Things That Suck: Home Networking Edition
Today on Things That Suck: AirPort Utility > 5.6 and AT&T 3G MicroCell
AirPort Utility > 5.6:
Apple seems to have Final-Cut-Pro-X-ed the AirPort Utility. I have no problem with the default mode being a "for dummies" mode, but I am the 1%. I want the wireless radio in this thing turned OFF. Disabled for good. I only bought it for AirPlay, and I want it on a wired Ethernet connection, and that's it. I don't want a WDS extender. I don't want it to connect as a client of the wireless network. I don't want it to be a router. I don't want ProxySTA mode. I just want it to be an AirPlay output device. That's it and that's all.
After two hours of fighting with it, I appear to have somehow, by using AirPort Utility 5.6 on it, then resetting it (but not all the way to factory defaults) and then re-configuring it with the new AirPort Utility, magically "Off" showed up as an option for the Wireless configuration. In the end, I got to where I needed to be, but damn was it a pain in the ass to get here. (Nor do I really know how I did it. I just sort of flailed a lot.)
AT&T 3G MicroCell
What a piece of crap. You go and buy this thing because you need better cell reception than you can get in your house without it. For us, our house is plaster with metal lath. It appears to have the effect of being a less-than-perfect Faraday cage. Less-than-perfect because there are a few corners of the house where you can get one or two bars, but in general, our house is a dead zone. Even out on the front lawn, we can only rarely get 3 bars. So I bought this thing. It acts as a "micro" "cell" tower, and routes all the traffic it sends/receives on its 3G radio out over your broadband Internet. Because of E911 regulations, you not only have to volunteer the physical street address of the device to AT&T, but the device also needs to be able to establish a GPS lock, AND the GPS coordinates it gets have to match the geocoded lat/lon of the street address you provided (as known to some private AT&T geocoding data set.) Now, it doesn't need to be in view of a window forever -- once it's gotten a lock and initialized itself, you can move it back into a closet (where it belongs), but you'll need to repeat that song and dance every time the power is interrupted AND every time the device enters a state that I'll hereafter call "NotWorking™".
Now, let's talk about its connection to the mothership. As best I can tell, these devices set up an IPSec tunnel/VPN back to AT&T. This tunnel is seemingly continuously monitored for not only connectivity, but also QoS. Understandable, since it needs to be able to provide voice traffic. However, it seems that if the QoS needs are not met, even temporarily, the device goes into NotWorking mode. If the connectivity is broken for any real amount of time, the device goes into NotWorking mode. I've been able to move the cable from one port on the switch to another without losing connectivity, but anything more than a second or so, and you're NotWorking.
I have never once seen the device self-correct back out of the state of NotWorking without a power cycle (and I have a pretty good sample size, sadly.) Once I have the blinking 3G light, as best I can tell, that's the end of the line for it, and the only remedy is a hard power cycle with the window/GPS dance. I shudder to think if this were the level of resilience and fault tolerance of other devices in AT&T's network. In practice, for whatever reasons, I seem to get into NotWorking state about once a week. As a consequence, I've had to put the thing on an extra long Ethernet cord and an extension cord for power, so I can drag it out to the window once a week for this song and dance:
The amazing part is this: Because of deficiencies in AT&T's network (our house construction is somewhat to blame too, as mentioned, but I feel confident that if we could get 5 bars outside, we could get by without this thing. The reality is that under the best cases, we get 3 bars outside and inside we get one, or maybe two if standing by a window) I have to have this device to enable me to use the service that I'm already paying for (my wireless service). Next, the device consumes another service I pay for: broadband internet -- I won't be pedantic and count power. It's reliability is crap, and worst of all, I had to pay $200 out-of-pocket for the privilege. It stings a little, I gotta tell ya.
My primary alternative appears to be to buy another, more expensive, and apparently also quite finicky, device called a wireless signal booster like this. The idea of these devices is that you pop an antenna up on your roof (or in the attic, or next to a window, or whatever), and then it somehow rebroadcasts the signals inside and out. If you spend any amount of time reading about these devices, you'll find that they're fraught with peril. In our particular case, I fear that the signal in portions of our house may be too strong. You see, these devices need to play nice with the rest of the cell network, and so their efficacy is largely dependent on the inside antenna and the outside antenna not being able to "see" each other well. These devices have the advantage that if they work for you at all, then they work for everyone regardless of carrier, etc. The MicroCell is obviously AT&T only, and access to it is whitelist based (and the whitelist is limited to 16 devices it appears).
If I had my druthers, it would work like this: I would complain to AT&T about my situation, they would come out and set up a carrier -class device (by which I mean one that I don't have to do some ridiculous song and dance like I do for the MicroCell every time there's a minor hiccup) and some QoS device that segments bandwidth such that this device has some agreed-upon amount of "guaranteed bandwidth" from my broadband connection. Then there would be a whitelist of sorts, where whitelisted devices get priority, but where any AT&T customer device can use the remaining resources. While I'm over here wanting a pony, I'll also say that I would not be paying for this device, but rather AT&T would be giving me a monthly statement credit based on the amount of resources consumed by this device in the course of servicing their customers. Sorta like solar installations putting power back into the grid.
I've heard that in the beginning of the MicroCell program they were giving the devices away to people for nothing. I can only speculate that the support burden of the device is so high that they had to revise their plan. I suspect that what you're really doing when you buy one of these is paying in advance for the time that AT&T employees will spend on the phone with you trying to diagnose/fix this piece of crap between the time you buy it and the time you give up and go to Verizon.
Oh well. We're stuck with AT&T for another year. I suspect we'll go back to Verizon the next time we upgrade phones. I considered returning the MicroCell and trying out the booster approach, but it seemed pretty onerous to setup, and I suppose I can do the reset song and dance as needed until my AT&T contract runs out. From what I've read Verizon's extender is a bit less temperamental than the MicroCell. That said, I present Ian's first postulate of wireless phone service:
As t goes to infinity, all mobile carriers suck equally.
or alternately:
If you don't already hate your mobile carrier, it's only a matter of time.
AirPort Utility > 5.6:
Apple seems to have Final-Cut-Pro-X-ed the AirPort Utility. I have no problem with the default mode being a "for dummies" mode, but I am the 1%. I want the wireless radio in this thing turned OFF. Disabled for good. I only bought it for AirPlay, and I want it on a wired Ethernet connection, and that's it. I don't want a WDS extender. I don't want it to connect as a client of the wireless network. I don't want it to be a router. I don't want ProxySTA mode. I just want it to be an AirPlay output device. That's it and that's all.
After two hours of fighting with it, I appear to have somehow, by using AirPort Utility 5.6 on it, then resetting it (but not all the way to factory defaults) and then re-configuring it with the new AirPort Utility, magically "Off" showed up as an option for the Wireless configuration. In the end, I got to where I needed to be, but damn was it a pain in the ass to get here. (Nor do I really know how I did it. I just sort of flailed a lot.)
AT&T 3G MicroCell
What a piece of crap. You go and buy this thing because you need better cell reception than you can get in your house without it. For us, our house is plaster with metal lath. It appears to have the effect of being a less-than-perfect Faraday cage. Less-than-perfect because there are a few corners of the house where you can get one or two bars, but in general, our house is a dead zone. Even out on the front lawn, we can only rarely get 3 bars. So I bought this thing. It acts as a "micro" "cell" tower, and routes all the traffic it sends/receives on its 3G radio out over your broadband Internet. Because of E911 regulations, you not only have to volunteer the physical street address of the device to AT&T, but the device also needs to be able to establish a GPS lock, AND the GPS coordinates it gets have to match the geocoded lat/lon of the street address you provided (as known to some private AT&T geocoding data set.) Now, it doesn't need to be in view of a window forever -- once it's gotten a lock and initialized itself, you can move it back into a closet (where it belongs), but you'll need to repeat that song and dance every time the power is interrupted AND every time the device enters a state that I'll hereafter call "NotWorking™".
Now, let's talk about its connection to the mothership. As best I can tell, these devices set up an IPSec tunnel/VPN back to AT&T. This tunnel is seemingly continuously monitored for not only connectivity, but also QoS. Understandable, since it needs to be able to provide voice traffic. However, it seems that if the QoS needs are not met, even temporarily, the device goes into NotWorking mode. If the connectivity is broken for any real amount of time, the device goes into NotWorking mode. I've been able to move the cable from one port on the switch to another without losing connectivity, but anything more than a second or so, and you're NotWorking.
I have never once seen the device self-correct back out of the state of NotWorking without a power cycle (and I have a pretty good sample size, sadly.) Once I have the blinking 3G light, as best I can tell, that's the end of the line for it, and the only remedy is a hard power cycle with the window/GPS dance. I shudder to think if this were the level of resilience and fault tolerance of other devices in AT&T's network. In practice, for whatever reasons, I seem to get into NotWorking state about once a week. As a consequence, I've had to put the thing on an extra long Ethernet cord and an extension cord for power, so I can drag it out to the window once a week for this song and dance:
The amazing part is this: Because of deficiencies in AT&T's network (our house construction is somewhat to blame too, as mentioned, but I feel confident that if we could get 5 bars outside, we could get by without this thing. The reality is that under the best cases, we get 3 bars outside and inside we get one, or maybe two if standing by a window) I have to have this device to enable me to use the service that I'm already paying for (my wireless service). Next, the device consumes another service I pay for: broadband internet -- I won't be pedantic and count power. It's reliability is crap, and worst of all, I had to pay $200 out-of-pocket for the privilege. It stings a little, I gotta tell ya.
My primary alternative appears to be to buy another, more expensive, and apparently also quite finicky, device called a wireless signal booster like this. The idea of these devices is that you pop an antenna up on your roof (or in the attic, or next to a window, or whatever), and then it somehow rebroadcasts the signals inside and out. If you spend any amount of time reading about these devices, you'll find that they're fraught with peril. In our particular case, I fear that the signal in portions of our house may be too strong. You see, these devices need to play nice with the rest of the cell network, and so their efficacy is largely dependent on the inside antenna and the outside antenna not being able to "see" each other well. These devices have the advantage that if they work for you at all, then they work for everyone regardless of carrier, etc. The MicroCell is obviously AT&T only, and access to it is whitelist based (and the whitelist is limited to 16 devices it appears).
If I had my druthers, it would work like this: I would complain to AT&T about my situation, they would come out and set up a carrier -class device (by which I mean one that I don't have to do some ridiculous song and dance like I do for the MicroCell every time there's a minor hiccup) and some QoS device that segments bandwidth such that this device has some agreed-upon amount of "guaranteed bandwidth" from my broadband connection. Then there would be a whitelist of sorts, where whitelisted devices get priority, but where any AT&T customer device can use the remaining resources. While I'm over here wanting a pony, I'll also say that I would not be paying for this device, but rather AT&T would be giving me a monthly statement credit based on the amount of resources consumed by this device in the course of servicing their customers. Sorta like solar installations putting power back into the grid.
I've heard that in the beginning of the MicroCell program they were giving the devices away to people for nothing. I can only speculate that the support burden of the device is so high that they had to revise their plan. I suspect that what you're really doing when you buy one of these is paying in advance for the time that AT&T employees will spend on the phone with you trying to diagnose/fix this piece of crap between the time you buy it and the time you give up and go to Verizon.
Oh well. We're stuck with AT&T for another year. I suspect we'll go back to Verizon the next time we upgrade phones. I considered returning the MicroCell and trying out the booster approach, but it seemed pretty onerous to setup, and I suppose I can do the reset song and dance as needed until my AT&T contract runs out. From what I've read Verizon's extender is a bit less temperamental than the MicroCell. That said, I present Ian's first postulate of wireless phone service:
As t goes to infinity, all mobile carriers suck equally.
or alternately:
If you don't already hate your mobile carrier, it's only a matter of time.