forum.excito.org

Hi all,

I just got my 2TB B3, which of course I like very much, but (there's always a but), I have some niggles with it. They could be down to my inexperience, so I'm very glad to be educated, but if they are not just me being stupid, then I hope the feedback will help to improve an already very good product.

1) I have it set up in server mode behind a DSL router. The DSL router (a Thomson SpeedTouch 516i) is the dhcp server for the LAN. If the router gets powered down or reset, the connection to the B3 fails and doesn't come back until the Ethernet cable is physically disconnected and reconnected again. As I intend to access the B3 remotely while travelling, that could be a little inconvenient if I'm in another country and my home has a power cut... (The Ethernet cable from the DSL router is plugged into the LAN port of the B3)

2) It's a wireless B3, as I intend to use it to provide a wireless network, as my DSL router isn't wireless. When activated, the wireless network appears to be bridged to the LAN, not routed. The web-browser admin pages don't appear to offer a routed option here: although I guess it would be possible under the hood. Can the B3 advertise more than one SSID, so I can have a private network and a public network to provide Internet access for guests?

3) I had a very frustrating problem setting it up as a webserver using the <name>.myoenb3.com service. I configured the relevant port-forwarding on my DSL router more than once, to apparently no effect, ending up with re-setting my DSL router back to factory settings and rebuilding the configuration from scratch. It turns out not to have been the problem when I tried telnetting to port 80 and executing a HEAD / HTTP 1.0 - I got a response! In fact, when I use Internet Explorer, it works as well. But if I try Firefox 3.6 (yes, I know it is old) on both a Windows PC and a Linux PC, I never get a page up, and the connection times out. So telnet to port 80 works, IE works, but Firefox doesn't. Any idea what's going on?

4) The B3 web interface is nice and clean, but not well designed for somebody partially sighted using JAWS to navigate the site. It would be nice if it were made accessible. I'm no expert in this, but I think a few <alt text> tags are missing.

http://webaim.org/techniques/screenreader/
http://www.redish.net/content/papers/interactions.html
http://www.ajmcclary.com/configuring-yo ... -jaws.html

If this comes across as overly critical, it's not meant to be. I certainly don't expect someone to leap into action and provide answers/solution over the next day or so. Rather, I hope this can be treated as constructive feedback.

Thank-you for building such a nice (and powerful) product.

Otixce

Edit: SSDi -> SSID

Edit2: Oh - and if this should be in the B2 & B3 support forum, please feel free to move it there.

Hi oticxe,

Thanks a lot for your feedback. Most of it goes directly into our "consider fixing" queue, but I want to add some comments:

1) This should not happen. However, it could happen if you just briefly pull power from your router. B3 detects network changes by sensing a link-down for more than 5 (i think, could be 10) seconds, and if shorter than that it doesn't send a new DHCP request (while, at the same time other hardware might, and you could potentially get an IP conflict). Another issue could be if you pull power both to B3 and your router simultaneously, and B3 is set to auto mode. If your router would be a slow booter (slower than B3), B3 would fail in it's auto-sensing mode (not finding any dhcp servers on your network) and become a router itself. Hence, when you test power-down, make sure to power-cycle B3 as well. My feeling is that this will work fine, this is how many users have it setup (including me), with no issues. Routers generally boot faster than B3.

2) Yes, you can use wireless in routed mode by using the WAN port instead for the LAN port. You are right that LAN <=> wifi is bridged, but WAN <=> wifi will be routed.
B3 cannot present more than one wifi network, sorry.

3) No clue, sorry. Apache config issue? Someone else any ideas?

4) Thanks for that feedback, you are probably right. On the list!

maybe this?
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/681968

Yes - that looks like it. I had done a little more investigation, and narrowed it down to something happening with the redirect: or rather, not happening. It doesn't seem to do it consistently, though, Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and I haven't tracked down the set of conditions that causes the problem.

Edit to add:

...and thank-you for the quick reply, Johannes. I get limited time to play with my 'new toy', so it'll be a while before I can get to re-configure the networking.

johannes wrote:Hi oticxe,

1) This should not happen. However, it could happen if you just briefly pull power from your router. B3 detects network changes by sensing a link-down for more than 5 (i think, could be 10) seconds, and if shorter than that it doesn't send a new DHCP request (while, at the same time other hardware might, and you could potentially get an IP conflict). Another issue could be if you pull power both to B3 and your router simultaneously, and B3 is set to auto mode. If your router would be a slow booter (slower than B3), B3 would fail in it's auto-sensing mode (not finding any dhcp servers on your network) and become a router itself. Hence, when you test power-down, make sure to power-cycle B3 as well. My feeling is that this will work fine, this is how many users have it setup (including me), with no issues. Routers generally boot faster than B3.

I guess that could be addressed with a ping command every 2h or so, if ping fails => restart networking?