Using the 3COM OfficeConnect Wireless 11g Firewall Router with the BeThere ISP

I am currently using BeThere as my ISP. They are pretty good, you can get upto 24Meg DSL and there’s no port blocking, throttling or any of that non-sense, and they’re a reasonable price. Alas I only get just under 2 meg down (in central London!) and just under 1 meg up.

They give you a free router which is a re-branded Speedtouch box. It’s very flexible but only if you’re prepared to telnet into it and alter the config via the command-line. Mine served me pretty well, until the BBC brought out the iPlayer. It has a terrible habit of crashing when streaming flash audio or video from the BBC’s iPlayer. This was an irritation, but now that all video on BBC sites and BBC Radio’s ‘listen again’ use the same flash delivery system, it became untenable as a router. (I believe that BT’s Home Hub router is having similar issues at the moment.)

So I decided to move back to my ever-trusted previous router: a 3COM OfficeConnect. I bought it years ago - and although it was more expensive than your average bargain-bucket router it’s never failed me, is rock-solid and surprisingly even supports ADSL2+ (even though I bought it back in… the early 2000’s.) If you’re going to buy networking kit - 3COM isn’t a bad bet, they know what they’re doing.

Anyway - I had a little bit of a tough time getting it to work with BeThere (who don’t use PPPoA like most DSL providers in the UK) so I thought I’d document what I needed to do to get it working.

In order to get one working with BeThere you need to use the following settings:

Protocol: Dynamic/Fixed IP in 1483 Bridge Mode
IP address: (my static IP address)
Subnet Mask: (my subnet mask)
Default Gateway: (my Gateway address)
VPI/VCI: 0/101
Encapsulation: LLC
QoS Class: UBR (not sure if this is correct, but it’s the default)
PCR/SCR/MBS: 4000/4000/10 (again - the defaults)
DHCP Client - not checked.

If you don’t have a static IP, then you can probably leave the IP address/netmask/gateway empty and just check the DHCP checkbox.

If you do use a static IP then you can get the relevant addresses by calling BeThere customer support.

Oh, by the way - if like me, you have a static IP address and want one of your LAN machines to be the public face of your network (place it in what router manufacturers call a ‘DMZ’) then the OfficeConnect will gladly let you do this - but it simply won’t work unless you turn the firewall on. If the firewall is disabled then you won’t be able to connect to that machine from outside the LAN.

Put current IP address on Clipboard AppleScript

I never remember to post these scripts which I write and often use onto the web, so that Google can index them.

So in an attempt to solve that, here we go: Here’s an AppleScript that I use often via QuickSilver. It calls Growl so - if you don’t have Growl, remove the growl parts otherwise AppleScript will ask you where GrowlHelperApp is.


set theIP to do shell script "ifconfig | grep 'broadcast' | awk '{print $2}'"

tell application "GrowlHelperApp"
set defaultNotification to "Put IP address on Clipboard"
set myAllNotesList to {defaultNotification}
register as application defaultNotification all notifications myAllNotesList default notifications {defaultNotification} icon of application "Finder.app"
notify with name defaultNotification title defaultNotification description "Your IP Address (" & theIP & ") has been put on the clipboard" application name defaultNotification
end tell


Click this link to make a new Script in ScriptEditor containing the above script

Upgrades

Woo - Bulldog are upgrading all their 4Megabit DSL accounts to 8Mbit. Here’s a bit of the email:

“Why 8 meg? With 8 meg, downloading DVDs or music, or just browsing is so much better, and even huge files can be downloaded in a flash. It really will help you experience the internet the way it’s meant to be.”

Sooo - they want me to torrent DVDs.

Growl has been updated to 0.7 - lots of new goodness - including the ability to create your own styled displays using CSS and HTML. Here’s a (rather basic) example that I made for my mail notifications:

if you make one - don’t forget to upload it to ResExcellence.

FyKnight has made massive strides with iTele and the MMInput Drivers - He’s even implemented AppleScript support and a new and groovy event timeline for iTele

Also there’s an amazing new system for the drivers he’s developed which allows the hardware to be shared over the network and advertised via Rendez…. Bonjour.

Can you hear me? Hello is this thing on?….

Right - second time lucky.

It appears my server has been firewalled for the whole of this week - my shiny new NetGear DSLRouter is a bit too clever by half - and has a built-in firewall that cannot be turned off. I didn’t realise this until this morning.

D’oh!

Drop a comment if your the first here, and salve my tortured mind, would you?

Thanks,

Digs.

Downtime (fo’ real this time)

Bulldog have contacted me and will install on Wednesday - so I’ll have to change DNS details then - which may take up to 2 or 3 days to propagate.

I’ll contact Easynet on Tuesday to let them know I’m still connected to them, so I should go dark after that.

See you after the change-over (I hope…)

(edit - changed days to be accurate.)

BT Flinches

BT is offering better access & prices to the local-loop in an attempt to head off Ofcom’s threat of using the Enterprise Act to split the telco.

That’s good news.

Meanwhile - in related news, Bulldog still can’t provision my DSL order — five weeks after the order — because they are waiting for BT to open slots in the Bayswater exchange….

Which reminds me - I’ve got a dilemma for my three readers: Easynet haven’t disconnected my DSL yet (as you can see by reading this post) - even though the three month cancellation period has elapsed (and they sent me a three month bill instead of my normal annual bill.)

Do I ask them about it now, and probably lose my DSL, or wait until I get a definite provisioning date from Bulldog?

Knowing my luck - they’ll try and charge me another three months for not telling them, or something…

Downtime

I’m moving DSL provider - so my domains (including this one) will go down for an unspecified duration (from today.)

I had thought that I was rather clever, and got the switch-over day-perfect, but then my new provider sent me an email

So - my server will be down for a couple of weeks, maybe… yuk.

Au Revoir…..

Central Station on the Web

CentralStation - The PS2’s network gaming hub is now available on the web, or rather the Events and Player Reporting section is. The missing articles/features are basically marketing fluff anyway.

It’s good that Sony is beginning to realise that the PS2 should not be the exclusive access point for Central Station.

dotMac storage upped to 1/4 Gig (from 100Mb)

.Mac’s storage has been upped to 250MB.

“The combined storage for your .Mac Mail and iDisk has been increased to 250 MB. That means you now have additional room for your email messages and mail attachments, web pages, and backups. Need even more storage? You also have the option of upgrading your .Mac account to 1 GB for US$49.95 per year.”

I was seriously thinking about letting my .mac sub lapse this month - but with the increase in storage seems to be less of a rip-off.

It’s not that much more space though, is it… The common comparison is with Google’s “free” 1GB of Mail storage.

I’m not so sure that it’s such a good comparison though: These services rely on the fact that not every user will fill their space to capacity (my GMail account is currently at 0% capacity!) - so the service provider can actually have less total capacity than would be theoretically required to satisfy all their customers. (Broadband ISPs do this too.)

Even geeks have problems filling a gig of Mail usefully, but your average Joe (or Joanna) could easily stuff a gig of Video onto dotMac for streaming.

Plus with dotMac you don’t get Scary Ads that may or may not be relevant to the email you were just sent.

It seems that you have to specifically divide the space yourself.

iChat at 35,000 ft.

Wow - that’s cool. Bet it was ultra-laggy.

Calling all SMTP Gurus!

Any SMTP gurus out there?

I’ve got a very odd conundrum -

I use Vodafone for my GSM provider - who allow you access your phone’s MailBox via Mail (i.e. you get a mail account into which your voicemail goes, and you can SMS via outbound email - at 10p a go.)

The odd thing is that I cannot send out via their SMTP Server - or rather I cannot authenticate to it via my Mail client.

Mac OS X Mail.app and Entourage 2004 refuse to allow the Authentication Protocol that the server uses (AUTH LOGIN).

But strangely, Entourage X (the old version) can authenticate to it (and I can authenticate by hand via telnet.)

Here is a transcript:

Widebook:~ diggory$ telnet smtp.vodafone.net smtp
Trying 212.183.156.228…
Connected to www.vodafone.net.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
220 Smtp Filter ESMTP Server ready
EHLO Localhost
250-Smtp Filter Hello
250 AUTH=LOGIN
AUTH LOGIN
334 VXNlcm5hbWU6
RGlnZ29yeQ==
334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6
(Encoded Password Removed)
235 Authentication successfull

Does anyone out there have any idea why the Client apps are throwing a fit over this?

Wireless doo-dah

I’ve just invested in a very cool (but quite ugly) device: you can get one here.

It’s basically a mini wireless access point that’s powered by USB - or at the flick of a switch it becomes an ethernet-to-wireless adapter.

I’m currently using mine to free my sitting room of one less wire (one down, 3,251 to go…)

It’s small enough to chuck into a laptop bag and take to meetings/LAN parties/ etc…

The only downside is the configuration - theoretically it’s web-based - but I had to fire up virtual PC and use the Windows Binaries - as the “web” interface is a real mess of Windows IE-only JavaScript. Firebird/IE:Mac/Safari all choked and Mozilla choked half way through configuration.

Freeserve Mail.app and SMTP

I’ve been having problems with sending mail when in a certain location. I’ve just figured out why - The ISP that is used there is Freeserve and they force all traffic on port 25 (SMTP - Outbound Mail) through their own mail servers.

This, to me, is very irritating - all my mail accounts use authenticated SMTP servers outside Freeserve. When I try to send a message my mail client (Mail.app) quite reasonably tries to connect to smtp.mac.com - and as far as it is concerned has done - it gets back an SMTP server response, but not from the server it asked for!

Widebook:~ diggory$ telnet smtp.mac.com 25
Trying 17.250.248.48…
Connected to smtp.mac.com.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
220 tmailb1.svr.pol.co.uk ESMTP Exim 4.14 Sun, 14 Dec 2003 16:50:47 +0000
EHLO
250-tmailb1.svr.pol.co.uk Hello modem-249.arbok.dialup.pol.co.uk [217.135.16.249]
250-SIZE 104857600
250-PIPELINING
250 HELP
QUIT
221 tmailb1.svr.pol.co.uk closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

This leads to problems - Mail tries to authenticate itself to the SMTP server, as is required for the server that it is expecting - but whoops! Freeserve’s SMTP servers don’t support Authentication so the whole operation goes tits-up.

Grrr… I’ve managed to hack around it by using a new bogus mail account that uses freeserve’s unauthenticated server - but I’ll still get one error every time I try to send email from there.

Mucking around with the way my IP traffic works is not a good way to endear me as a customer to an ISP.