Help to save the rainforests in the Amazon with your networking knowledge. UK volunteers wanted.

[sc302 Veteran]

Would have to be fiber and would break your budget. trench or poles would have to be dug or erected

[The Evil Overlord]

The ubiquiti is the way you should go, if a replacement is needed/warranted.  Bridgewave is expensive, but you are paying for the name (much like you pay cisco for their name on their appliances).

A little hurtful, Their Pre Belkin home networking was cheaper and more reliable than Netgear

[sc302 Veteran]

Wasn't referring to cisco/linksys

[jebus197]

OK this is the latest response from my boss (remember I'm just a volunteer however). He says his nearest high speed source is approximately 40 KM away. But I think that is with a cabled solution.A line of sight solution with a Ubiquiti type solution would of course be shorter. But the topology of the region provides challenges of its own.

 

 

Here is what he says:

 

Sorry, I forgot to respond to this in my last email. Yes, by all means talk to Ubiquiti. I won't talk to them here because a) my phone doesn't work properly and b) in Brazil, most of these reps for foreign companies know very little about the products they are supposed to be selling. The topography is such that I don't think we could get line of sight with only one intermediary relay - I think we'll need 2. The ISP source is at 200 m asl, we are at 700m and there is an intervening range of hills of 800m. As I said in my last message, I think this is the most promising line of inquiry

 

 

 

I don't know what he means by 200 m asl?

[sc302 Veteran]

ubiquiti as the company is email only.  They will put you in touch with a vendor but you may have to follow up with them a bunch of times. 

 

not sure what asl is. 

[GotBored]

OK this is the latest response from my boss (remember I'm just a volunteer however). He says his nearest high speed source is approximately 40 KM away. But I think that is with a cabled solution.A line of sight solution with a Ubiquiti type solution would of course be shorter. But the topology of the region provides challenges of its own.

 

 

Here is what he says:

 

 

I don't know what he means by 200 m asl?

 

 

200m Above Sea Level.

[jebus197]

I thought that's what it might be. I'm still in the market for keen volunteers and experts with any experience, particularly of real world testing of the Airfiber solution.

There's no one up for an adventure in the jungle? I tried contacting Ubiquit for technical advice, but they just pointed me to a bunch of resellers. many of whom don't seem to have much of a clue about the products they are selling.

 

Also does anyone know of some charitable foundations/Philanthropist or bodies that might be able to help?

[jebus197]

OK my 'boss' (given that he isn't really my boss as I'm doing this on a voluntary basis) has decided he wants to focus on resolving several of the problems/errors he has encountered for some time with his server 2012 set up.

 

Here is what he has said about these errors along with his error log. The question he has asked me is what's causing these errors and is there anything he can do to resolve them?

 

OK, here are the Error messages I picked up now : they all refer to errors that occurred today. Several are repeated several times, especially the 4004 and 4015 messages on the DNS server.

Regularly, some services stop or don't start: they are :
ltdsvc, AppHostSvc, AdobeARMservice,W3SVC, and Trusted Installer

 

 

Please ignore the random pdf 'padding file' I have included and just concentrate on the 'error.txt'. Neowin uploader won't allow files under a certain size to be uploaded.

Iracambi.zip

[sc302 Veteran]

You have a lot of issues going on there. 

 

Possibly issue with replication between sites (having a slow connection would be an issue here).....The dc's should be looking to themselves as primary dns server, then going to eachother as the secondary dns server.  May have to look further into replication issues. 

 

If you do not have services that utilize ipv6 or can route for ipv6, turn off ipv6. 

 

They may need to update drivers or run some fixes to fix other issues

 

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/event-says-when-my-system-froze-that-the-dgivecp/8b3bf484-ffa7-4821-8f14-f1c767ee4a15

 

 

most of the issues seem to be network/replication related.   There may be possible hardware related issues as well. 

 

A dump of the eventlogs would be helpful vs that text document that tells me nothing other than you have issues.  It really is only giving me about 1% of what I need to see to be able to think about giving you a proper solution.  At this point all that I have given you is best educated guess.

 

 

I would want to see application, system, dfs replication, dns server, directory service, and file replication event logs.  I would also like to see a dcdiag and, if 2003, a netdiag (if not 2003 the netdiag command is no longer supported).

[jebus197]

You have a lot of issues going on there. 

 

Possibly issue with replication between sites (having a slow connection would be an issue here).....The dc's should be looking to themselves as primary dns server, then going to eachother as the secondary dns server.  May have to look further into replication issues. 

 

If you do not have services that utilize ipv6 or can route for ipv6, turn off ipv6. 

 

They may need to update drivers or run some fixes to fix other issues

 

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/event-says-when-my-system-froze-that-the-dgivecp/8b3bf484-ffa7-4821-8f14-f1c767ee4a15

 

 

most of the issues seem to be network/replication related.   There may be possible hardware related issues as well. 

 guy

A dump of the eventlogs would be helpful vs that text document that tells me nothing other than you have issues.  It really is only giving me about 1% of what I need to see to be able to think about giving you a proper solution.  At this point all that I have given you is best educated guess.

 

 

I would want to see application, system, dfs replication, dns server, directory service, and file replication event logs.  I would also like to see a dcdiag and, if 2003, a netdiag (if not 2003 the netdiag command is no longer supported).

 

OK I'm happy to do all of that, but as I said I'm just an amateur, I have never worked as a system admin before. I'm helping this guy because I genuinely want to do something to help this project.I have messed about extensively with computers and simple little Linux file servers for about 17 years, but have hardly any experience of Windows server set-ups.

So in short, can you possibly give me a comprehensive list of instructions I can give this guy, like where and how to obtain the error logs you requested, what commands to run (on command prompt presumably?) and basically break it down for him in a step by step way so that he can get all the info you have requested, given that he knows even less than me?

I know this is asking a lot, but I do think it's a genuinely good cause. They do help educate the kids of the local farmers there and the guy himself is very passionate about preserving the forest for future generations.

Thanks so much in advance for any help you can offer.

Could some of these errors have anything to do with signal drop outs given that he is experiencing a lot of bottlenecks (and probably signal drop outs) as per the network diagram I provided previously?

[sc302 Veteran]

absolutely they have something to do with the drops.

 

the command I gave dcdiag and netdiag are ran at the command prompt

 

the eventviewer logs can be had by opening up event viewer....if you don't know how to do that type in eventvwr.msc in a run prompt or a search prompt.  right click each of the logs and choose to save...save them and zip them up. 

[jebus197]

OK as requested. Sorry it took so long. The guy is very busy, but I finally got him to give me full remote server access so I could do all this stuff myself.

 

Netdiag doesn't run as it's a Server 2012 R2 install I believe. To me I can't see much other than a bunch of DNS errors and some active directory issues that are probably related to these DNS errors. My instinct is this is due to network drops, hardware/network configuration (probably not so hot microwave transceivers) and the general topography of his local. Given that you might confirm this to be the case, are we back to square one with him needing to consider the AirFiber solution, or equivalent in order to get a more stable network?

 

The Airfiber solution is proving a hard sell, as I can't get any real world testing data from anywhere to persuade him of this. He's interested, but not without seeing some meaningful data first.

 

http://www.filedropper.com/admin_1

[sc302 Veteran]

basic connectivity tests failing, dns failures...yes get a better pipe. 

 

If I knew someone that had an airfiber install I would help you with that.

[jebus197]

So is there anyone out there who has had experience with Airfiber, or equivalent?

Thanks for your help BTW. Yes these are just standard error 404 connectivity issues when the connection gets dropped. I think his server install is sound.

[+theblazingangel MVC]

<snip> To me I can't see much other than a bunch of DNS errors and some active directory issues that are probably related to these DNS errors. My instinct is this is due to network drops, hardware/network configuration (probably not so hot microwave transceivers) and the general topography of his local. Given that you might confirm this to be the case, are we back to square one with him needing to consider the AirFiber solution, or equivalent in order to get a more stable network?

The Airfiber solution is proving a hard sell, as I can't get any real world testing data from anywhere to persuade him of this. He's interested, but not without seeing some meaningful data first.

<snip>

 

I think that you're jumping the gun a little here; I believe you have yet to determine (or at least I don't believe you've told us) what equipment is actually in use currently for this relay (what microwave transmitters) - is it cheap equipment, is it omni-directional with insufficient range, or are these directional with sufficient range but poorly aligned? There's no point in shelling out money for new ones to boost LAN/relay bandwidth if the existing equipment can already provide it, if only aligned correctly. Before pursuing replacements, find out the make and model of this existing equipment.

[jebus197]

OK sensible suggestion.