the other guy? Ken has told me he came down that night, and tried to mess with the routers again. Ken found him, asked if his net had been working (which it hadn't), thus confirming who it caused all the problems. He was instructed to contact me (by email, by note, and by Ken) to get things resolved.
He still hasn't. Weird.
1. We swap routers, the net starts working. Then, someone comes and swaps it back. It stops working. Bright one.
2. We daisy chain the routers, the net starts working. We did this because we found out that someone's computer is a nest of malware, and spends its days trying to bring our network, and the rest of the net, down. Anyway, the net starts working again, somewhat. It's flakey, but better than before. Anyway, of course, someone comes and swaps it around again, making the net stop working.
3. I fix it and put it back to working order. Next day, I find it changed again. Except this time, one of the routers is connected TO ITSELF. There's three people connected to the LAN jacks, and the WAN port is connected directly by patch cable to the fourth LAN jack. No wonder the net was down. *sigh*
4. I finally connect enough logs about what's happening to the router to pinpoint precisely which machine is doing it. (I know it shouldn't have taken this long, but I've only taken one networking class, so sue me.) I send out an email telling everyone this. Then, I turn on MAC filtering for everybody who's on the router, except for that guy. BAM the internet starts working, and pretty much hasn't stopped yet. I also put a note on the router saying to contact me if their net isn't working, not to screw around with it. (This doesn't work, someone does mess with it, but only minorly)
Sounds great, no? Our saga is almost complete. Turns out I accidentally blocked two people from the net, not just the one. The guy who lives next door is a CS major. He comes to me, a few days later, looking morose, asking how to fix it, telling me that he doesn't know how to get viruses off, and is ready to format his computer. After some quick checking, his girlfriend and I find out that his computer wasn't actually the one killing things, so I apologize, and put them back into the filtering scheme.
As for the other guy? Ken has told me he came down that night, and tried to mess with the routers again. Ken found him, asked if his net had been working (which it hadn't), thus confirming who it caused all the problems. He was instructed to contact me (by email, by note, and by Ken) to get things resolved.
He still hasn't. Weird.
# posted by Leander @ 1:58 PM 
