Doesn't look like windows does auto-failover in any way considered graceful - at least not in desktop flavor. Need to see if the situation is different for win10, but I doubt it. Is this a desktop OS or server? Keyword to aid you in googling is "multihomed".

Both are Win 7 machines. Desktop.

It occurs to me that I can do a simple test on Monday, by simply pulling a cable across the floor into my office and connecting my desktop PC, via a USB NIC, to the .156 VLAN which I already have available at the proto desk outside.

Solution #2, assuming this doesn't work, will be to put a new PC in the room which is connected to the secondary network on one side, and 192.168.x.x on the other, with 192.168 also connecting to second NICs on the critical machines, with no gateway. The new machine will be VNC'd into from the outside, and then used to connect via VNC to the critical machines.

You're IT dept is going to lose it's shit if you're exposing an internal machine to an external network without hardening the fuck out if it. I understand you might be IT here, but this is very bad security.

Both networks are "internal," in that they are both part of our corporate WAN

One goes to the 98th floor of Sears Tower on a Verizon fiber circuit, via our main data center in Texas.

The other is a different VLAN, which is normally used only at the studio, that I have extended out to Sears via a 7Ghz radio link.

The idea is that if the primary fiber circuit fails, or if the studio loses connectivity with the outside world, or the corporate data center goes down (all three have happened over the past two years) I will still have a direct link to the critical machines via the microwave circuit.

Why not make the microwave link the primary? Because it's old, and has also failed in the past.

I want two physically separate paths to communicate with my transmitter.




And don't get me started on IT security. We broadcast our internal network to WiFi hotspots all over this city. I've raised that flag more than once, but the convenience of the remote crews being able to use their laptops to access internal systems when deployed trumps all other concerns.

I'd make an argument for better network edge design to thwart fiber seeking backhoes, but it sounds like you're in the classic OOB gateway conundrum. Auto failover between two interfaces should be easy less messy.

It's not just backhoes. The primary fiber circuit goes through multiple COs and several data closets at the building itself. Sometimes, field techs do stupid shit. My longest outage was nearly three days. We stayed on the air (the video feed auto-fails over to the microwave) but I had no control over the transmitter other than a phone call (we still have physical POTS lines at the transmitter sites) to the engineers stationed at the site on shifts during the emergency.

That was a lot of overtime...

Ugh.. so no doubt inherited monolithic network segmentation. So the first solution may work for you, but it won't be automatic. You'd need to down the primary iface and bring up the second manually to keep the routing happy-ish. Then I think it might work.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...33c243edcc.jpg
Got my girl repping the MTnet

It will consult the routing table for each prefix to decide which interface to use. Generally speaking, hosts are configured with a "default route", which points to the single network interface on the device. If it's a multi-homed host like the one you're describing then you need to populate some more sophisticated routes in order to use both interfaces. This can be done statically, or by running a routing protocol of some description. However, the machine will have two IP addresses, one for each interface, and the network will not know that it's possible to reach one of the addresses by going through the other.

What you are really asking for is to have a network of your own that has multiple paths to reach it. To do this you need to run BGP to peer with your providers -- it's a fairly sophisticated (and expensive) network setup.

--Ian

Joe,
Would it be possible to have two different computers and be able to switch from one to another in case of a signal going down?

Not remotely. The machine in question is connected to a piece of equipment via an RS-232 port.

But have another idea- involve a third PC. Put it on the second network, then establish a private (192.168) network connection between it and the machines I care about. VNC into the new machine, then VNC from it to the machines of interest. It's a tad sloppy, but should work.

Does the rs232 connection run software? Or is it just a terminal needed?

Cuz my initial thought might be a bit overkill but tried and true.

https://opengear.com/products/im7200...ucture-manager

There are two separate machines in question here, with two separate PCs.

Both require a Windows software application, not just a terminal.

One is a Harris Diamond UHF transmitter, built in 2001. The other is a Genetner VRC-3000 site-control system, which is slightly older.


On the plus side, I just got capital approval to replace the transmitter next year. And I already have the replacement for the Gentner system in the warehouse.

I think I'm just going to do option B. Put a dedicated midway machine on Network 2, and a private network so it can reach the other machines. Since this is a "for use in emergencies" problem, I prefer an architecturally simple solution.


Unrelated:

You gotta love it when, as a society, we have reached such a level of technological sophistication and economic surplus that offering to launch the cremated remains of your dead cat into space is a viable business model: https://www.space.com/first-cat-spac...-celestis.html

Wifi will automatically connect to two hotspots at will... do you need a copper wire connection?

Yes. Two of them, on separate VLANs.

Even if I were to put the services onto wifi, the trouble is that the access point itself would still be online after the line upstream of it failed. This is the basic problem I have with the existing copper system.

oh right, computer dumb because network still there.

how about if you set up a periodic task to ping a speicfic server somewhere on the internet and if you get no response, switch to the other interface. then every x hours (when nobody is logged on or whatever) fire up the primary interface, ping, decide if it's time to revert.

or have a tiny little raspberry pi machine do it on the primary interface and remotely notify your machine the primary connection is up.
or maybe a virtual machine that keeps an eye on one of the connections?

incidentally, Windows 10 does know when it's connected to the internet or not. perhaps you can use that "feature" to determine which network you should be using.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...d05d935ce8.png
.. but by the time you get into doing that, you're probably no better off doing the static routes codrus mentioned above. But I'm not sure how well windows handles service: port bindings multihomed.

IMHO the right way to do it is build the network to be reliable, rather than running two unreliable networks to one machine and hacking up a shell script to have it try to figure it out which one is up.

VRRP is a protocol that allows two upstream routers to offer redundant service to a given wired network in a fashion that's invisible to the end host. The two routers share a virtual IP and MAC adress, with the currently elected master device forwarding traffic destined to the virtual MAC. If the master fails, the standby device(s) detect that and elect a new master, who then takes over the virtual addresses. The hosts are configured with the virtual address as their next-hop, and thus don't need to know anything about it.

--Ian

Late to this, but codrus has got the right idea. At a very minimum you need a decent router in front of the machine that can do WAN failover.

Here's a nice little guide for using a Ubiquiti router like this: https://xenappblog.com/2016/cheapest...-for-failover/

Even cheaper (if you have some hardware to host it), you can probably roll your own pfSense or OPNsense box and do WAN failover. I run OPNsense on these great little HP T620 Plus thin clients that you can find on eBay for $80 or so (plus the cost of an Intel NIC), but if size and power consumption aren't big concerns, you could easily run it on a $40 SFF PC.

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-...fsense-router/
https://wiki.opnsense.org/manual/multiwan.html

This actually turned out to be easy. I just plugged the second network into the PC, and it worked.

I have no idea why it worked, but nothing scary happened, and the routing table looks fine. I can make outbound connections from the machine, and I can VNC into it via ether address.

So that's nice.

Aside from service binds, I don't think any of us doubted it would work with multiple nics - but it's when your primary gateway stops passing traffic shit'll hit the fan.

Why?

I've simulated outages on both networks by putting small ethernet switches in between the PC and both networks. This was I can kill the network while keeping the link on the PC up. It worked fine with either link gone.

Hmm, with a little more digging I found this in the Win 10 Creator's Update.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...ws/ba-p/339676

The info in the "Multi-homing improvements" is mostly concerning WAN failover in a WLAN to cellular failover scenario, but I'm wondering if this feature set would include logic such that failed connections to public destinations might trigger a failover to the next adapter. It at least hints at some capability there. Probably something going on there with comparing routing metrics and selecting the best adapter.

You're connecting to the mach from the same subnet, right? Probably won't matter then.

Negative.

Two different VLANs, two different gateways, two different physical paths.

Path redundancy is the real key here. Router / gateway / DNS / etc services are already handled in a redundant fashion at the main site. This is a remote site (specifically, a room on the 98th floor of Sears Tower), which history has shown to experience link interruptions about once a year. That's unacceptable (from an FCC compliance standpoint), so the goal is to have two separate physical paths to communicate with critical machines at the site.

I'm going to let this one machine (the site controller) simmer for a week or two. If nothing weird happens, I'll dual-NIC the transmitter itself.

Thus far, this seems way too simple, given the huge amount of forum content I've come across which proposes extremely complicated solutions to a problem which, when I first learned the basics of TCP/IP, seemed insurmountable.

So - here's my concern - charlie don't surf, windows don't failover. It looks like for windows7 they "improved" a dead gateway detection (DGD) algorithm that works as a sort of failover - if it can't communicate with the gateway, it fails over to the next one that's prioritized by link speed(?) and device number. But I fear that in your failure mode - your gateway will be alive but your traffic will timeout - your experiment earlier, if I understand it properly - would hit DGD as designed. But an actual outage would just result in timeouts being returned from the gateway, so not triggering DGD.

Keep in mind a lot of us are approaching this problem from a 5(or 6) 9's site reliability perspective - and that if this box needs to be up, the entire internet needs to be able to connect to it. There's also questions of route table cache and expiry and how windows will deal with it. Windows will still try and use interface1 if DGD isn't triggered - so if it has other data it's trying to send, it's going to send them to a dead pipe.

But if it's connecting through VLAN's - relying on straight ARP it's not needing to route through the gateway if your querying machine is close enough.

That's an interesting point. And I will admit that I don't actually know if the VLAN145 gateway is in this building or not. For the 147 (the one extended over the microwave radio) I know it's not. But for the 145, which is the primary, you're probably correct in that it's in the local Juniper SRX550. And I'm not taking that down for a simulation.

I might move to Plan C. Since I can technically control the transmitter from two different PCs (albeit in a limited capacity on one of them), I might connect that second machine only to 147.

Wait a sec...

I don't care about outbound connections from the PC in question. I only care that I can VNC into it remotely.

Let's go back to the scenario in which it has two network connections, with VLAN 145 (fiber) being the primary, and 147 (radio) being the secondary. The 145 router is local to the site, the 147 router is five miles away in another building.

Assume that the fiber connection fails. Ok, so DGD won't go into effect (since the local Juniper SRX550 router is still apparently providing gateway service at 10.180.145.1), but why does that matter? If I initiate an inbound VNC connection on VLAN 147, won't all communication for that session flow over the 147 link?

That's the crux of the question - if you're connecting to it from a local net, it won't hit the gateway. You might not care about outbound connections - but are you sure you can authenticate without one?

If you need a laugh, read the reviews on this:


I am not responsible for any lunatic who uses these in an inappropriate manner.

Been an interesting week already at work. Wolters Kluwer seems to have suffered some manor of major catastrophe, so we haven't been able to use most of the software or access any client documents or contact information because everything is cloud-based. This outage has apparently impacted pretty much everything they offer/host, including educational resources. If memory serves, they are the #1 software provider for our industry (Public Accounting) so this is a HUGE disruption. Millions of dollars in lost productivity. Still have some work I can do using locally hosted software, but much of my office is on hold. Fun times.

Did anybody end up getting their cheap laptop?

My friend and I received packages from Estonia today. I bit of junk. I think that is what we will get. Additionally, BoA voluntarily initiated a card change last week due to suspicious accounts having my number.

That's good to hear, though i'm sorry about the trouble.

BoA has had me sorted out a few times. They have taken care of me pretty well for the last 15ish years.

I haven’t but then there’s no charge on my account either although I have an email with shipment but no tracking info. If scammers they sure suck at it...

Charge came in under "Fancy Beauty LLC" to my account.

Ahhh there it is. Had to go back into a prior billing cycle but yep. Oh well just initiated the Amex dispute and the credit was applied.

Thanks!

Delete

https://www.foxnews.com/us/alligator-florida-pants

Florida woman pulls alligator from her pants during traffic stop

A Florida woman pulled an alligator out of her pants during a traffic stop on Monday — a strange move that might just rank on the state's list of odd reported crimes.

Ariel Machan-Le Quire, 25, was in the passenger's seat of a vehicle around 3:30 a.m. in Punta Gorda when she was pulled over, the Miami Herald reported, citing an incident report from the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office.

The department said that the woman was asked if she had anything else in the vehicle, and then “proceeded to pull an alligator out of her yoga pants (about one foot in length) and placed it into the bed of the truck."

Last night, while riding in the passenger seat of a 31' RV on a little country highway in Florida, I got to witness some truly impressive braking performance when, I shit you not, a litter of kittens ran into the road. Really wish I'd have gotten a picture of that.

Did you keep them all?

We're traveling with a 60lb Visla pup. It would have made chew toys of them.

Two other drivers also stopped, and they negotiated for the kittens. We left before it was finalized.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...eb775818b5.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...ab60bf4976.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...fde79a84d7.jpg

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...8af1084e6f.jpg
I removed counter to install an xray machine that weights 290lbs. The base of the machine is about 10"x6" so there's a lot of weight being supported on that tiny base. I have a crawlspace with 1/2" plywood subfloor (which I believe is thinner than what's required). It was just cut out and replaced with 1/2" ply due to termite damage. I'm worried this $40k machine is going to drop through the floor. Is this a baseless fear?

I've thought about using 1/2" ply to help distribute this load over 2 joists but I've read on aquarium forums this doesn't really help. Any explanation why it wouldn't? Edit: realized they are talking about large aquariums where a large piece of plywood would likely flex. Any recommendations for wood type that is rigid? Size would likely be 17”x12” to span 2 joists.

The floor is very uneven too due to previous owners placing laminate over vinyl. I've since removed the counter which did not have vinyl underneath it - that section is level but lower
(you can see in the last picture how the floor near wall is lower by the gap in the molding).

Pic1: machine
Pic2: rotting wood that was cut out
Pic3: original counter untouched
Pic4: counter removed but uneven floor

Almost killed myself today. Forgot to torque the front lug nuts. Felt like something between a badly out of balance wheel and a bad CV. Holy hell. First time for every form of stupid I guess.

Did the exact same this yesterday. Not good feelings

I did this years ago with my track rat Miata. I forgot what I had been working on, but with the car up in the air, I went ahead and threw the wheels on and gave a quick snug because I knew I was taking it off the jack stands later.

Lowered it down when I was done so I could take a quick drive through the neighborhood to make sure whatever I was doing had worked. Turned a corner and felt a really strange "shift" of the car. I crawled back to the house to discover the left hand nuts were at the end of the studs, and the studs had ground some nice little marks into the holes on the wheels.

Many faceplams were had that evening.

My wife always has crazy ideas and dreams.

My pleasure is to make those come true.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Lu...w1625-h1219-no

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/YL...w1625-h1219-no

WHAT IS IT?

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Et...=w915-h1219-no

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/sV...w1625-h1219-no

It's for butts.

But also it's for shits:

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...fe7fbd3f89.png

(blurry screen cap from silly google automated animation nonsense)

It'll get trimmed and painted and have a vent for the newly-hidden air return vent in the center. It'll also get some electrical outlets to remedy the recently hidden one of those as well.
Note the pile of removed baseboard trim. I'm a nice guy. Whoever removes this will have those to return to their original place or to take for copies. They will be hidden inside where nobody will mess with them.

Start with an accurate model. Unfortunately I don't live in an accurate house. Walls and floor are not quite straight and perpendicular, but are within a 1/4 inch. Tweaks and trim will help.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7e78a448bb.png


Secret strategy is to get my sister (who makes clothes) to make some cushions for it. Or I might. I'm renaissance like that.

I thought my Monday was about to be bad. I work from home on Monday/Friday every week. My boss sent me a message through Slack, "Hey, do you have time for a quick call? We need to talk about something."

Long story short, I got a salary raise and 250 RSUs. I knew our new Fiscal year started June 1, but I had no idea I would be getting a raise or anything like that. Great way to start the day and the week.

We share similar thoughts. Happy wife = Happy (Car) life.

A couple fairly recent projects.

Dining room wainscoting
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...bdda04a2ba.jpg


Family room fireplace surround

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f68b961214.jpg

In fairness though, I didn't make the paneling but designed the surround and sourced the panels then assembled everything and added the cornice and stuff and fitted it in place.

In the end it's all "yes dear"...

If the women don't find ya handsome, they should at least find you handy.

I noticed a low speed rattle as I left the dealership parking lot after having my Ford's PTU replaced under warranty.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...be&oe=5D902CF6

My thoughts.

Why is it that yankee transplants so often show their asses in traffic and unnecessarily honk at other drivers? Such uncivilized and uncouth behavior is indicative of poor breeding. No respectable southern man would behave in a manner so unbefitting.

Exactly. Makes me want to tell them they are welcome to stay and become part of Southern Hospitality, but leave the harried hurried attitude back where they came from.

EDIT: Atlanta, traffic wise, is now solidly a Northern City.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e1802bad6e.png

My wife told me today she wants me to wear tighter jeans. I am not sure how to feel about being made into a sex object.

You're gonna want that.

I think I would have offered that dealership an opportunity to give me some free stuff after that.