[TriLUG] OT: Wired Gigabit Router Postscript, or Post Mortem...

Tue Oct 27 08:35:45 EDT 2015

Update, for the statistically likely 25% of one LUGger who cares enough
to be following this saga...

I took a new tack on the Ubiquiti forum and asked for anyone who had
gotten their router to function as a PPTP VPN client to post their
configuration.  One of the company employees came through and posted
their data dump. 
I was able to use this information yesterday evening to get the
EdgeRouter Lite to work for its intended purpose. 
It's seriously helpful to have all of the details in one location!

If anyone wants to attend the retirement ceremony for the Linksys 54GL
let me know.  It's a small office, so space is going fast  ;-/ 

   Scott C.

On 10/13/2015 02:44 PM, Scott Chilcote via TriLUG wrote:
> Hi Lee,
>
> No luck with the EdgeRouter Lite.  I could find no means of specifying
> the  PPTP client's remote subnet or subnet mask. 
>
> I don't know whether these parameters are essential for a PPTP client
> config, but the DD-WRT, Ubuntu, and Windows configuration editors for
> PPTP client setup all have them and I had no trouble setting up those.
>
> The only PPTP client interface config information I could find on
> Ubiquity's website didn't provide a means to specify these parameters. 
> What little info they had was in a wiki page, which was removed from
> their website during the time I was trying to get it to work.
>
> I did what most of the other new users wind up doing, which was to post
> asking for help on their forum site.  I had a few of their experienced
> users try to help out, but none of them appeared to have a PPTP server
> to test against and their advice didn't work.
>
> The Ubiquity products are widely held to be a breakthrough in power for
> price.  But they are very "work in progress".  There is no graphical
> configuration for the PPTP client config.  It's command line based for
> now.  I made some progress experimenting with the command line
> parameters, but I reached a point where I got the web interface to crash
> and reboot the router a couple of times.  After that I put the thing on
> the shelf and went back to my old DD-WRT/54GL.
>
> I will probably give up the notion of going wired-only for my home
> office and get another one of Intrex's TP-Link routers one of these
> days.  It's a weird shaped, unstackable appliance with a radio I don't
> need, but cheap and reliable.
>
>    Scott C.
>
>
> On 10/09/2015 01:52 PM, Lee Fickenscher via TriLUG wrote:
>> Hey Scott,
>> I'm now in a position where I could use a similar device.
>> I want a dedicated p2p VPN back to the office's Cisco 5505.
>> Have you had any luck getting it going?
>>
>> -Lee
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 5:43 AM, Scott Chilcote via TriLUG <
>> trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello LUGers,
>>>
>>> The reason I was looking for a wired-only router in my earlier thread
>>> was to connect my home office computers to my employer’s VPN.  The
>>> product I wound up purchasing was a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite
>>> <
>>> http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-EdgeMax-EdgeRouter-ERLite-3-Ethernet/dp/B00CPRVF5K
>>>> .
>>> Or “ERL”, as its dedicated, cult-like fan base refers to it.
>>>
>>> As it turns out, buying this router for such a purpose is like going to
>>> the hardware store for a stud finder, cracking off the shrink-wrap, and
>>> finding out that you have brought home the Starship Enterprise rev. A.
>>> You think about taking it back to the store, but then it occurs to you
>>> that within seconds of arriving in a solar system it can locate and scan
>>> all of the planets, tell you whether they have atmospheres, are
>>> inhabitable, and harbor civilizations.  So really, it ought to be able
>>> to tell you where the snippets of metal behind your wallboard are hiding.
>>>
>>> Instead of comprehensive documentation, all you have is a 16 page Quick
>>> Start Guide.  And it doesn’t even include the word “sensor”.  But on the
>>> other hand, there's a website address…
>>>
>>> If advice like “The graphical configuration support is very much a work
>>> in progress, so most users get the job done using the command line
>>> interface” Spark your sense of intrigue, this might be your ideal
>>> product.  And if you really begin to salivate when you see that the
>>> software is a fork of the open source network operating system Vyatta
>>> 6.3, you /may/ have already waited too long.
>>>
>>> I’m three weeks into setting up this pint-sized 3 port obelisk,
>>> attempting to accomplish what I was able to do in five minutes with
>>> DD-WRT by filling out a handful of text fields and clicking "Apply
>>> Settings".  I spend an hour or so a day wandering through the support
>>> forums on Ubiquiti’s website, waiting to see if one of the veteran users
>>> will be sufficiently bored enough to share a crumb or two of laboriously
>>> extracted knowledge.
>>>
>>> I should have taken the hint and sent it back in the original box when I
>>> found that the instructions for configuring a client VPN were not in the
>>> product specific manual (there isn’t one), and not in the 50 page PDF
>>> manual for the router’s operating system.  I eventually found those in a
>>> wiki file on the company’s support pages, but it took Google keyword
>>> searches to ferret them out.
>>>
>>> But like John Cleese in Monty Python’s cheese shop sketch, “I am keen to
>>> guess!”  So on it goes.  Why settle for incremental progress when you
>>> can seek out new life, and new civilizations?
>>>
>>> Scott C.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Scott Chilcote
>>> scottchilcote at ncrrbiz.com
>>> Cary, NC USA
>>>
>>> --
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>

-- 
Scott Chilcote
scottchilcote at ncrrbiz.com
Cary, NC USA