Steelrat's Personal Webserver

White Birthday

Hmmm, I have a white birthday. Pictures taken a few minutes ago (relative to the time I wrote this - tch!).

Draytek Router - Part 2.

Well, my router has now been on for a few days with no further issues. I reported my problems to Draytek and let them know my findings and they have been extremely communicative with me. I'm pleased to say that they have been able to re-create the problem under lab conditions and their R&D lads now have the task of resolving the issue. So hopefully I've helped them identify a problem and they can resolve this issue once and for all and help out all the other people who have been suffering with similar issues.

Thanks, Draytek, for your support. I remain a loyal user of your prodcts. :)

Draytek 2820Vn Dropouts!

Firstly, I must apologise to everyone who visits my sites on a regular basis or uses my mail server as the service lately has been fairly awful! The biggest cause of my problems has been my Draytek Vigor 2820Vn router.

I bought this router because of the reliabilty I have had from my previous two Draytek routers. However, this latest one seems to have had quite a few issues. It has been rebooting itself on very many numerous occasions with no apparent rhyme nor reason, or just plain locking up. I thought it was down to the wireless part of the router being faulty so I disabled wireless to see if things would sort themselves out. The router appeared to be a little bit more reliable then but not completely, it would still reboot randomly and the lockouts seemed to still be quite frequent.

Well, for anyone out there who stumbles across this article and is suffering the same problems here is what I believe the solution is! The router has now been up and running flawlessly for the last 14 hours, probably the longest period of time since I bought it! I'm not going to say it's definitely the answer just yet as I'd like to give it a couple of days first to ensure I'm happy with it. Also, for anyone interested I am running with the very latest firmware, V3.3.3_232201.

If you are running your own DHCP server then this is what you want to check. Obviously you will not be running the DHCP server in the router, and if you're like me you'll have the router relay agent enabled pointing requests to your own DHCP server instead. DON'T!!! Disable the server completely! That's it! Obviously, if it changes then I'll update this page but for now I'm smiling. :)

A little tip for anyone who has two ADSL lines like me but has their second line with a completely different subnet. How do you route between the two subnets with your 2nd router connected to your 2nd WAN connection of your 2820? Easy! Run your 2nd WAN router onto one of your lan ports. Then connect a lan port to the wan port of the 2820.... tada! :D

If you're wondering why I'd want to do that here you go. My first line has a download limit, my second has none. I occasionally grab files through the newsgroups so I have a rule which allows my news articles to be pulled through the 2nd router while retaining other traffic through the first. Also, it means that my servers can run without detriment if I want to download files at full rate for a while, people can still view my websites and collect their mail.

Anyone got any other tips they'd like to share? Leave some comments to let everyone know.

Housework!

Really should start looking at adding new topic headings and icons...

Preparing for new staircase to go in, hopefully next week.

Well, started getting back to the deconstruction of our houses. I've starting pulling down the ceiling above the stairs in number 8 and have removed the loft hatch and refitted it back up at the real ceiling height. Unless you know the layout of our house that seems a bit weird but the ceiling height at the top of the stairs was about a metre below the room / hallway ceiling height so it needed to be done.

Today I need to remove the porch inside the front door of number 8. You would think all this deconstruction lark would be easy but it's far from it! For a start it means clearing all the area around you but as they're places that are in use constantly there's a lot of stuff to find homes for. The amount of mess generated is unbelievable, even though I'm trying to dismantle everything as carefully as possible so as not to destroy the surrounding areas. Then there's the electrics and central heating which just happen to have cable / pipes just where I happen to be working!

Going to have to make some trips to the tip today, I think, and dispose of more building rubble.

Search engines.

Interesting results tonight... was looking through my logfiles and saw an amazing number of hits from various search engines, so I thought how popular has my site become?

I tried various search engines, entering the simple text Steelrat, to see what happened. Now, I thought that the novels by Harry Harrison, where I took my nickname from many years ago, would feature up at the top. I was surprised to see that I came second in every search engine I tried... second to Wikipaedia. Damned Wikipaedia getting in my way! :)

I suppose that perhaps I should post something interesting on the site now and again, shouldn't I?!

www.mushin-aikido.com

Hi all,

As some of you know, Rob and I have been training in Aikido for a while and have recently started a new club in Folkestone. Have a look here for more info. www.mushin-aikido.com

Hope you are all keeping well, keep in touch.

Paul.

Bike Meet @ Margate

Anyone interested in bikes might like to make a trip to Margate this bank holiday. There is a meet planned for charity events and they are expecting 50,000 bikes! Mind you, the weather will probably decide the numbers. :)

See here for more details....
http://www.ace-cafe-london.com/default.aspx

I will try to get there if I can but my bike has just developed a split in the exhaust...:( Should be fixed next Tuesday if all goes to plan.

I have a ZX1100 by the way, I'll send Ratty a few pics and see if he would be kind enough to post them on the end of this post for me. ( thanks in advance Rob, I owe you another breakfast! )

edit: Sorry about the lateness of submission, only just read emails! Will addd photos later on today....

ahem.... erm, here are the pics... erm, just a tad late!

What a difference a "clay" makes!

Hello all, decided to have a go at restoring the paint work on a family members run-around. This little fiat has the worst oxidation you are likely to see, the dreaded red paint that has turned pink.

Anyway, £64 at Halfords and 4 hours work.....so far I have done the Bonnet and the two Front Wings. Plenty to do but the results make it worth doing I think.

Anyone else have a car that needs doing? I am getting into this now. :) I have been quoted at £500 for a respray and £300 for a "mopping", paint restoration is an expensive business unless you have a go yourself of course!

I'll send a few before-and-after shots to Rob and see if he can host them on his server for me.....if they appear below you know he has, if not send me an email and I will get them to you.

paul4d@live.com

Click Read more to view images... Ed.

Windows Seven

Do you love Vista? You need to try Seven! Any of you running the 7 beta? I have just installed it on all three of my laptops and it is fantastic, I've had several system crashes...AVG on an upgraded system is a pain but ok on a fresh install. VNC seems reluctant to run and a couple of other little quirks but as this is a beta it's to be expected......

TV

I've had the TV back for a week now and I still haven't broken it again! :)