Literally lost

02 Nov 2005

<erno> hm. I’ve lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can’t figure out where in my apartment it is.

I always thought that bash.org quote was fabricated until just now. I literally lost my router. It was responding to ping, it worked completely (I was using the web inteface), but I had no idea where it was. I looked in the usual place and it was gone!

So I rebooted my cable modem instead (the BigPond connection was “there”, just not working. Happens once every month or two.), went to the web interface and reconnected, and all was good.

I think it might have fallen somewhere underneath our Commander PBX, but I’d need to move a not-insubstantial desk full of cables and various IT gear, and risk disconnecting some of the 12 or so network connected devices, in order to see it for sure. Meanwhile, it’s out of sight and working perfectly!

Working perfectly, that is, as a basic Internet gateway. If we were using its horrible unsecurable (you can do MAC based auth, but only if you’re prepared to enter the MAC addresses of LAN devices, too. I’m not. It’s also impossible just to grant wireless Internet access and block off the LAN — I’d be perfectly happy leaving the AP wide open if I could do that, because bandwidth should be free. Yeah, whatever, I’m a ‘net commie.) wireless, I imagine reception would be rather poor in that RFI nest! (Assuming it’s where I think it is)