internet

Install and configure LLDP on OpenWrt Linux

A few months ago, I started monitoring my network with Smokeping, more about it later.

I’d also never bothered to check the speed of powerline ethernet. It “feels faster” than WiFi, so I was happy.

When I did my last Velop upgrade to OpenWrt, I did the physical manipulation at my home office desk using the powerline ethernet for various phases of the install.

I have an old web page here on my personal web site. It’s actually my single most popular page.

I write specifically about my scripting FTP file transfers web page. Go take a look, then come back for some navel gazing about it!

I noticed that my DNS aggregator, DNSMasq, was periodically getting bursts of queries about “www.belkin.com” and “heartbeat.belkin.com”.

When I last had problems with PPP, I noticed that some non-routeable IP addresses ended up getting sent out for DNS reverse lookup.

This is different than routing packets with those same (nominally) non-routeable addresses out into The Internet.

We use incredibly weak language around smartphones and point-n-click computer interfaces. It’s embarrassing.

There’s a system admin saying: It’s always DNS

But weird problems aren’t always DNS problems. Better than 50% of the time, they’re cabling problems.

I had to get my production server to clamp MSS (size of TCP data “segment” in bytes) to path MTU.

I run pacman -Syu about once a week on my Arch Linux machines, to stay up-to-date, avoid security problems and generally stay at the bleeding edge of software revisions.

Today, I ran pacman -Syu on my Dell R530 server and it updated the PPP package.

Trouble ensued.

I used to try to do one dumb/weird hardware thing every year. One year, I used a Palm Pilot as a serial terminal for a Sun SPARCStation-10. Multiple serial cable adapters and gender changers involved.

My dumb hardware stunt for October 2024: 10 USB WiFi adapters on the same laptop.