Network Upgrade

Friday 5 December 2008
1845

Since the last entry I made was called “Computer Down”, I guess it’s appropriate that this is the next one. Today we got our internet access upgraded to a commercial high-speed gateway, and it’s awesome!

Backtracking a little, my own computer problems were solved within a couple of days after that last entry. The scariest part of the whole process was when I got an error message after running CHKDSK – it told me that I had a corrupted file entry that had been removed: “Pictures”. My entire pictures directory was toast, and was completely gone. Fortunately I had a backup and didn’t lose any photos. I actually had to restore the entire system from backup, and then spend some time tinkering with it to get the settings back the way I wanted them. But in the end I didn’t lose anything, which is either a miracle or a validation of my paranoid multiple-backup mentality. Probably a bit of both.

I solved most of my network access problems by completely uninstalling the “ThinkVantage Access Solutions” Software that Lenovo included to manage network connections. I don’t know why it caused such problems, but once I got rid of it I had almost no more trouble with internet access beyond the usual struggling to get online when too many people were trying to use too few ports and too little bandwidth.

Our former internet gateway was set up on the cheap by someone here a year or so ago. It was basically just a home router like you’d pick up at Best Buy, with a dedicated telephone line. It worked OK for a few people at a time, but would be quickly overwhelmed when too many people tried to use it at once. Eventually it would degrade and fail completely, and need to be restarted. I had more or less mastered its idiosyncrasies, and had a complete set of IP and DNS addresses to hard-code in so that I could break onto the network even if it was malfunctioning and not giving out IP addresses.

I have established and adapted to a new daily routine. I get up around 0400 or 0430, do PT, and shower. Then I do my best to get over to the USO by 0600, which gives me a good two hours on the internet before I have to get to the office at 0800. This has worked well for three reasons – first, that is the only time the network was reasonably accessible and reliable, second, it is somewhat quieter at that time, and third, that is late evening at home and the only time I can see my kids online except on weekends. So that’s been working fairly well. A side benefit is that I’m losing weight by not going to the DFAC for breakfast (I rarely go for lunch anyway). A couple of single-serving packs of “Special K” and an apple do for breakfast, followed by my standard PowerBar and fresh fruit lunch. I can then eat a fairly big evening meal at the DFAC and still manage to drop a few pounds. :-)

This morning I followed that pattern (with the difference that it’s my rest day so I didn’t have to go to work until a briefing later in the afternoon). When I got to the USO, I was very pleasantly surprised to see that the new high speed internet gateway was finally operational!

This has been a typical third world project, moving along in fits and starts with the officer in charge having to problem-solve and provide impetus to keep it going all along the way. Clausewitz was dead-on in his concept of “friction”, and this was a good example. One of the final stages involved us at DPW. Two days before Thanksgiving, long after the contractor had installed the hardware and was supposed to be bringing it online, they remembered to ask for electricity to be installed so they could plug in the servers and routers. Hmm - seems like they might have been able to foresee that need, don’t you think? Inshallah…

But we got the electrical outlets installed where they were needed, and the S6 (Technology Officer) overcame a few last hurdles (such as a contractor who spent all day struggling to program a CISCO router, finally sort of semi- admitted he didn’t know what he was doing and asked for help, and was then told by his offsite supervisor that he was supposed to be programming a completely different component instead…). But the S6 overcame all such stupidity and finally got all the pieces together (THANK YOU!!), and today was the payoff.

I sat down to get on the network, and it wouldn’t work for me. People around me were online, but no dice for me. I’ve gotten pretty patient with this kind of thing lately, so it didn’t bother me. I just went through the standard routines of checking all the various network settings, restarting the wireless adapter, etc. etc. I had actually restarted the entire computer to no avail when I finally realized my problem. The hard-coded IP and DNS server addresses were preventing me from getting onto the new network. A quick resetting of those IP parameters to “Obtain Address Automatically” and I was in business!

The rest of the morning was wonderful. I downloaded software upgrades, checked email, played WoW, all at blazing-fast speeds. I got onto Yahoo IM with my younger daughter, and as a test of the new network I disconnected my laptop and walked around, giving her a webcam tour of the USO facility. They now have commercial CISCO routers distributed around the building, and we didn’t get disconnected once. Too cool!

So now I just need to find a different place to sit when I go there. Up until now, I’ve had to sit near the router, and had found a corner which was relatively quiet (*very* relatively ”quiet”, considering it was right around the corner from the stage where they have Kaoroke and just across the room from the large screen TV’s that blare football and basketball games 24x7). I am *so* sick of listening to sportscasters yammering as I try to do things on the internet! Even my Bose acoustic noise-cancelling headphones can’t do more than dull the almost –constant cacophony of that place. Now I’m hoping that the signal will reach into some of the further corners and I can get some reasonable peace and quiet. It’s still not the same as having internet connectivity in my own room, but it’s a great improvement. I’ll take it.

(Later) I’m at a table in the back of “Mularkey’s”, an Irish Pub in the USO building, for an evening of fast internet service. It’s not as quiet as I’d hoped – they have TV’s blaring sports at this end of the building, too. But I’ve sort of learned to live with that, and it isn’t as noisy as it is outside where I had to sit before. I just read an article that said today is “Repeal Day”, the 75th anniversary of the end of prohibition. So while I’m at it, I think I’ll have a beer. :-)

Mood: Happy
Music: Tchaikovsky – The Nutcracker