About JacksonTech

I just got an older 2.1RC0 to assign a 2001: address on both the WAN and the LAN, but ran into another problem: the DHCPv6/RA server for pfSense really doesn't want to run without a static IPv6 address, and the DHCPv6 relay configuration page seems to be missing an option or two. I'll have to tinker with it later... As for the WAN disappearing, is it an fxp card? IIRC there's a regression in the upstream FreeBSP fxp driver and it likes to make the card go into an infinite loop of bringing the link up, then dropping it, then bringing it up, then dropping it... ... View more

I don't mind emails or Google+ conversations (email is on the site). I'm also at the dslreport forums. What VPN software are you hoping to have working? It depends a lot on how it's implemented. Unfortunately I'm only familiar with OpenVPN. ... View more

I just did a few file transfers via SCP from my desktop to a VPS I have. What a weird feeling--directly accessing a computer with no port forwarding. IPv6 is supposed to get rid of the end-to-end breakage nonsense of NAT, so these are PUBLIC addresses (although dynamic). NAT is such a hack... Even with scp, I saturated my uplink at 1MBit/s. Not sure what I hit when transferring a file back to the desktop because it transferred too fast. I think it's safe to say that performance on a VPN would be reasonable, if not the full 10MBit/s download. (Remember, pulling a file *from* your home computer is using your lower-speed uplink, not your downlink.) Keep in mind that you're gonna have to reconsider how you think of firewalling, security, etc. There are no private addresses on IPv6. (Well, there are, but, there aren't.) Each of your machines should have an IPv6 firewall on them and your border router should have one too. ... View more

Hmm, maybe I should change my avatar back to Mr. Finch...! If your wife's workplace is IPv6 enabled, it *should* work. You'd probably need to register with a dynamic DNS service (foo, that's what I forgot to mention) for when the prefix changes, and run a little daemon like ddclient to update your IPv6 address on occasion. Let me do some...testing... ... View more

New post on HughesNet's native IPv6 infrastructure. Very lengthy how-to on setting up a CentOS/RHEL router to service IPv6 clients. The post is rough around the edges but I'll be updating it over the next few days. All this work for a little dancing turtle... http://jacksontech.net/index.php/2013... ... View more

The easiest way would be just to link to the site. I'd rather not have it mirrored because I keep updating it. If the URL ever changes I'll throw in a redirect, but I doubt it will change. The idea of a permalink is that it's...well...permanent. Next up: IPv6. I almost have a fully working IPv6 setup at home. Turns out HughesNet actually gives us routed prefixes (multiple subnets too) via prefix delegation! ... View more

I was looking for upload/download speed and latency. I don't know what operating system or VPN software you're using, but what I was planning to do: 1) Ping through the VPN tunnel (the software I use, OpenVPN, shows up as a network interface like a normal network card), 2) Download a medium-size (less than 15MB) once or twice file to see what the download rate is, and 3) Figure out some way to test interactivity--maybe an SSH connection over the VPN to see if it's any worse than SSH over satellite (which is pretty hilariously bad already). Actually I can test another type of "VPN" right now: SSH allows a user to set up an encrypted tunnel and use it as a SOCKS proxy. So I'll try downloading a few files through the SSH tunnel with Firefox. 🙂 ... View more

Very interesting. What's the HT1000 have, 128MB? Extra RAM is always good. Same goes for the CPU. It'd be nice if they would actually give us SSH access to the thing. (You could telnet into the older modems from the customer side.) But I somehow don't see that happening... ... View more

Thanks! http://jacksontech.net/index.php/arti... is now updated with some information on latency, etc. I haven't actually tried transferring large amounts of data with a VPN, so I don't have any hard numbers to post. I should set up an OpenVPN instance and test it. I'm not sure how accurate the section on SQF is, but it seems reasonable. What do you think? ... View more

Beefed up how? Physically more solid? (The HT1000 is a little bit too light for my taste--it's easy to knock it over especially with the weight of the cables.) ... View more

Added http://jacksontech.net/index.php/hugh... for good measure. I don't know if my explanation works very well, but there you go. HughesNet has a similar sidebar. I think the administrator can set the contents of these links. ... View more

For what it's worth, it's not actually HughesNet's fault. The problem stems from the underlying service they use: https://getsatisfaction.com/getsatisf... I doubt HughesNet can do much unless they host their own support forum using professional software such as vBulletin or free and open-source software such as SMF. (Doing this would also enable private messages and a host of other features...) ... View more

Thanks for the information! I'm not considering publishing but that may change eventually. I hope your new install is still performing well. It seems that people get placed into two buckets when they subscribe to HughesNet: those that have no problems (like me, so far), and those who are living in an alternate dimension where everyone has goatees and the modem goes down every other day. Hopefully, you landed in the first bucket... ~HF ... View more

You use your bandwidth wiser than I. 🙂 Authors? Are you an editor? ~HF ... View more

Here's the HT1000 user guide: http://customer.kb.hughesnet.com/Docu... There are quite a few documents here, I haven't checked many others: http://customer.kb.hughesnet.com/Docu... ~HF ... View more

KYbunnies, I'm glad you had a good installer. The folk who set up your satellite system are critical to its future operation. I personally had a very nice installer who did a very professional job (and took the time to answer all my curious questions about the system). I hope you enjoy the new system! ... View more

The LAN light flashes whenever data passes through the LAN port on the back of the modem. The transmit/receive lights flash when data passes through the satellite link. Curiously, the LAN light flashes much more rapidly than the transmit/receive lights. Power should always be on. Supposedly, it will turn a blood-chilling, soul-searing red when the modem overheats, but I've never seen it (my soul is intact). System illuminates when the modem is in communication with HughesNet's ground center at the other end of the satellite link. It usually illuminates last when the modem is booting and it will darken first when an outage occurs. There's more information in the manual (seriously, there's an HT1000 manual somewhere) but this is what I've observed. Flashing LAN is OK and means that your modem is feeding your computer the cat videos you requested! ~HF ... View more