Time Immortal

So I mentioned that we were having internet-related troubles at work, but didn’t go into detail. Here, with pictures, is that detail.

Monday morning’s first five minutes were not unlike the first five minutes of any other morning on which I chanced to arrive at the office early. As part of my morning routine, I check a few blogs and news sites, and that was what told me something was wrong — I couldn’t connect to any website, nor could I access e-mail. I wish I could say that this is the first time I’ve had to fix early-morning connectivity problems, but at least the past experience with same has left me equipped with a good battery of quick tests that I can perform to determine whether the problem is internal (or external) to the building.

I checked the network hardware — switches and routers, and the modem — and everything seemed fine. The firewall was also working smoothly. For all intents and purposes, nothing seemed to be in error with anything on “our” side. So, the next step was to call Uniserve, our ISP. They proved to be the source of the problem — due to a record-keeping error, they had discontinued our internet access and removed both of our static IP addresses from their servers.

And getting them back, we were told, would take a week.

This is not the first problem that we’ve had with Uniserve — in fact, about a month ago, we stopped using them for web hosting and moved over to Bluehost. This incident, then, was determined to be the proverbial “straw,” and the boss began calling around to see how quickly Telus ADSL could be brought in to the building. I’m not a huge fan of Telus either, but they are better than Uniserve. As it turned out, Telus could have us back online in two days’ time, which was acceptable enough given our circumstances…but we needed to be online sooner, if possible.

Matt, the IT manager, sent me to Memory Express to buy two routers, two wireless access points, and two antennas, while he went to the company next door and asked if we could borrow the use of their Internet connection for a day or two. They’re good folks, and agreed to the request. We owe them doughnuts and beer now, but that’s a price we’ll gladly pay.

What we did next still has us feeling like rock stars. In the abstract, what we did is basically connect our network to the Internet again through a free port on their router, the same as if we had run a cable directly between the buildings. Only we didn’t run a cable between buildings — we did it wirelessly.

On their side of the connection, we set up one of the routers and connected it to their network (i.e. we plugged a cable going from their network switch into the WAN port on our router). We assigned it an IP address in their subnet scope (196.168.1.x). We kept our router’s subnet scope set at the default for D-Link hardware (192.168.0.1), so what was basically happening is that the router was serving as a network address translator between the .1.x and .0.x scopes. We connected the first wireless access point (which has a default IP address of 192.168.0.50) to one of the router’s switch ports with a long network cable, and then set up the access point in the window of an office of the neighbouring building that faces our offices (pictures 1, 2 above).

We set that access point to operate in WDS mode, and programmed it to connect to the other access point by hard-coding said other access point’s MAC address into its firmware.

Back at our offices, we configured the other access point (pictures 3, 4 above) to operate in WDS mode as well (bound to the MAC address of the access point in the building next door), and set its IP address to be 192.168.0.49 (since we didn’t want them to be in conflict). We then plugged that access point into a router (pictures 5, 6 above) on this side which assigned IP addresses using the 192.168.0.x scope, and which in turn had an IP address in the 10.0.0.x scope (which is what we use here for the network) — another network address translation (NAT). We then pointed our two DNS servers at the router instead of at the firewall, and crossed our fingers…

…and then celebrated rather a lot when we tested Google in Matt’s office and saw the page load. A few more tests of internet and email connectivity later and we announced to everyone that we were back up and running.

Did I make all of that sound easy? I guess in a way it was — the concepts themselves are pretty straightforward, to be fair. But it still took us over a day to get off the ground, as one obstacle after another hampered us. First, testing this setup in a “lab” environment was tricky at best, especially since we weren’t actually able to test one layer of the address translation until we had everything set up and in place. And even once it was all set up, we had issues getting the wireless access points to talk to each other simply because their transmission range is small — these are, after all, “off the shelf” home-use components, not business-class units. Even the extra antennas we bought (pictures 8, 9) didn’t buy us as much range as we’d hoped. Positioning became important.

And then there’s the whole issue of NAT, and the fact that in bringing internet access into this building from next door using this wireless scheme, we are actually translating from the 192.168.1.x scope to the 10.0.0.x scope, by way of the 192.168.0.x scope.

Still, in the end, it all worked more or less as we’d hoped it would, and the only thing we’ve had to contend with in the aftermath of it all is that Telus seems to block port 25 (the default “send” port for email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird). Fortunately, our mail server also accepts connections on port 26, so I’ve been making adjustment to user settings all afternoon.

Interesting article from John Robson, which gives some context and meat to observations I’ve made before in various comment-level discussions here on the site. Namely, he points out that when governments tend to fail in their efforts to promote “environmentally friendly” initiatives, private enterprise usually succeeds.

It will upset others that companies are succeeding where governments often fail. The European Union’s environment commissioner just admitted that biofuels promote rainforest destruction. Legally mandated efficient light bulbs may give some people skin problems. The failure of governments to build nuclear plants has contributed massively to greenhouse-gas production. But over there in the private sector, it’s just progress progress progress. Wretched, isn’t it?

The progress is enormous. That digital dictaphones use less power not only means fewer dead batteries full of weird metals chucked into landfills, it also means fewer new batteries manufactured then schlepped about using fossil fuels. Thes we store s on require far fewer resources to manufacture, and generate far less trash when they’re history, than LPs, spools or the aforementioned three drawers’ worth of microcassettes. (And just wait until I discover external hard drives.) Fourth, a subtle refinement, early digital dictaphones required proprietary software CDs and connection cables that also had to be manufactured, transported and, one day, discarded; newer ones send standard files through standard USB ports or wireless. Fifth, we e-mail, FTP and stream this stuff instead of couriering or mailing physical copies.

If you’ve ever been in a darkroom while “film” was being “developed” (Google it, kids) the stench of sodium thiosulphate tells you instantly that digital photos convey at least equal benefits. (And how, incidentally, do you dispose of old photos you no longer want? Landfill? Burn? Yuck. Whereas now it’s right-click, delete, empty recycle bin, goodbye ex-mother-in-law.)

Some greens advocate going back to a time when the human “footprint” on the environment was smaller. But we actually have to go forward, technologically speaking. The “footprint” of a portable cassette device was far larger than that of a digital player, while a medieval monk would have had to lug some nit with a lute on his back to enjoy Greensleeves while he jogged, to say nothing of plucking geese, skinning sheep and mixing who knows what gunk to write down the sheet music.

If you think about it, this makes a good deal of sense. Progress and technical innovation, especially in the field of consumable products of almost every variety, are inherently driven toward greater efficiency. That’s the nature of the give and take of supply and demand — consumers want devices that perform a wider variety of roles, and different companies will race to meet that demand. The companies that will thrive, and the products that will survive, are the ones that offer the best balance between price and capability — this is why the iPod dominates the digital music market despite the fact that there are dozens of brands of mp3 players out there.

But the principle is applicable in a broader sense as well. Obviously, not everyone buys like this, but the average comsumer looking for a new vehicle will tend to want (especially given fuel prices these days) to buy a vehicle that gets better gas mileage. That means that the pressure is put, because of consumer demand, to develop more efficient automobile engines that burn fuel at a more efficient rate. That also (surprise, surprise!) has the effect of reducing emissions.

It’s no coincidence that the Western nation with one of the best environmental track records in terms of emissions controls in the last decade is also the nation that has been enjoying, for most of said decade, a major economic boom: the United States of America. Almost as a matter of course, greater efficiency of products and diminished levels of environmental impact necessarily follow prosperity.

Of course, this effect can go too far as well, and I have in the past been highly critical of the situation that megachains like have created by reducing price points to so low a level that it is easier and cheper to throw away a defective electronic device and buy a replacement for it than it is to have said device repaired. I think that’s a case of the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction, crossing the like from progress and efficiency into wasteful decadence.

But on the flip side, I can’t deny that private industry seems to be getting things right where most governments are getting things wrong, in terms of driving us all toward the use of products and methods which, as a side benefit of their profitability, are more efficient and environmentally friendly.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: SDA)