[Rack] Networking as of 2013-10-02

Ben Kochie ben at nerp.net
Mon Oct 7 19:19:48 UTC 2013


On Mon, 7 Oct 2013, Omar Zouai wrote:

> 
> I did consult the rack. Hence this current debate. Yes, when the network went down, the r00ter
> was rebooted multiple times. And yes, I let it sit for half an hour, both on and off. I did
> what was necessary to maintain a internet connection at the time in the space, and came up with
> an idea on how it can be improved.
> 
> Yes, I did read the damned wiki while trying to get the internet back up(mobile data).
> 
> CF Card? After 4 unsuccessful boots, I opened r00ter up. There wasn't a CompactFlash in it.,
> the only thing remotely visible to it is the WiFi chipset. Maybe this is a problem?

Are you sure you looked at the right box?

> Correction, Networking is simple, but will get more and more complex; which would be fine if
> all the equipment was "perfect", and did everything it was supposed to do without errors and
> never failed.  But we don't live in a perfect world, things will have errors, and equipment
> will go offline. That's where the nightmare comes in.

No, it was already as complex as it needed to be.  We had a nice simple 
all-solid-state router to connect, failover, and load-balance our two 
ISPs.  You want to replace this with a 150W server with fans and hard 
drives?  And you call this "simpler"?

We even simplified the network just a few months ago by removing two 
switches from the critical path and replaced it with one good Juniper 
switch.

The noisebridge network is actively maintained by this group.

> I highly doubt watching the rack is good enough to prevent fuckery. If someone was determined
> enough to do something stupid, they simply would just go do it, without consulting the Wiki or
> Rack.
> 
> On Oct 7, 2013 3:53 AM, "Ben Kochie" <ben at nerp.net> wrote:
> 
>
>                   The network at noisebridge is not a toy for you to play
>                   with.
> 
>
>             Disclaimer: I actually agree that it would be much more convenient if
>             the network wasn't dramatically gutted when not necessary. I only point
>             out the following technicality.
> 
>
>             This is "doacracy" at its best (and worst). Technically, it is a toy
>             that people could play with. It's a shame the play wasn't "playing
>             nicely" with the work already done (and previously working).
> 
>
>       Actually, the network is one of the few places that is not a toy to play with.  We
>       (the rack list) keep an eye on things and try and keep the fuckery on the network
>       to a minimum.
>
>             Glen
> 
> 
>


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