Categories
Uncategorized

AIrCube Part 2

Part 1 of our AirCube article can be found here

One of the best features about the new aircube is the interface.  On Facebook and other places the aircube has been criticized for it’s lack of features. I believe this is where the simple interface really makes the unit shine.   One thing many people don’t realize is your typical home router really doesn’t have a true firewall. Most routers have features that are firewall like. Most “firewalls” are security by obscurity.  The ability to close off ports is a by-product of a nat router.

Setup was very easy.  I downloaded the ap, scanned the QR code, and then went into the phones wifi and connected to the AirCube wifi. Once I plugged it into my home router I was online.

One of the first things I always do when testing a new device is upgrade the firmware, unless I have a specific firmware version for whatever reason.  Upgrading the firmware on the unit was very easy.  I like the fact you can see the changelog notes with a single click.

Once upgraded the simplicity of the setup really shines through.  By default, the AirCube is in an access point mode. This is probably the default mode which will be the most beneficial for the ISPs out there.  I will explain why in a little bit.

The interface speaks for itself, I could go through screen by screen and spoon feed you the very simple setup screens, but you would get bored very quickly.  It is truly a very minimalist product and interface.

One of the coolest features I like about this product is the scan feature.  For some reason the way it is presented on screen resonates with me.  It makes seeing the frequencies in use handy.  While not a chart or graph, it still accomplishes the same function.

I know this little product has received some ripping from operators on various groups and forums.  However, I think it fills a very basic need.  That need is an easy to configure device which allows devices to access the Internet.  Nat firewalls can be done by the provider, and the user never has to touch them.  This is a trend many operators are headed toward anyway.  Let the provider manage the endpoint for the customer. The customer ends up calling the ISP to do port forwarding or if they have a virus anyway.  If the customer wants to add things in the house, it should be simple, and not add extra layers of NAT and firewall rules.  This is a perfect fit for the Cube.  So don’t dismiss it because it doesn’t have all the fancy features some router have.  Save that for other product lines that you, as the ISP, can manage.

 

Categories
Uncategorized

MTIN announces forthcoming 2018 Pricing changes

In an effort to better serve customers MTIN is changing some of our pricing structure. We are moving toward a limited availability structure to guarantee availability to our core customer base while recognizing a one-size-fits-all solution isn’t for everyone.

Tier 1: Customers without a service contract or retainer
$109 per hour during normal business hours (8am-5pm EST time)
$135 per hour for after hours and weekend
First come first serve. No SLA.

Tier II Support
Normal Business Hours (8am-5pm EST time)                           $89 per hour
Late night & Weekend support                                                 $125 per hour
Must Purchase in 5-hour blocks ahead of time to meet response times below for any non-scheduled work.  After hours work can be scheduled ahead of time for normal business hour pricing.

Tier II emergency response times for Tier II customers with a time balance.
Normal working hours (3 hour maximum)
Late night and weekend (4 hour maximum)

Tier III Tech on call Plan
This plan is designed for those who need a high-level engineer on a WISP budget. These slots are extremely limited.

5 hour blocks per week available
6 month minimum commitment
as low as $150 per week paid bi-weekly (1/2 off normal rate)
Discounts are given for multi 5 hour blocks
response times much lower
Contact MTIN for complete details

Contracts available
-Priority support
-Faster response times
-Late night & Weekend support rates don’t apply
-Access to backend monitoring and other services
Contact MTIN on details on contracts

Policy details

1.Late night and Weekend is defined as. 9PM-9AM EST MONDAY-FRIDAY & 8PM EST FRIDAY -9AM Monday. For West coast and customer in other time frames work can be schedule to meet your needs and not be charge for after hours.

2.All customers who don’t have pre-purchased time will be served on a best effort service. Priority will be given to contract customers, and then customers with a balance, and finally to “walk-in” customers.

3.All times stated are maximum times for response. Depending on workload, times are typically much less.

Categories
epmp

ePMP Tip of the Day: GPS Radio Inactive and Active software banks

http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-FAQ/How-does-the-GPS-Sync-Radio-utilize-the-Active-and-Inactive/m-p/82855#M143

Categories
Uncategorized

Looking into to 2018

As the snow is melting off during the 50 degree days I have a moment to pause for some of the things coming in 2018.

One of the things we will be working on is some tweaks to our pricing and support structure.  Over the past year, we have been moving to a deeper relationship with our clients.  This helps me provide better support as well add stability to income.  MTIN will be rolling into a more personalized service for clients in the upcoming months.  This will mean more one-on-one attention to clients. With this, we will still be doing “walk-in clients” but only as time allows.   Customers with service contracts and retainer balances will get priority.

Secondly, partnerships with other companies will become a way we will be able to provide customers with a great experience.

 

We look forward to this new year!
Justin

Categories
xISP

MTIN is now a FLexOptic Reseller

MTIN typically is not a reseller for many product lines, for several reasons.  We like to be vendor agnostic and not chasing sales commissions on products, and we are not in the business of stocking product.

Having said this, we now have a reseller relationship with flexoptic.net.  They have optics you can code for a huge variety of manufacturers.  WISP clients will be intersted to know they support the following vendors:
-Brocade
-Cisco
-Ceragon
-Mikrotik
-Netgear
-Netonix
-Ubiquiti
and a whole bunch more. There are over 150 vendors supported.

The optics are coded with a product called Flexbox. The flexbox has several features to it such as coding, wavelength tuning of DWDM, distance analyzer, power measurement, and diagnostics.

FLEXBOX series - Configure Universal Transceivers | CSFP, SFP, SFP+, XFP, QSFP+, QSFP28, SFP28, CFP, CFP2, CFP4

We are working on some reviews, how-tos and other tutorials for these products. At the very least we are recommending everyone have a few optics of the form factors you use for compatibility troubleshooting.  If you have a device that you wonder if it is recognizing your optics correctly you can pull out this kit, code an optic for your device, and go on with troubleshooting.   Very handy for vendor optic issues.

If this is something you are interested in send us an e-mail for a quote on a starter kit and look for more information coming soon.

Categories
xISP

Client subnet in DNS requests

Some Light Reading:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-vandergaast-edns-client-subnet-00

Many Authoritative nameservers today return different replies based
   on the perceived topological location of the user.  These servers use
   the IP address of the incoming query to identify that location.
   Since most queries come from intermediate recursive resolvers, the
   source address is that of the recursive rather than of the query
   originator.

   Traditionally and probably still in the majority of instances,
   recursive resolvers are reasonably close in the topological sense to
   the stub resolvers or forwarders that are the source of queries.  For
   these resolvers, using their own IP address is sufficient for
   authority servers that tailor responses based upon location of the
   querier.

   Increasingly though a class of remote recursive servers has arisen
   that serves query sources without regard to topology.  The motivation
   for a query source to use a remote recursive server varies but is
   usually because of some enhanced experience, such as greater cache
   security or applying policies regarding where users may connect.
   (Although political censorship usually comes to mind here, the same
   actions may be used by a parent when setting controls on where a
   minor may connect.)  When using a remote recursive server, there can
   no longer be any assumption of close proximity between the originator
   and the recursive, leading to less than optimal replies from the
   authority servers.

   A similar situation exists within some ISPs where the recursive
   servers are topologically distant from some edges of the ISP network,
   resulting in less than optimal replies from the authority servers.

   This draft defines an EDNS0 option to convey network information that
   is relevant to the message but not otherwise included in the
   datagram.  This will provide the mechanism to carry sufficient
   network information about the originator for the authority server to
   tailor responses.  It also provides for the authority server to
   indicate the scope of network addresses that the tailored answer is
   intended.  This EDNS0 option is intended for those recursive and
   authority servers that would benefit from the extension and not for
   general purpose deployment.  It is completely optional and can safely
   be ignored by servers that choose not to implement it or enable it.

   This draft also includes guidelines on how to best cache those
   results and provides recommendations on when this protocol extension
   should be used.

For those of you running BIND here is some practical information
https://ftp.isc.org/isc/dnssec-guide/html/dnssec-guide.html#whats-edns0-all-about

Categories
UBNT

UBNT Air Cube first impressions

I have been meaning to start this review for several weeks.  Due to the holidays and sickness that has not happened until now.  Recently Ubiquiti Networks released the airCubeAC. I won’t bore you with all the stats, just some of the highlights.  For the complete list go here…

-AC radio containing 5ghz and 2.4 Radios (AC Model)
-4 Gigabit ethernet ports
-Supports POE in and Out

One of the first things you notice about the modern UBNT products like this is the nice retail looking package.  This could be on the shelf of Best Buy, or on the shelf of any computer shop. The packaging is modern and eye-catching.

After unboxing we find a very minimal packaging.

All that is contained in the packaging is the airCube itself, quick start guide, and the power cord. One of the first things I noticed as I went to plug this in was the length of the power cord.  Too many companies give you a short power cord you are always fighting against.  This cord has to be 7-8 feet long. In addition, the power plug is a compact size to fit into most surge protectors with ease.  It’s the little design features like this which can really make a product shine.

While waiting for it to boot a quick tour around the outside reveals the four gigabit ethernet ports, one of them being the WAN port.

The quickstart guide was very helpful, except for the terminology used for the UMOBILE app. On the IOS store, I finally figured out the UNMS app was the correct one to use. This might be confusing for some folks. Maybe newer documentation reflects the change in the naming.

I connected the Cube to my home network and fired up the app, the wizard was very helpful in getting me connected to the Cube.

The use of the QR code to customize the instructions is a very nice time saver.  I was up and connected within 40 seconds.  Most of that time was switching over to my settings to connect to the wifi and switching back to the app. A nice feature would be launching the settings app for you.  Not sure if such system calls are allowed on iOS but something to consider.  On a side note, there is Puerto Rico listed as a country yet again. Not sure why this is a recurring theme with UBNT.

Anytime I get a new device like this one of the first things I do is upgrade the firmware to the latest. This was a very easy process. The app even had a little orange information thing directing me to go check it. The addition of the changelog within the app is a very nice touch. The total firmware upgrade took about 2 minutes.

I made the mistake of switching out of the app before the upgrade was done. The unit was not reporting the firmware was upgraded, and when I tried to upgrade again it gave me an error. Hitting logout on the app and logging back in refreshed the app and confirmed I was indeed at the latest firmware.

It’s getting late, but I wanted to get this out there and get the ball rolling.  Look for part 2 coming shortly when I go over the interface in detail. For now, I will leave you with my first impression summary.

The airCube has many nice physical features.  The long power cable makes the flexibility of installation easy.  No longer do you have to set it in an awkward place just because the power cable did not reach.  It does POE in and out, so you could power the unit with a wireless CPE POE if you were a WISP running UBNT gear. This would save on a power plug because you would only need one for your outdoor radio and the airCube. However, if you are deploying these with non-UBNT gear, or simply in a home with fiber or cable the small power plug makes for a neat and compact installation.

Setup was easy, minus the documentation issue on the app to get.  This is probably simply the app being updated for whatever reason and the documentation that came with my Cube being behind.

Look for part two coming soon.

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Interesting Mikrotik GUI behavior

While bringing up a BGP session for a client I kept trying to add our side of a /126.  It kept reverting to the network address.  The video shows what happens when I tried to add ::12/126 to the IPV6 addresses.

After some second-guessing and then some Facebook chatting I decided to do a terminal /ipv6 address print.  Sure enough the proper IP shows up.  Must be a GUI bug.

Categories
Tower

Tower crew in today’s world

One of the questions we often are asked is why our rates for tower work are what they are. In today’s world, a tower crew needs the following, not only for themselves but to protect and do the best job for the client.

The first key is equipment.  Having a crew with proper ropes, proper lifting blocks, and pulleys, and proper safety gear goes a long way. A job can be done more efficiently with the proper tools.  In-Shape tools make a big difference. How many times have you gone to cut something with a dull blade? Tools get used up and have to be replaced.

Next up is safety and insurance.  I lump these into the same category because an insured crew is safe for the client.  Having the proper insurance protects the client from anything that may happen.  Tower work is dangerous work.  With insurance requirements comes updated training. Not only does this teach crews new methods of doing things, it helps them in becoming complacent in safety practices.

Availability is the next thing. Having a crew that can roll out in a timely manner to meet client’s needs takes a dedicated staff.  We see too many part-time crews not bringing in enough money so they are having to moonlight doing other things this lessens the availability because you have to find steady work to have quality people.

The last thing is the experience our crews have.  Having been a veteran of the WISP industry for over 12 years I have seen many ways of doing things, so Have the rest of the experienced folks in our crews. We have done night climbs, harsh weather work, and custom work.  Having someone who knows the WISP industry doing your tower work makes a huge difference.

Categories
Data Center

Re-usable Cable Ties