This week Greg talks to John Osmon about his top 6 tips.
The Tips:
1) *BE* the packet (Know how the network works)
2) pcap or it didn’t happen (get proof)
3) don’t confuse network and physical diagrams
4) give back to the community
5) vocabulary — learn others, teach yours. Necessary for communication
6) lab it / break it — you don’t know it until you see how it behaves when broken
Slack Updates
Austin MUM – record a little brothers wisp podcast?
Andrew Thrift is now prepared to answer all of your Fortinet questions.
Jeremy has found success with receiving and processing is abuse notifications at abuse.io NV2 for 802.11ac is broken on Mikrotik ARM kit, so avoid it.
Thrift is pushing for a standardized API with Mikrotik. 802.11 beaconing with additional SSIDs
When you think an optic may be running too hot, you can try wrapping fiber around a pencil
Tomas wants unimus feedback “If you aren’t using it, what are your reasons?”
This week Greg talks to Colin Z about his top 5 tips.
The Tips:
Colin Z
1) Look at things in terms of a Link Budget.
2) 6 dB delta to make a noticeable difference.
3) Follow basic grounding practices (R56 is a good reference).
4) Plan for outage.
5) Document what you can.
This week Greg, Mike, and Dave do the first cast of the new year…time to start out on the wrong foot 😉
This cast we talk about: UBNT vs. Cambium Lawsuit Update Centurylink outage
Mikrotik NAT (as it pertains to SIP and RTP) Broken
Greg fav things: hAP AC^2, pickleball, your mom’s house podcast/Harmontown podcast, little brothers wisp slack
Mike’s Fav things
Daves My son, Ham Radio
completely useless phrases that sound inspirational
Mikrotik bug fix for CRS3
Hammett would look amazing with a mow-hawk
PoE power cycle ping
*Slack Updates*
In Mikrotik, flush connection table when troubleshooting and making changes
This week Greg and Tommy C(TCent to his fam) talk about their top 5 tips.
The Tips:
Tommy C
1. Have a test bench: I read somewhere “everyone has a test network, not everyone has a production network” I have been able to pull off so many changes/upgrades to our network just because I was able to show how the system would work before implementing it. I also have a couple friends who my company serves. They know they are on testing equipment and enjoy buying me beers when I come over to try out “some new hardware”. We are now setting up a test tower that will just be
2. Radios + antennas are just like old flashlights: Remember those old Mag Lights and the light pattern they would make? Dish antennas are the exact same way. If you think you have a good alignment, keep moving the antenna another 20 degrees and see what happens.
3. Don’t break EIRP: It’s not worth it, get a bigger antenna or fail the customer. Noise only goes up and you can only make so much more noise. (Which everyone else has to hear) Set a minimum signal level and stick to it, be willing to fail a new Install if you can’t get a good signal. You will thank yourself when you are able to get more customers on an AP and push more bandwidth to existing customers. (Far fewer phone calls as well.)
4. Wireless is not “Set and forget”, Have some sort of monitoring as well as record keeping for signal levels and bandwidth. Call people if they have a rapid drop in signal or their signal has dropped a lot over several months. People will pay more money for longer if you are the one telling them “your internet sux, we want to fix it”.
5. If you climb towers, have a good safety guy give you classes, if you have employees make them take safety classes and enforce safety policies. If someone routinely breaks safety rules get rid of them, eventually they will cost you a lot of money. Someone called OSHA to report a bunch of false safety violations against us while we were putting up a tower in a competitors area. Because we had our safety guy on site while we were setting up the tower OSHA decided we were not the ones making trouble.
Greg
Keep a spare on the shelf Keep a spare of everything you have. Great for emergencies as well as labbing scenarios.
Keep backups This will save your life one day.
Diagram current and future builds This is for you and every engineer/consultant you employ.
Don’t be affraid to ask for help Being on an island is lonely, especially when you don’t have a volley ball.
Don’t be affraid to help others Your knowledge is a gift that should be given, not horded away like the one ring.
