In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router
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We've all heard the stories about the dependable infrastructure hardware that gets "lost" -- since nobody ever has to touch it, it ends up behind a pile of papers and then a filing cabinet and then a newly built wall.
I never thought it would happen to me. But here I am, looking in every room in the building (there are about 150 of them) looking for a wifi router that isn't accepting connections.
Presumably, I should be looking for it near a network patch bay (the wall jack thingies) or looking for long inexplicable network cables.
Any tips?
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@Captain Can you find the switch end of the cable? Break out your toner. Some models of Fluke will give you an estimate of the run's length, that might be helpful too.
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Does it have a unique SSID? If so, walk around with a laptop and InSSIDer to see where the signal is the strongest. That should help narrow it down somewhat.
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@mott555 said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
If so, walk around with a laptop and InSSIDer
There's an Android app you can use, too. A phone's a bit easier to carry around, and if people ask what you're doing, you can say "Pokémon Go".
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@Captain I caught a bulbasaur this morning outside my office. But then the game wouldn't take any of the names I offered for myself so I got back to work.
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@FrostCat said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
But then the game wouldn't take any of the names I offered for myself
Wait, you can choose your own name?!
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@Captain did you try cycling power to the whole building?
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@anotherusername urrraghhhh I guess I could do that tomorrow afternoon if I really really really had to.
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@Captain I was really only kidding...
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@anotherusername I thought so, but the idea hadn't occurred to me and it is an option... :-/
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@Tsaukpaetra said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
Wait, you can choose your own name?!
Right after you catch your starter. Guess you shouldn't've gone for Pikachu instead.
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@FrostCat said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
@Tsaukpaetra said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
Wait, you can choose your own name?!
Right after you catch your starter. Guess you shouldn't've gone for Pikachu instead.
Oh right NVM I has the dumb.
I also apparently don't have a team despite being level four. ..
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Is that Ash? He's all growed up.
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@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
Is that Ash? He's all growed up.
Dunno, I think it's supposed to represent "me" in game. I'd rather have the smallish sprite, it takes up a non-insignificant portion of the screen when walking around...
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Fuck this fucking task. It's in the ceiling somewhere. I've narrowed it down to one of 15 or so rooms. And it's a tiny Ubiquiti bullet. FUCK
I guess I'll have to check out the pictures I took again.
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@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
I guess I'll have to check out the pictures I took again.
Got a small, wheeled RV you can put a camera and a flashlight on? I'm a little more than half serious.
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@Captain I'm subscribed to this thread now. please keep us posted!
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@bb36e Yeah, so I'm covered in asbestos from the shitty ceiling tiles I moved around trying to find the thing.
I slammed my hands on my desk and yelled "FUCK THIS" loud enough that the kids outside started crying and then I found out Ubuquity has a "device discovery tool" and I downloaded it and found the IPs and then I googled the default admin password and rebooted the fucking things.
All quiet on the western front now.
@FrostCat said: Got a small, wheeled RV you can put a camera and a flashlight on? I'm a little more than half serious.
Yeah, that's a pretty good idea. I don't think it would work with our ceiling though, just because it's ... terraced? It's on different "levels" anyway.
Filed under: the only word I can think of now is fuck.
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@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
I googled the default admin password and rebooted the fucking things.
?!?!?! Your APs are using the default Admin password!?!?!?1!!11!
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@Tsaukpaetra I'm glad they were. Otherwise I would have been ultra fucked.
I will change them though. And store them in our encrypted key store.
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@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
@Tsaukpaetra I'm glad they were. Otherwise I would have been ultra fucked.
I guess in the ideal world they would have been hooked into SMTP and integrated into some central management software which would have auto-logged you in with the nominal changed password and obviated the need to go around looking for it.
Of course, wouldn't have helped if the issue was that the AP was completely disconnected, but at least the CMS would have notes to tell you where it was...
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@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
"FUCK THIS" loud enough that the kids outside started crying
Nice job, soon-to-be-ex-employee.
@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
I don't think it would work with our ceiling though, just because it's ... terraced? It's on different "levels" anyway.
I was assuming drop ceiling and guessing you could maybe crawl it around one suspect room at a time, hopefully enough to at least get a likelihood of whether or not you needed to stick your actual head up there, and who knows, you might get lucky and actually find the thing.
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Also... the only reason I brought my laptop in to work today was so it could join the domain, and I could enable DirectAccess to work from home. I had installed Windows 8.1 Enterprise on it last night to make that all work.
So of course, I stupidly changed the computer name and it forces me to reboot before I can join the domain. And it says "Update and Reboot". And there are 224 fucking updates.
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@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
Otherwise I would have been ultra fucked.
So you're saying you still don't know where it is, right?
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@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
And it says "Update and Reboot". And there are 224 fucking updates.
Does rebooting via
shutdown -r -t 0still work to avoid that?
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@FrostCat Yes, it is missing. The previous operations manager had the foresight to label them, in software, as "A Hallway" and "Lobby".
(That's a little better than it sounds -- it's A Hallway as opposed to B Hallway or C Hallway, etc.)
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@Tsaukpaetra No idea. It's doing the updates. 82 of 224 now.
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@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
@Tsaukpaetra No idea. It's doing the updates. 82 of 224 now.
Darn. Well in hindsight maybe you should have tried joining (and rebooting) before going on an AP hunt...
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@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
So of course, I stupidly changed the computer name and it forces me to reboot before I can join the domain.
I'm pretty sure that's the case even on Windows 10.
@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
And there are 224 fucking updates.
THIS is why Microsoft made it so you can't turn off automatic updates on Windows 10.
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@anotherusername said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
@Captain did you try cycling power to the whole building?
Need to rephrase that as:
@Captain, did you try turning the building off and on again?
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@FrostCat did they also made it automatically wake up and starting a fire if you left it turned off in your briefcase for more than a couple of days?
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@anotherusername No because your battery would die before then.
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@FrostCat ah, so you have to plug it in and let it charge for an hour, then start it up and let it install updates for an hour, then maybe can use it.
Great. Apparently "left in my briefcase for a few weeks" isn't a valid use case for Windows 10.
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@anotherusername said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
Apparently "left in my briefcase for a few weeks" isn't a valid use case for Windows 10.
Nonsense. But if you go that long without powering it on, you should expect it to want to update, and maybe have a lot of them. So if you think you're going to need your laptop for a big presentation this afternoon, maybe in the morning or the night before you turn it on first and let it get the updates out of the way.
I mean, you can whine about how you can't be some kind of purist, or you can realize you just wanna do your fucking job (or play games, whatever) and let the little box have a tiny little bit of control over your life.
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@FrostCat said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
THIS is why Microsoft made it so you can't turn off automatic updates on Windows 10.
I would have happily done the updates. While I slept. Instead, I have to wait like 3 hours while I'm at work and wanting to get home to enjoy our newly found Oregon liberties.
I wonder if I can open up a port (or use the VPN) and join the domain from home. (Actually I know I can do it with the VPN...)
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@Captain said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
I wonder if I can open up a port (or use the VPN) and join the domain from home. (Actually I know I can do it with the VPN...)
Yes. But it's more like 3-5 ports, and some DNS trickery.
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@FrostCat said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
But if you go that long without powering it on, you should expect it to want to update, and maybe have a lot of them.
Maybe it should update on a schedule that's convenient for me, rather than one convenient for it. And maybe my schedule requires me to reboot it when it's not convenient for me to let it do the updates.
So if you think you're going to need your laptop for a big presentation this afternoon, maybe in the morning or the night before you turn it on first and let it get the updates out of the way.
What's wrong with the night after the big presentation?
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Quick! To the Windows 10 threads!
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@anotherusername said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
Maybe it should update on a schedule that's convenient for
mehackers and virus makers, rather than one convenient for it.@anotherusername said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
What's wrong with the night after the big presentation?
The longer you wait, the greater the danger? Sure, it's not all that risky for you probably, but for the average user, getting it for sure is a good thing.
And either way, you're still being stupid. You have three days to install the update. Why would you wait until the day when you have to do an important thing to do it?
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@Captain I hope tomorrow you decide to make a map of your network over a blueprint of your building.
Did you try the toner or Fluke? Did it work? Not work? Why not? You left me hanging.
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@blakeyrat I might decide tomorrow to make a map on Monday.
I have a pretty good idea where the things are now. One is in Hallway A, and there's only about 15 tiles it could be on top of (I don't think a Fluke would narrow that down too much), and the other is in the lobby.
Supposedly there are stickers on the tiles, but that is a LIE. There are no stickers.
Also, the server room is a bit of a mess. I don't know where the network topology map is, so I have to reverse engineer it every time I look for something. (This is probably the real WTF)
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@blakeyrat said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
Did you try the toner or Fluke? Did it work? Not work?
Nope, he stopped once a remote reboot fixed the issue.
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@Captain Please assure me you at least OWN a toner.
You keep avoiding mentioning the most common-sense tool used to solve problems like this. They ain't expensive.
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@blakeyrat Actually I don't. I had one when I was a kid and I'd listen in on phone calls with it. That's a good idea, I'll order one now.
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@blakeyrat said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
you at least OWN a toner.
Never thought to use it with the Ethernet runs though. Thanks for the suggestion!
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@Captain Make sure you get one with an ethernet plug, the quick-and-dirty photo I dug up on Google Image Search is for phone lines.
EDIT: and buy Fluke brand if they make one, because it's a local company and the more Fluke products you buy the more tax my local government collects.
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@blakeyrat said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
Make sure you get one with an ethernet plug, the quick-and-dirty photo I dug up on Google Image Search is for phone lines.
I plan on just making a plug. Would that reduce the efficacy though?
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@Tsaukpaetra For a toner? Probably not. But I mean, they're seriously cheap. Just buy one with what you need already in it:
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@blakeyrat said in In which @Captain looks for a lost wifi router:
But I mean, they're seriously cheap
The Amazon link on that page leads to a product with a $200+ price tag.
