welo

There is an often-cited long-term report from Google on hard-disk failure rates. They partly refuted the common assumption that colder harddrives are less likely too fail than hotter ones - average (!) temperatures that are too low (<27 °C) make a drive even more likely too fail than drives that get too hot. Of course we are talking about air-conditioned server rooms here!

The report states the optimum temperature range with 37 °C to 46 °C.

Your drive might have a SMART value for reading the current temperature, and if so it most likely also records the highest recorded value. Use hdtune or a similar program.

Found this good write-up of the topic, source: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Minimizing_Hard_Disk_Drive_Failure_and_Data_Loss#Temperature_control

== Temperature control ==

Overheating is purported to be a common cause of drive failure. Overheating can cause the platters to expand. If the disk's read-and-write head comes in contact with the disk's surface, a catastrophic head crash can result.

Each drive has a specified lower and upper bounded operating temperature. In addition, drives that constantly run relatively hot, i.e. near the upper bound of the operating temperature are thought to have a reduced lifetime.

Inadequate ventilation, especially during the summer months, can cause a drive's temperature to exceed safe levels. In desktops, this can be handled by ensuring that a computer fan is installed near each drive to move hot air outside. Other types of computer cooling can also be used as an alternative or in addition to basic air cooling. Air conditioning can be used if the room or the area in which the computer is present becomes too hot.

Laptops also can be cooled more using a laptop cooler, with an active cooler preferred over a passive cooler. This can be especially important if the drive's temperature is high.

External hard disk drives must preferably be enclosed in a disk enclosure that has a fan, rather than one without a fan. An absence of a fan in the enclosure can be partly compensated for by using an ordinary table fan to improve airflow around the enclosure. Stacking multiple external drives together, especially if they do not have fans, is strongly discouraged as it impedes heat transfer.

== Temperature monitoring ==

Several drives include a temperature sensor and a thermal monitoring feature. The sensor can be queried using software and the drive's current temperature can be steadily monitored. Two free Windows software applications that do this are HD Tune and SpeedFan. Several other programs are available as well. If the temperature exceeds a preset threshold, perhaps 50 °C, the monitoring application can be configured to log the event, warn the user, and shut down the drive or computer. If the drive includes a thermal monitoring feature, it shuts down the drive if its temperature reaches a critical level, perhaps 65 °C.

A common misconception is that a colder hard drive will last longer than a hotter hard drive. A study by Google showed the reverse to be true.[1] Hard drives with average temperatures below 27 °C had a failure rate worse than hard drives with the highest reported average temperature of 50 °C, and a failure rate at least twice as high as the optimum temperature range of 37 °C to 46 °C.[1]

I know the Linksys WAP54G only has one single ethernet interface.

Just wanted to make it clear to the OP, because *I* had confused the WAP with the WRT before, and you had said: "If you're using a wireless router as an accesspoint: use one of the LAN ports to connect it and leave the WAN port unconnected."

The architecture of this board is not designed at all to perform routing functions. Maybe dd-wrt programmed it into their firmware, but it'll have poor performance.

Are you sure? Looking at the hardware specs the major difference seems to be the smaller FLASH memory, but micro processor and memory specs are very similar (and vary between different revisions): http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices#Cisco_Linksys_.28Wireless_a.2Fb.2Fg.29

Getting a stronger signal by pushing more power into the radio will

a. improve transmission but not reception!

b. heat up the chip which is not a smart thing to do in this climate.

The best way to improve range, is to use a bigger antenna. Since an antenna is a passive element, it will not take more power but will improve range; both in transmission and reception of the signal.

I learned something today!

About dd-wrt:

It seems that the dd-wrt is a bit more stable than the custom stock firmware. The WAP54G models with only 2MBit flash memory can only load the 'micro edition' anyway, which is said to bring only view more features.

There seems to be an issue with the MAC address not being set correctly after flushing dd-wrt micro edition. Maybe OP should check that as well.

With the Linksys stock firmware there seems to be a problem with the web interface not being accessible when the device is in 'bridge mode', but this doesn't apply to the OP's setup - still, I wanted to mention it, you never know...

sources:

http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?t=240131

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5025

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linksys_WAP54G

http://toroid.org/ams/linksys-wap54g-firmware

The point is that I thought the channels have the license to broadcast the championship only within Thailand, therefore having to cut the transmission (of championship games only) via satellite. My thinking was that the satellite can be received outside of Thailand as well, hence the problems.

So I was surprised that the terrestrial signal cut the game transmission as well. My theory was obviously wrong

This probably comes from accidentally touching the Touchpad while typing.

When using a mouse, disable the Touchpad, or enable the 'Tap off when typing' feature in the Touchpad settings.

You probably had this feature enabled before, but not after the re-install.

Check the settings of your Touchpad for the option 'Tap off when Typing'. This disables the Touchpad temporarily while hitting the keys on the keyboard, lessening the risk for accidentally 'brushing' over the Touchpad and moving your mouse pointer.

The settings dialog can be accessed from the Control Panel (Mouse Settings) or from the icon in the system tray.

If you can't find that option you probably don't have the latest drivers installed. The standard Windows XP drivers don't offer this feature.

Synaptics Drivers: http://www.synaptics.com/support/drivers

ALPS Drivers: http://download.cnet.com/Alps-Pointing-dev....html?tag=mncol

welo

Well, I put up a terrestrial antenna to avoid the annoying satellite restrictions (no FIFA games), but was pretty surprised to end up with the same problem (at least on MCOT) - no FIFA insert there as well at least for the game I tried to watch - waited until 1am only to find this out LOL

This is in Sa Kaeo province, I've been told the terrestrial antenna is in Sa Kaeo town.

&lt;deleted&gt;?

Here a tutorial to setup a device with dd-wrt v24 as wireless Access Point.

You basically disable the WAN part, set the mode to 'router' but disable all routing features. But please check the tutorial carefully.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Access_Point

@OP

I can see that your original IP setup (plus your modified 2nd setup) is basically identical to what Prasert suggested, both should put all devices within the same IP subnet.

To understand this part you should read about the meaning of the subnet mask - this part basically determines which parts (octets) of the IP address determine the subnet, and which the individual clients. '255' marks the parts that determine the subnet, the rest will be used to number the clients.

192.168.1.x/255.255.255.0

192.168.0.x/255.255.255.0

192.168.x.x/255.255.0.0

This is why even your 2nd modified setup didn't really change anything and still placed all devices within a shared subnet, because you changed the subnet as well. This is perfectly legal and is used to allow a larger number of devices to share the same subnet.

EDIT: I just read Prasert's recent post. Good to point out the possible pitfalls of not using consistent subnet masks!

But as I said earlier, your IP setup is not the problem. I assume that you have a routing problem.

My idea/guess:

Your dd-wrt Linksys is actually in 'router mode'.

I thought that the Linksys WAP54G is a router, but it is actually just a plain access point - at least with stock firmware! I assume that the dd-wrt firmware actually implements routing functionality on this device, and this causes the problems on your network.

That's why I advised you to switch both Linksys into AP mode - however, the one with the stock firmware is a plain access point without any routing features, so no problem here - but the dd-wrt probably messes things up! At least this is my guess at what happens!

That's why Prasert recommended to not connect to the WAN port on the Linksys - however, the Linksys WAP54G DOES NOT HAVE ANY WAN port by default because it is designed as access point, but the dd-wrt firmware turns the (one) LAN port there is into the WAN port, and start routing between this port and the wireless clients

Therefore you have to find a way to disable any routing functionality for the dd-wrt, not sure if the firmware supports a AP-only mode.

Otherwise disable any DHCP option (NO NEED TO FORWARD DHCP - any wireless client will find the Zyxel DHCP server without problems), and disable any routing functionality. How you do this exactly depends on the software, the wording is sometimes not very exact, it might be described as 'bridge' mode (Prasert will probably now point out that routing and bridging is working on different OSI levels, and he is correct, but still, the term is sometimes used in this manner).

Good luck!

welo

Thanks for the interesting writeup!

What device could the OP use to separate his computers from the rest of the network while still sharing the same TCP/IP subnet? Basically only allowing two-way communication between the Zyxel router (the one connecting to the internet) and his devices, but disallowing communication between his devices and other PCs on the 'public' LAN (other PCs in the apartment building. (And of course not implementing NAT).

I guess the router's packet filter should be able to do this (based on IP), but most likely only via direct configuration in the cli, this is surely not a 'standard feature' accessible via web UI - or maybe dd-wrt supports such scenarios...?

Or could this be done on the data link layer (bridge)? I know there are switches with support for virtual LANs (VLAN), but they usually map to a corresponding layer 3 (IP) subnet as well, am I correct?

And a VLAN switch is probably more expensive than a router And is

Or do you think this is a bad idea and better stay with double NAT?

welo

Any update? Any answer to my questions?

Other options are

* Setup a wirless Access Point as repeater (that's basically the generic term for what innerspace has suggested AFAIK) - a repeater is an Access Point that picks up the signal and retransmits it on a different channel. Only thing you need is a power source, no LAN cable connection.

* external antenna or antenna replacement for your current router (but don't expect wonders)

* Moving your current router/access point to a different location - remember that walls will degrade the signal significantly, maybe you can provide a line of sight from your AP into your garden.

If money matters I guess that you should find a solution for much less than 10.000 THB (n-router 1600-3500 THB, Access Point repeater maybe 1500 THB, indoor version though), though surayu's solutions is a cool setup for sure!

Make sure you check out this topic which is basically about the same question.

The problem is that the field is interpreted as number. Therefore the + marks a positive value/number and hence is redundant and is removed.

CSV usually encloses text values in quotes, e.g. "+66893435". When imported this will be interpreted as text and the plus will not be removed.

When adding one or more spaces in between (some of) the digits then this is no longer a 'number' in the technical term - numbers don't contain spaces or characters. The export will no longer detect the field as number and put it in quotes when writing to the csv files.

I think the Excel importer allows overriding the format during import.

EDIT: That does not seem to be part of the Import Wizard. But as GmB and Crossy already pointed out, if you can get the data into Excel with the plus, you can then mark the column as text (overriding the default detection)

You can then re-export the list, and the phone numbers should then be enclosed in quotes.

One more thing: Try opening the csv file in a text editor (Notepad or other) and replace +66 with "+66 (Use Find/Replace) - I think that the quotes don't have to be necessarily closed at the end to be recognized as text, but this depends on the software used.

welo

More ideas

* Just copy the stuff you don't want to delete to your hard drive then do a reformat. A Quick Reformat gets rid of everything and is super fast.

* Try TotalCommander, it has its own copy/delete routines, maybe it can do it.

* Consider a corrupted file system instead of an infection. chkdsk might help, or might make things worse (but reformat will always work)

Yes, what about the OP. Does he have a double-NAT problem now or what?

@NBFM

Do you still have access to the Zyxel router now or not?

Google 'choose which browser to open link', 2nd result = first find, then in the comments section somebody mentions the second find.

Browser Chooser (the first link) seems to be the more popular of the two, not sure why it doesn't work for you.

browserchooser[dot]codeplex[dot]com

works for me on TOT/GoogleDNS

I'm sure there are other solutions out there, but somebody has to find them first

Btw you could also just use drag'n'drop.

welo

Interesting idea!

Took me some time to come up with a suitable google search term but this is what I found

http://browserchooser.codeplex.com/

http://www.freewaregenius.com/2009/11/04/browsermaster-choose-your-browser-on-the-fly-whenever-you-click-on-a-link/

However, I didn't install/try any of this myself.

If it doesn't work in a certain app than probably because this program calls the browser executable directly and does not respect the system browser default setting. You will have to configure that specific program to use the browserchooser/-master executable as browser I guess.

welo

Any update?

Right, this is where Firefox shines!

I personally don't use IE but a Google search brought up this link

http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/ie-extension-open-web-page-different-browser/

There is a minor security risk to run this because the reg file contains binary code that I could not verify.

I personally doubt that it is harmful, but use at your own risk.

Or click the button in the 'user info panel' left of each post (where you find the user's group and join date)

OK, that makes sense now. I was puzzled why you didn't do it in the web interface - it's not that difficult

But no, I haven't tried that before.

But yes, it works. I just tested it. (forward p 80 to my test server)

However, I don't have the HTTP service running on the WAN port like in your example. But I don't run standard TOT firmware. Maybe I modified TOT's default settings during that process.

It's unbelievable that any ISP ships routers in the configuration from your example!!!

Side note: the Speedtouch does still serve the web interface when accessing the router with its external IP from inside the LAN. But I checked from outside to make sure... no rsponse.

welo

Seems to be complicated enough... As i understand it the UPnP is dynamically opening ports in your router from outside. To me this sounds like a good reason to stay away from it... although I must say it sound fun to play with...

Yeah, uPNP is definitely scary if you have untrusted computers on your network, but not in a standard home user setup IMHO.

A scenario such as the OPs is a security nightmare anyway - anybody in the apartment complex basically has full access to the Zyxel router, uPnp doesn't really matter in that case. I assume that uPnp only allows to open port forwards on the PC where the uPnp command originates from, but I'm not 100% sure.

We had a discussion on uPnp here on this forum, see here.

If anyone want help to setup port 80 to reach into a web server on the LAN side through a Speedtouch... please let me know.

You need to use command line to do it. (At least that's the only way I could figure it out)

Yeah, it's not really straight forward, but you can do it in the web UI as well. The key is that you first have to setup a game/application, which is basically just a name assigned to a port range. In the second step you can then assign the 'game/application' to an IP (select 'user defined' from the 'device' dropdown).

Alternatively you can browse the list of connected devices - the router collects a list of connected PCs based on the Windows network name - and then assign the port forward.

I guess this will even work if you have DHCP enabled and the router assigns a different IP to this device.

Alternatively, just click the 'Always use the same address' checkbox.

welo

you are right about that but that means the money on a router is wasted... if it wasn't for the Wifi you would do it with a 400 baht hub instead...

It's more like getting the most value for the already spent money that rules...

Interestingly the price difference between a dedicated AP and a standard router is minimal - I guess the hardware inside aka hardware production costs is more or less the same.

I still wonder if you can get P2P software to work on a cascaded router setup (I mean easily). I am tempted to switch my Zyxel router back to AP mode and test it out

I'm using dynamic DNS to get into my server from outside. When my ip changes, usually someone else get the same ip. It takes about 15-20 minutes before the new DNS records are updated. During this time I end up on other peoples routers when I try to reach http://home.siamect.com. In the majority of cases I have been able to get in from the WAN side with the default password. It is usually Zyxel that are configured this way. True is the company doing it like this on a regular basis.

Wow! Scary! I will pay more attention to this problem when checking on friends' PCs and network setups...

I am actually surprised that there is something that TOT is better at than TRUE - the Speedtouch modems don't have this major flaw.

welo

If your two Linksys APs run in router mode, then you probably have a seriously massed up setup (both, your original and your modified setup)

If they are in AP only mode, then everything is OK. They won't do NAT or run a DHCP server, and your network topology should actually be pretty simple (all sharing one subnet).

In what mode do you run your Linksys routers. I recommend switching them to AP-only mode.

A word on the router mode:

The routers will do NAT, and will route between the external and internal LAN. The external LAN being the Zyxel (if connected on the WAN port), the internal LAN being devices connected on the LAN ports or wireless.

The router will have an IP on the external LAN and another one on the internal LAN. Usually routers don't allow to setup an internal LAN IP in the same subnet as the external LAN, in your case 192.168.1.x. So I'm not sure what your setup is right now.

This setup might even be more confusing when the Zyxel is not connected on the WAN port but on one of the standard LAN ports.

Your second setup doesn't really change anything. All three IPs still share the same subnet because you changed the subnet mask as well t0 255.255.0.0. Change the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 and you will have three different subnets.

However, the problem is most likely the router mode, and no change in the IP setup will actually change that.

ASUS website for example... I tried to get the manual for a router and it was like 10 minutes to get the website up and the download didn't work at all. (still today the downloads are standing still but the webpage loads ok)

LOL which manual could THAT have been!?!

Glad we could help the guy, but you still owe me about half an hour of my life-time

Also it seems somebody's got wise, I tried logging in to the condo router again and now I'm unable to. I wonder how they know? Maybe someone's been trying to get in from the WAN side because yours truly was stupid enough to post the WAN ip further back in this thread!

Maybe an old session of yours or someone else is still there stopping you from logging in again.

I very much doubt somebody noticed a login from the WAN side. That would imply that somebody actually looked at the router logs! Anybody thoroughly enough to check the router logs would not have left the default password on the router

Martin got a good point! Was the password rejected or was there any other error message? The latter points to session clashes (always logout probably).

Should I set the DNS server settings in the RT-N16 LAN DHCP settings to 8.8.8.8? Or should I set it to 192.168.1.1 so the Zyxel is the DNS server?

This is a matter of religion... test and see what is the fastest for you.

Martin

I don't recommend Google DNS as primary DNS as long as you don't have any problems with your ISP's DNS servers. Performance is most likely very similar with slight advantages for your ISP. In addition, some global web services offer load balancing based on your geographic locations, those will deliver better results when using your ISP's DNS servers.

However, some ISP's tend to have unreliable DNS servers, switching to Google DNS is a viable alternative in such cases. Don't use openDNS, performance is inferior in Thailand.

My recommendation doesn't consider ethical (Big Brother) or religious motives

Useful tools:

Down for US users as well? Down for everyone or just me?

What do users in the US see? thumbalizr - thumb your webpages