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May 21, 2019
PeenieWallie Lives!
I got up this morning, to discover that we lost internet access. And, this is the part I don't like. I don't like this part where my internet keeps going out on me, and PeenieWallie is down. This is where I feel like I should be in a home. But make no mistake. I don't want to go in a home like my dad did. I'd rather die in a horrible motorcycle accident, but for some reason, it never comes. I talk to other riders and they all tell these horror stories and I have nothing really. For some reason, I'm still here.
So I call Mountain Broadband. And they say everything looks fine from their end. She cycles everything and says to try again in 5 minutes. But 5 minutes later, I have no internet access. So, here we go.
Go into DOS:
Upstairs PC has 2 ethernet connections:
192.168.2.3
192.168.2.107
Router 192.168.2.1
Ping 192.168.2.1
Destination host unreachable.
Cycle downstairs router (Turn router on/off).
Cycle downstairs thing that goes to dish.
now, Ping 192.168.2.1
C:\Users\Rob>ping 192.168.2.1
Pinging 192.168.2.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Ping statistics for 192.168.2.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
Woohoo! I can ping my router now!
C:\Users\Rob>ipconfig
Windows IP Configuration
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 2:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.3
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.107
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1
Now, though, I want to go a little further and see:
1) what IP address is the one that is being used on my web server
2) verify port forwarding is correct in my local router.
So now, I go to my web browser and go to 192.168.2.1.
(This is the address of my router downstairs).
Now, if I click on Virtual Servers, I see that inbound Port 80 requests are routed to 192.168.2.3 on Port 80. So, this is my Peenie Wallie server. And, it's being routed to my upstairs laptop, on the new IP connection at 192.168.2.3.
So...I just wanted to document this connection because I feel like I'm at the point where, if I don't document it, I won't be able to manage it.
So, it's working now. Check please.
Posted by Rob Kiser on May 21, 2019 at 8:57 AM
Comments
I just wanted to document this connection because I feel like I'm at the point where, if I don't document it, I won't be able to manage it.
Your network has grown "organically" over the years. There's nothing wrong with that. I've seen it happen in enterprise data centers.
But the problem is that you eventually end up with a duct-tape-and-bailing-wire infrastructure that becomes difficult to manage, even for a small office / home office (SOHO) size network such as yours.
And troubleshooting when things go wrong - which I've helped you with more than a few times over the years - becomes harder than it should.
While documentation is good, you really need to clean up and re-architect * your network and other infrastructure. Not to mention update some of your equipment and operating systems and applications. And do some other stuff.
The good news is that this doesn't have to be done all at once. A little bit at time would be fine.
But you really should be thinking about this, beyond simply documenting what you have now.
* OK, "architect" (verb) is too fancy of a term to describe what needs to be done to your SOHO network, but I can't think of a more appropriate word.
Posted by: robert on May 21, 2019 at 2:33 PM
I just wanted to document this connection because I feel like I'm at the point where, if I don't document it, I won't be able to manage it.
Try IP Address Tracker by Solar Windows to see if it helps.
https://www.solarwinds.com/free-tools/ip-address-tracker
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IP Address Tracker is a free, reduced feature set version of SolarWinds IP Address Manager enabling you to sample the functionality of IPAM.
Key Features
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- Monitor subnets
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Posted by: robert on May 30, 2019 at 7:21 AM
PeenieWallie is down
1. Go to Uptime Robot
2. Create an account. It's free.
3. Create an HTTP monitor for your web site
4. Configure the monitor so you get an e-mail alert when your web site is down.
5. In case you rarely check your e-mail, install the Uptime Robot app on your phone and/or tablet.
5a. Configure the app so you get alerts pushed to your phone and/or tablet when your web site is down.
6. Not only will this send you alerts when there's a problem, but it will also provide a historical log of your web site's up- and downtime.
There are other services that will monitor your web site, but I think Uptime Robot is the only one that is free.
Posted by: robert on May 30, 2019 at 7:33 AM
Add the site UptimeControl.net to the article, because only they have a 3-minute site availability check interval on the free plan.
Posted by: Zezari on March 21, 2022 at 2:34 AM
> Add the site UptimeControl
I'll look into that.
Since 2019, I've also added Better Uptime as an additional monitoring tool.
This was mainly because Uptime Robot no longer offers free custom domain status pages, whereas Better Uptime does.
• Better Uptime → https://status.peeniewallie.com/
• Uptime Robot → https://stats.uptimerobot.com/JWopXsB8XQ
But the more the merrier, since additional monitors cover gaps in the monitor intervals.
Although it's not as though monitoring this site is critical enough to worry about every second of downtime. But there is the issue of services being discontinued to take into consideration, so having multiple monitors does help with that.
Posted by: robert on April 4, 2022 at 9:46 AM