(no subject)

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

Ok techies, need a fellow pro opinion.

I'm contracting (kind of) in my spare cube time for a small companies LAN and trying to solve some internet connection issues with their 1mb and 768k frac T1 lines through Xspedius at their two locations in D/FW. I'm reasonably certain this issue is on the ISP side, but can't prove it. Unfortunately the dinky company has no network monitoring tools (Netgear FVS318 routers with only the grossest traffic monitoring), no test software, and no tools save what I can pull off of the net or basic dos commands. I need two or three things which I'm researching for which someone may be able to point me towards. I've been out of that game for about 6 years now, and have forgotten most of what little I knew. Hopefully you trench runners can help a bit.

One: A hopefully free or reasonably cheap network monitoring software which can run on XP. I can't throw a rock on majorgeek.com or the like without hitting one but I'd like to know if you have experience with any, what to try, what to avoid, what's spyware, and what works these days. I won't earn myself some on the books gainful employment by putting porn popups on their boxes, and I don't yet have a 'test' laptop I can throw under the bus.

Two: Anyone in the D/FW area who can recommend a good ISP for business T1 or a site that specializes in them similar to DSLreports? DSLreports (blocked at the 'real' job, long live proxies) is mostly residential, but I'm grinding through it.

Three: "Hey Paco, you asstard, we love you, but take this crap to a community that's meant for it!" Ok, I can do that. Got one that you recommend?

Thanks guys.

Comments

[wyrdrune.livejournal.com]

Ethereal for Windows runs under XP, but is that what you mena by "network monitoring software"?

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

traffic. Blocked packets, dropped packets, error packets, latency, and destinations. Etc. etc.

[wyrdrune.livejournal.com]

You could do some of that with Ethereal, but the configuration might be a bit complex. When I was looking for similar I ended up using NeTraMet under Linux (and it took me about a week to get it configured).

Ah! If you can get a Linux box on there, then SmokePing for your latency and MRTG for traffic. Can't help with the blocked/dropped/error/destination analysis.

[kuang.livejournal.com]

If you want packet capture with added thrills you can't beat Ethereal IMO. It's a freebie, it's rock solid on XP and it's now a lot nicer to use than it used to be.

[greeklady.livejournal.com]

There are tons of freebe testing sites on line plus the ISP should have one of their own to direct you to.

I just had this problem at home. I should have 3mb download and 1.5 upload or something. I can't remember, anyway, we used their site to determine we weren't getting the speed and it turned out it was their router.

And, just being nice cause this is a semi inteligent question. You still should be slapped around just on general principal.

Get in Line

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

Semi-intelligent is being nice. Idiot Questionably Savant seems about right. Most of the crap I forgot consisted of 'how to relate it to other people'. I sound like a moron each time I open my mouth on this, but I can still get the crap to do what they want it to do.

[torkell]

#1: Big Brother makes for a rather nice piece of network monitoring software once you've beaten the config into submission (stupid hosts-style file which can't decide what is or isn't a comment). There's also clients you can stick on servers to report things like disk usage. It does ideally need a web server, as the status pages are all web pages.
Etheral's a good packet sniffer, and as a bonus knows how to decode most network protocols.

#2: No idea. Not in that area.

#3: techsupport_ot I think was created a while back for things like this. Could also try tech_support, but that may not be techie enough.

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

Nah, don't care what porn they're looking at, as long as it's not slowing down the whole net. Ethereal seems to be a unanimous win.

On the move to TS_OT! Thanks!

[torkell]

This particular incarnation of Big Brother doesn't do that unfortuantly, rather it does things like "is that server/service alive?". Very handy, and rather customisable. The sysadmin at my school set up different sounds for the main status (red/yellow/green), and the one for red was a submarine diving siren.

[jecook]

to reply:

1) re: reference to #3 by boggyb: community exists ( says me, the owner), expressly for this.

2) Paco is explicitly allowed. :)

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

It's probably worth mentioning that the company will be more than likely locked into some kind of minimum term for their T1 (usually ~24 months) because their ISP will in turn be held to some kind of minimum term by the loop provider. I'd recommend having them check how far into their term they are before they order a T1 from another company.

You don't say what kind of issues they're experiencing and I'm not familiar with Xspedius, but if you do your homework and demonstrate that you've thorougly troubleshooted (troubleshot?) everything on the customer side, they should be able to escalate issues to the carrier and/or have a monitor placed on the circuit. If the company is only 9-5 business hours you could also schedule intrusive testing where the carrier runs a pattern to the CSU/DSU which is usually the final thing required before they will escalate the issue to the loop provider (normally SBC or Verizon, at least, in Austin).

There's also the obvious task of replacing cables between the router and the smartjack and - if you have access to the telco closet and aren't a clumsy oaf - even reseating the card in the SJ, which I've seen clear up a problem before.

What kind of router are they using for their T1 (isn't the FVS318 for cable/DSL? Unless they're just using it as a switch)? If they're using a Cisco, a show interface command will show if errors are incrementing on the serial interface. You should also be able to check the router logs and see when and how long the T1 went down (if it's going down and isn't, say, just saturated - in which case using MRTG to monitor your network interfaces is a very good option).

Hope this helps.

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

Figured they would be on a contract, shall check that. I just want to be able to point to another local ISP and say "Look, this company has a decent rep" vs just "your ISP seems to suck."

Ever since they've gotten the service they've had intermittant slow throughput, and they've recently tasked me to check it out. The first time I went out there I found one of their offices were set to static (while the router was set to serve out DHCP) and trying to find a gateway that isn't on the local net. That was solved, though they assure me they've had problems in both offices before the new netgears were put in. Then, on Friday, their OTHER office a county away on the same provider started having horrible speed, with ping times pegging at about 500+ms, which seemed to start at the gateway when pinging in to their IP. Pinging out got 700+ms on all returns until things started timing out about 10 hops away. I wasn't able to get out there until this afternoon, but I just got a call while on my 'real' job letting me know that the problem has already cleared up. Pinging reveals no issue.

I want the network monitoring software to make sure it's not one of their machines causing some problem, and also to help get a better idea of the nature of the large number of errors the router logs seem to be reporting.

No, apparently you can wedge a FVS318 into being your small businesses router, which isn't horrible since they have 9 stations and an IBM server for two offices. They've got the routers set to manage a VPN between their two offices, and it seems pretty competently set up. I've got no real complaints yet about the network... Well, save some poorly crimped cables, and I've just found a mass of cat-5 on a hub behind the server, not sure yet what they're doing back there, afraid to touch it until they hire me enough to sit on it and actually be on hand to handle possible fallout from any tinkering/labelling/tracing that needs to be done... Oh yeah, and the fact that the router management interface gives absolutely NO information of any depth (ARP cache? Advanced forwarding? Advanced port blocking? Error detail? Not on this bad boy!). But other than that, it's pretty simple.

Going directly to the CSU/DSU with a crossover cable while running that software and ping tests (if this problem can recur while I'm there AND can troubleshoot) should be enough to convince the ISP that it's their ball, or prove to me that it's really mine. If I can't take down an entire office for part of a business day, that software should allow me to argue my case much better than ping tests can.

Ethereal seems to be the way to go, since MRTG seems to only want to work for Linux or Win2k. I hope to make enough money here to afford a cheap laptop I can toss linux onto and use for precisely this purpose. Being broke sucks.

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I didn't know the Netgear could be used on a T1. That said, it's a cheap POS - nothing compared to, say, a Cisco 1720 or even a Tasman 1002SL. Either way, MRTG does run on Windows XP so long as it has Perl installed. It can also be used to monitor anything that is available via SNMP - not just traffic.

Anyhoo, enough of my amateurish meddling. Good luck.

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

Stay away from the Tasman's, unless you have a fridge to put them in. Passive Cooling isn't effective enough for them.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

If they're using unmanaged switches, you're probably not going to get much out of packet sniffing software, just broadcast stuff.

The cheapskates I work for wouldn't pay for a managed switch, so I wedged an antique hub between the main network switches and the router, that way I could plug into it to sniff packets going to and from the Internet. Doesn't help much for sniffing out internal network problems, though.

[smw1983.livejournal.com]

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/nmtf/nmtf-tools.html

This list might be a bit useful. Otherwise, yeah, I'm partial to Ethereal.