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Stardate: 20201202.2228
Location: Living Room
Input Device: AlphaSmart dana.wireless
Audio: blackgrape, "Get Higher" 12"
Visual: Garbage sale turntable on top of newly refinished radio
cabinet.
Emotional State: OK, with 10+ Diet Mt. Dew boost
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Man, it is already December. 2020, what a strange year. I don't
feel like looking back on it right now so I won't.
Last night, I had to fix my household network. What a pain. It
felt like work, but I haven't been working, so I guess it's ok.
Unfortunately, I have been in the habit over the years of just
letting my network continue running without updating firmware or
keeping an eye on things. I just want it running so the family
doesn't start complaining.
Our provider had some kind of outage yesterday that had me
rebooting internal network equipment since we lost connectivity.
Well, after that was done, we still could not get out on the
Internet so I had to do some deeper troubleshooting.
It turned out that the issue was with the provider's gateway
router. It looked like they had updated and reconfigured it,
hosing the traffic to my internal network. I crawled into their
router and changed the config back to allow traffic for my network.
GRRR!!! /me shakes fist.
Since I was wearing my networking hat, I decided to check on my
internal router. I had my console kit out so I decided to go that
route. I use an Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite behind the providers
gateway and saw that the firmware was from 2018. It has been awhile
since it had been upgraded, so I promptly brought it to current.
My internal network is probably a little more complicated than most
and most of my networking equipment is old. I keep the provider's
equipment seperated from my stuff. I used to mess around
a bit with 3rd-party consumer router firmwares, but have not been
keeping them updated or they haven't had any updates available in
years. Most of these devices are just being used as switches these
days.
I think I need to find a better way of managing my network. I used
to keep a spreadsheet with all of the equipment, but it has been
quite awhile since it has seen any updates. I wonder if there are
any simple free tools that I could use or maybe I could script
something out that would aggregate the information. Nothing fancy.
Oh, I should also update my network map...and update firmware...and
maybe sunset some hardware. Looks like I found my next project...
since I got the time.
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