Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Re: [BLUG] Xfinity, Ubuntu woes

Yeah, I'm aware. What's the acronym... mdi-x? Medium dependent interface?

Though it's pretty much a standard feature, I've also run across devices since that was implemented which either don't manage it properly or still just don't have it. Not everything (seems like it's usually the consumer stuff) uses the internal switching, so I still keep a couple x-overs I've made just in case.

I suggest a crossover cable in this case because it should work with one whether the device automatically switches the contacts on the port or not. Hunter's right though, there's no real reason not to try it with a regular old ethernet cable.

On Aug 13, 2014 5:06 PM, Kevin Hunter Kesling <hunteke@gmail.com> wrote:
At 2:47pm -0400 Wed, 13 Aug 2014, Ryan Lee Kiser wrote:
> I presume you can connect to one of the Ethernet ports with a
> crossover cable into a wireless router and just use it as a modem.

As a friendly FYI: 10+ years ago, the term crossover cable meant that
the ethernet cable in question had the relevant input and output wires
switched from a normal ethernet cable, so that the output of port A
talked to the input of port B and vice versa.

This was necessary/convenient if you wanted to have two machines
communicate and you did not have a hub or switch available (and a second
ethernet cable).

Since ~2005, however, no special crossover cable is needed as all (to my
knowledge, anyway) ethernet cards have built-in hardware logic to
auto-negotiate which wires are input and output upon connection.  So,
when he says "crossover cable", you can translate that in your mind to
just "cable".  (Unless of course you're working with hardware older than
2005!)

Cheers,

Kevin
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Re: [BLUG] Xfinity, Ubuntu woes

At 2:47pm -0400 Wed, 13 Aug 2014, Ryan Lee Kiser wrote:
> I presume you can connect to one of the Ethernet ports with a
> crossover cable into a wireless router and just use it as a modem.

As a friendly FYI: 10+ years ago, the term crossover cable meant that
the ethernet cable in question had the relevant input and output wires
switched from a normal ethernet cable, so that the output of port A
talked to the input of port B and vice versa.

This was necessary/convenient if you wanted to have two machines
communicate and you did not have a hub or switch available (and a second
ethernet cable).

Since ~2005, however, no special crossover cable is needed as all (to my
knowledge, anyway) ethernet cards have built-in hardware logic to
auto-negotiate which wires are input and output upon connection. So,
when he says "crossover cable", you can translate that in your mind to
just "cable". (Unless of course you're working with hardware older than
2005!)

Cheers,

Kevin
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Xfinity, Ubuntu woes

I'm thinking that the big time delay before it gives me real connectivity has something to do with some sort of protocol/program that is running, running, running, then finally timing out. If so, it's blocking my connectivity.

BTW, thanks for all your help for this Indiana newbie!

LB


On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 2:47 PM, Kiser, Ryan Lee <rlkiser@iu.edu> wrote:

I presume this is it?

http://www.cisco.com/web/consumer/support/modem_DPC3939.html

 

I have zero experience with that hardware, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt, but I presume you can connect to one of the Ethernet ports with a crossover cable into a wireless router and just use it as a modem. That should work unless Comcast is doing something really wacky and/or obnoxious with their hardware. I imagine you'll want to ask them if they can disable the wireless radios in the box to keep it from interfering before buying something for yourself.

 

I personally like the Asus and Buffalo wireless N routers. I've had good luck with both. I've been using a Buffalo Airstation N600 running their DD-WRT firmware setup at home for the past 3 years or so with a Motorola Surfboard modem and haven't had a single problem with it since I ditched Comcast's modem to use my own. Lots of nice features come with DD-WRT as well if you're willing to dig into the technical stuff.

 

Another thing to consider if you think the XB3 is the source of your headaches… If you're paying to rent the XB3 from them it might be worth it in the long run to invest in your own modem. I was paying $6 a month to use their basic modem (Motorola SB5100) before I bought my own, so that's $72 a year. I bought the Motorola Surfboard SB6120 for $65 shipped. It's been consistently faster (DOCSIS 3.0! Whee!) and more reliable and it's still going strong 3 years later. The downside is that you'd be responsible for it yourself. If something goes sideways Comcast can use the "your hardware's probably causing it" excuse to get out of support. I got to hear that from them once before I bought my own modem to replace their leased junk modem. Not fun.

 

Just something to think about.

 

-Ryan

 

From: blug-bounces@lists.bloomingtonlinux.org [mailto:blug-bounces@lists.bloomingtonlinux.org] On Behalf Of Lawrence Bottorff
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 1:55 PM
To: Bloomington LINUX Users Group
Subject: Re: [BLUG] Xfinity, Ubuntu woes

 

AFA "did something," it was the Comcast tech who "did something" on his end. No Comcaster has seen or touched my machine.

 

At this point I've noticed it simply seems to be a function of time: I wait, say, 15 minutes . . . and it suddenly works. All the while, though, the connection icon is lit, saying I'm good to go. But yeah, wait ten, fifteen and it works. Disconnect, reconnect, works immediately. 

 

Could someone suggest a wifi router that would be compatible with an Xfinity XB3? I tried my old Quest PK5000, but it's a DSL modem.

 

LB

 

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Kirk Gleason <kgleason@gmail.com> wrote:

Concur completely. But I did get that line from a technician. It *was* hard not to laugh in his face, but I did manage.

 

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 9:48 AM, dosman <dosman@packetsniffers.org> wrote:

Blanket statements like "your wifi is not as fast as our wifi" are laughable at best. There's no magic Comcast wifi protocol that works better. Anything any provider tells you over the phone needs to be taken with a grain of salt, they are just reading from a script. The only people I would trust are the technicians that show up at your door, and even then not all of those folks are as sharp as one would hope, but my personal experience with them has been very good (both AT&T and Comcast techs).



On Aug 13, 2014, at 8:57 AM, Kirk Gleason wrote:

> Also worth noting is that Comcast tries to do some things with their "free wifi-routers" that I find to be suspicious and you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to be able to run your own router -- you have to specifically request that they convert the provided router to a bridge. I've had some serious issues with the provided Comcast WiFi stuff (not just in Linux) and in every case, I've ended up disabling the wifi on the Comcast provided device, getting them to enable the bridge mode, and running my router.
>
> Comcast alleges that this slows down your wifi. Perhaps. I don't have a baseline to test against. I know that in my house, we are able to comfortably run 2 netflix streams and a hulu stream simultaneously.
>
> Are you using the router from Comcast? If so, do you have access to a different router?
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:15 PM, Kevin Hunter Kesling <hunteke@gmail.com> wrote:
> At 5:07pm -0400 Sat, 09 Aug 2014, Lawrence Bottorff wrote:
> I'm on U14.04 on my Thinkpad X201. I could not get Wifi to work at
> all initially. Then a Xfinity support person "changed something" and
> it . . . sort of worked.
>
> In context of the second sentence, it's not clear to me whether you are talking about the Xfinity hardware, or your laptop.  Did the Xfinity support personality help you with Linux on your laptop?  If so (and I gather from the other messages in this thread that they did), then I'm impressed, as I'm not aware of too many Linux support options for the desktop (okay, laptop) user.
>
> I'm also curious: you say they changed "something".  How did they do this?  Did you give them root access to your machine?
>
>
> That means it worked after fiddling with enable, disable, (I'm on
> Gnome classic). Actually, I don't know what I would do, but
> eventually it would work.
>
> For debugging purposes, it's important to describe what you mean by "wouldn't work".  Does the network just stop responding?  For example, are you in the middle of downloading a web page which stops halfway through, and then you note that you can't do anything (open any other website in another tab, ping a google.com, etc.)?  Does the NetworkManager applet animate as if it's unable to connect to a network?
>
> In a later message, you pasted some lines from the syslog.  I think some bits are missing from each session, which may be important for tracking down the issue.  Nevertheless, I do note one difference:
>
>     Bad session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
>
>      'HOME-2D4F-2.4' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
>
>     Good session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
>
>      'HOME-2D4F-5' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
>
> Given just this difference, 2.4 vs 5, I wonder if there is a mismatch in either the Xfinity implementation of 802.11n ("Wireless N"), or -- more likely -- is the wireless N driver incomplete on your X201?  In other words, given 802.11n, it is _not_ strange that it wants to use both frequencies (recall that 802.11n is a MIMO technology), but I wonder if the implementation is buggy.  Specifically, I know that Intel wireless Linux drivers had, at one point, some issues with 802.11n.  Do they still?
>
>
> Then I'd put it in suspend, come back . . . and it wouldn't work.
> Repeat fiddling, rebooting, etc., then it would work. Any ideas what
> I'm having probs with?
>
> Notwithstanding my above question, this general behavior echoes experiences I've had with some wireless firmware and kernel modules.  In the end, my solution was to remove the module, and reinsert it.  Since your lshw output suggests you use iwlwifi as your wireless driver, here's the relevant action from the command line:
>
>     $ sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
>     $ sudo modprobe iwlwifi
>
> This is the moral equivalent of rebooting, but at the driver level.  At this point, if it doesn't "just work", you should be able to restart NetworkManager (sudo service networkmanager restart).  That simple trick has fixed 90% of my wireless "stopped working randomly or post-suspend" issues on Linux.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Kevin
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
>
> --
> Kirk Gleason
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason


_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug

 


_______________________________________________
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BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug


Re: [BLUG] Xfinity, Ubuntu woes

I presume this is it?

http://www.cisco.com/web/consumer/support/modem_DPC3939.html

 

I have zero experience with that hardware, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt, but I presume you can connect to one of the Ethernet ports with a crossover cable into a wireless router and just use it as a modem. That should work unless Comcast is doing something really wacky and/or obnoxious with their hardware. I imagine you'll want to ask them if they can disable the wireless radios in the box to keep it from interfering before buying something for yourself.

 

I personally like the Asus and Buffalo wireless N routers. I've had good luck with both. I've been using a Buffalo Airstation N600 running their DD-WRT firmware setup at home for the past 3 years or so with a Motorola Surfboard modem and haven't had a single problem with it since I ditched Comcast's modem to use my own. Lots of nice features come with DD-WRT as well if you're willing to dig into the technical stuff.

 

Another thing to consider if you think the XB3 is the source of your headaches… If you're paying to rent the XB3 from them it might be worth it in the long run to invest in your own modem. I was paying $6 a month to use their basic modem (Motorola SB5100) before I bought my own, so that's $72 a year. I bought the Motorola Surfboard SB6120 for $65 shipped. It's been consistently faster (DOCSIS 3.0! Whee!) and more reliable and it's still going strong 3 years later. The downside is that you'd be responsible for it yourself. If something goes sideways Comcast can use the "your hardware's probably causing it" excuse to get out of support. I got to hear that from them once before I bought my own modem to replace their leased junk modem. Not fun.

 

Just something to think about.

 

-Ryan

 

From: blug-bounces@lists.bloomingtonlinux.org [mailto:blug-bounces@lists.bloomingtonlinux.org] On Behalf Of Lawrence Bottorff
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 1:55 PM
To: Bloomington LINUX Users Group
Subject: Re: [BLUG] Xfinity, Ubuntu woes

 

AFA "did something," it was the Comcast tech who "did something" on his end. No Comcaster has seen or touched my machine.

 

At this point I've noticed it simply seems to be a function of time: I wait, say, 15 minutes . . . and it suddenly works. All the while, though, the connection icon is lit, saying I'm good to go. But yeah, wait ten, fifteen and it works. Disconnect, reconnect, works immediately. 

 

Could someone suggest a wifi router that would be compatible with an Xfinity XB3? I tried my old Quest PK5000, but it's a DSL modem.

 

LB

 

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Kirk Gleason <kgleason@gmail.com> wrote:

Concur completely. But I did get that line from a technician. It *was* hard not to laugh in his face, but I did manage.

 

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 9:48 AM, dosman <dosman@packetsniffers.org> wrote:

Blanket statements like "your wifi is not as fast as our wifi" are laughable at best. There's no magic Comcast wifi protocol that works better. Anything any provider tells you over the phone needs to be taken with a grain of salt, they are just reading from a script. The only people I would trust are the technicians that show up at your door, and even then not all of those folks are as sharp as one would hope, but my personal experience with them has been very good (both AT&T and Comcast techs).



On Aug 13, 2014, at 8:57 AM, Kirk Gleason wrote:

> Also worth noting is that Comcast tries to do some things with their "free wifi-routers" that I find to be suspicious and you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to be able to run your own router -- you have to specifically request that they convert the provided router to a bridge. I've had some serious issues with the provided Comcast WiFi stuff (not just in Linux) and in every case, I've ended up disabling the wifi on the Comcast provided device, getting them to enable the bridge mode, and running my router.
>
> Comcast alleges that this slows down your wifi. Perhaps. I don't have a baseline to test against. I know that in my house, we are able to comfortably run 2 netflix streams and a hulu stream simultaneously.
>
> Are you using the router from Comcast? If so, do you have access to a different router?
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:15 PM, Kevin Hunter Kesling <hunteke@gmail.com> wrote:
> At 5:07pm -0400 Sat, 09 Aug 2014, Lawrence Bottorff wrote:
> I'm on U14.04 on my Thinkpad X201. I could not get Wifi to work at
> all initially. Then a Xfinity support person "changed something" and
> it . . . sort of worked.
>
> In context of the second sentence, it's not clear to me whether you are talking about the Xfinity hardware, or your laptop.  Did the Xfinity support personality help you with Linux on your laptop?  If so (and I gather from the other messages in this thread that they did), then I'm impressed, as I'm not aware of too many Linux support options for the desktop (okay, laptop) user.
>
> I'm also curious: you say they changed "something".  How did they do this?  Did you give them root access to your machine?
>
>
> That means it worked after fiddling with enable, disable, (I'm on
> Gnome classic). Actually, I don't know what I would do, but
> eventually it would work.
>
> For debugging purposes, it's important to describe what you mean by "wouldn't work".  Does the network just stop responding?  For example, are you in the middle of downloading a web page which stops halfway through, and then you note that you can't do anything (open any other website in another tab, ping a google.com, etc.)?  Does the NetworkManager applet animate as if it's unable to connect to a network?
>
> In a later message, you pasted some lines from the syslog.  I think some bits are missing from each session, which may be important for tracking down the issue.  Nevertheless, I do note one difference:
>
>     Bad session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
>
>      'HOME-2D4F-2.4' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
>
>     Good session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
>
>      'HOME-2D4F-5' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
>
> Given just this difference, 2.4 vs 5, I wonder if there is a mismatch in either the Xfinity implementation of 802.11n ("Wireless N"), or -- more likely -- is the wireless N driver incomplete on your X201?  In other words, given 802.11n, it is _not_ strange that it wants to use both frequencies (recall that 802.11n is a MIMO technology), but I wonder if the implementation is buggy.  Specifically, I know that Intel wireless Linux drivers had, at one point, some issues with 802.11n.  Do they still?
>
>
> Then I'd put it in suspend, come back . . . and it wouldn't work.
> Repeat fiddling, rebooting, etc., then it would work. Any ideas what
> I'm having probs with?
>
> Notwithstanding my above question, this general behavior echoes experiences I've had with some wireless firmware and kernel modules.  In the end, my solution was to remove the module, and reinsert it.  Since your lshw output suggests you use iwlwifi as your wireless driver, here's the relevant action from the command line:
>
>     $ sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
>     $ sudo modprobe iwlwifi
>
> This is the moral equivalent of rebooting, but at the driver level.  At this point, if it doesn't "just work", you should be able to restart NetworkManager (sudo service networkmanager restart).  That simple trick has fixed 90% of my wireless "stopped working randomly or post-suspend" issues on Linux.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Kevin
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
>
> --
> Kirk Gleason
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason


_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug

 

Re: [BLUG] Xfinity, Ubuntu woes

I have an X201 as well but it runs Windows 8.1. When I first updated it
to Windows 8.1, I also ran into this weird problem that sometimes the
wireless connection stopped working after waking up form suspend or
hibernation. The following solution seems to help (and judging from your
reply, it might related to this problem. Thus see if the Linux driver
has this option or not):

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-networking/windows-81-dropping-wireless-connection/88ef2187-38f6-436b-bc25-e92cf6fe05af

I have a Motorola SURFboard SBG6580 that is 3-in-1: 1) cable modem, 2)
with 4 1Gb ports and 3) wireless AP. Works pretty well with a large
range of wireless equipments.

Bruce

On 8/13/2014 1:55 PM, Lawrence Bottorff wrote:
> AFA "did something," it was the Comcast tech who "did something" on
> his end. No Comcaster has seen or touched my machine.
>
> At this point I've noticed it simply seems to be a function of time: I
> wait, say, 15 minutes . . . and it suddenly works. All the while,
> though, the connection icon is lit, saying I'm good to go. But yeah,
> wait ten, fifteen and it works. Disconnect, reconnect, works immediately.
>
> Could someone suggest a wifi router that would be compatible with an
> Xfinity XB3? I tried my old Quest PK5000, but it's a DSL modem.
>
> LB
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Kirk Gleason <kgleason@gmail.com
> <mailto:kgleason@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Concur completely. But I did get that line from a technician. It
> *was* hard not to laugh in his face, but I did manage.
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 9:48 AM, dosman <dosman@packetsniffers.org
> <mailto:dosman@packetsniffers.org>> wrote:
>
> Blanket statements like "your wifi is not as fast as our wifi"
> are laughable at best. There's no magic Comcast wifi protocol
> that works better. Anything any provider tells you over the
> phone needs to be taken with a grain of salt, they are just
> reading from a script. The only people I would trust are the
> technicians that show up at your door, and even then not all
> of those folks are as sharp as one would hope, but my personal
> experience with them has been very good (both AT&T and Comcast
> techs).
>
>
> On Aug 13, 2014, at 8:57 AM, Kirk Gleason wrote:
>
> > Also worth noting is that Comcast tries to do some things
> with their "free wifi-routers" that I find to be suspicious
> and you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to be able to
> run your own router -- you have to specifically request that
> they convert the provided router to a bridge. I've had some
> serious issues with the provided Comcast WiFi stuff (not just
> in Linux) and in every case, I've ended up disabling the wifi
> on the Comcast provided device, getting them to enable the
> bridge mode, and running my router.
> >
> > Comcast alleges that this slows down your wifi. Perhaps. I
> don't have a baseline to test against. I know that in my
> house, we are able to comfortably run 2 netflix streams and a
> hulu stream simultaneously.
> >
> > Are you using the router from Comcast? If so, do you have
> access to a different router?
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:15 PM, Kevin Hunter Kesling
> <hunteke@gmail.com <mailto:hunteke@gmail.com>> wrote:
> > At 5:07pm -0400 Sat, 09 Aug 2014, Lawrence Bottorff wrote:
> > I'm on U14.04 on my Thinkpad X201. I could not get Wifi to
> work at
> > all initially. Then a Xfinity support person "changed
> something" and
> > it . . . sort of worked.
> >
> > In context of the second sentence, it's not clear to me
> whether you are talking about the Xfinity hardware, or your
> laptop. Did the Xfinity support personality help you with
> Linux on your laptop? If so (and I gather from the other
> messages in this thread that they did), then I'm impressed, as
> I'm not aware of too many Linux support options for the
> desktop (okay, laptop) user.
> >
> > I'm also curious: you say they changed "something". How did
> they do this? Did you give them root access to your machine?
> >
> >
> > That means it worked after fiddling with enable, disable,
> (I'm on
> > Gnome classic). Actually, I don't know what I would do, but
> > eventually it would work.
> >
> > For debugging purposes, it's important to describe what you
> mean by "wouldn't work". Does the network just stop
> responding? For example, are you in the middle of downloading
> a web page which stops halfway through, and then you note that
> you can't do anything (open any other website in another tab,
> ping a google.com <http://google.com>, etc.)? Does the
> NetworkManager applet animate as if it's unable to connect to
> a network?
> >
> > In a later message, you pasted some lines from the syslog.
> I think some bits are missing from each session, which may be
> important for tracking down the issue. Nevertheless, I do
> note one difference:
> >
> > Bad session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
> >
> > 'HOME-2D4F-2.4' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and
> DNS.
> >
> > Good session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
> >
> > 'HOME-2D4F-5' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
> >
> > Given just this difference, 2.4 vs 5, I wonder if there is a
> mismatch in either the Xfinity implementation of 802.11n
> ("Wireless N"), or -- more likely -- is the wireless N driver
> incomplete on your X201? In other words, given 802.11n, it is
> _not_ strange that it wants to use both frequencies (recall
> that 802.11n is a MIMO technology), but I wonder if the
> implementation is buggy. Specifically, I know that Intel
> wireless Linux drivers had, at one point, some issues with
> 802.11n. Do they still?
> >
> >
> > Then I'd put it in suspend, come back . . . and it wouldn't
> work.
> > Repeat fiddling, rebooting, etc., then it would work. Any
> ideas what
> > I'm having probs with?
> >
> > Notwithstanding my above question, this general behavior
> echoes experiences I've had with some wireless firmware and
> kernel modules. In the end, my solution was to remove the
> module, and reinsert it. Since your lshw output suggests you
> use iwlwifi as your wireless driver, here's the relevant
> action from the command line:
> >
> > $ sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
> > $ sudo modprobe iwlwifi
> >
> > This is the moral equivalent of rebooting, but at the driver
> level. At this point, if it doesn't "just work", you should
> be able to restart NetworkManager (sudo service networkmanager
> restart). That simple trick has fixed 90% of my wireless
> "stopped working randomly or post-suspend" issues on Linux.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Kevin
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > BLUG mailing list
> > BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org <mailto:BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org>
> > http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Kirk Gleason
> > _______________________________________________
> > BLUG mailing list
> > BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org <mailto:BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org>
> > http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org <mailto:BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org>
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
>
>
> --
> Kirk Gleason
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org <mailto:BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org>
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Xfinity, Ubuntu woes

AFA "did something," it was the Comcast tech who "did something" on his end. No Comcaster has seen or touched my machine.

At this point I've noticed it simply seems to be a function of time: I wait, say, 15 minutes . . . and it suddenly works. All the while, though, the connection icon is lit, saying I'm good to go. But yeah, wait ten, fifteen and it works. Disconnect, reconnect, works immediately. 

Could someone suggest a wifi router that would be compatible with an Xfinity XB3? I tried my old Quest PK5000, but it's a DSL modem.

LB


On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Kirk Gleason <kgleason@gmail.com> wrote:
Concur completely. But I did get that line from a technician. It *was* hard not to laugh in his face, but I did manage.


On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 9:48 AM, dosman <dosman@packetsniffers.org> wrote:
Blanket statements like "your wifi is not as fast as our wifi" are laughable at best. There's no magic Comcast wifi protocol that works better. Anything any provider tells you over the phone needs to be taken with a grain of salt, they are just reading from a script. The only people I would trust are the technicians that show up at your door, and even then not all of those folks are as sharp as one would hope, but my personal experience with them has been very good (both AT&T and Comcast techs).


On Aug 13, 2014, at 8:57 AM, Kirk Gleason wrote:

> Also worth noting is that Comcast tries to do some things with their "free wifi-routers" that I find to be suspicious and you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to be able to run your own router -- you have to specifically request that they convert the provided router to a bridge. I've had some serious issues with the provided Comcast WiFi stuff (not just in Linux) and in every case, I've ended up disabling the wifi on the Comcast provided device, getting them to enable the bridge mode, and running my router.
>
> Comcast alleges that this slows down your wifi. Perhaps. I don't have a baseline to test against. I know that in my house, we are able to comfortably run 2 netflix streams and a hulu stream simultaneously.
>
> Are you using the router from Comcast? If so, do you have access to a different router?
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:15 PM, Kevin Hunter Kesling <hunteke@gmail.com> wrote:
> At 5:07pm -0400 Sat, 09 Aug 2014, Lawrence Bottorff wrote:
> I'm on U14.04 on my Thinkpad X201. I could not get Wifi to work at
> all initially. Then a Xfinity support person "changed something" and
> it . . . sort of worked.
>
> In context of the second sentence, it's not clear to me whether you are talking about the Xfinity hardware, or your laptop.  Did the Xfinity support personality help you with Linux on your laptop?  If so (and I gather from the other messages in this thread that they did), then I'm impressed, as I'm not aware of too many Linux support options for the desktop (okay, laptop) user.
>
> I'm also curious: you say they changed "something".  How did they do this?  Did you give them root access to your machine?
>
>
> That means it worked after fiddling with enable, disable, (I'm on
> Gnome classic). Actually, I don't know what I would do, but
> eventually it would work.
>
> For debugging purposes, it's important to describe what you mean by "wouldn't work".  Does the network just stop responding?  For example, are you in the middle of downloading a web page which stops halfway through, and then you note that you can't do anything (open any other website in another tab, ping a google.com, etc.)?  Does the NetworkManager applet animate as if it's unable to connect to a network?
>
> In a later message, you pasted some lines from the syslog.  I think some bits are missing from each session, which may be important for tracking down the issue.  Nevertheless, I do note one difference:
>
>     Bad session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
>
>      'HOME-2D4F-2.4' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
>
>     Good session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
>
>      'HOME-2D4F-5' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
>
> Given just this difference, 2.4 vs 5, I wonder if there is a mismatch in either the Xfinity implementation of 802.11n ("Wireless N"), or -- more likely -- is the wireless N driver incomplete on your X201?  In other words, given 802.11n, it is _not_ strange that it wants to use both frequencies (recall that 802.11n is a MIMO technology), but I wonder if the implementation is buggy.  Specifically, I know that Intel wireless Linux drivers had, at one point, some issues with 802.11n.  Do they still?
>
>
> Then I'd put it in suspend, come back . . . and it wouldn't work.
> Repeat fiddling, rebooting, etc., then it would work. Any ideas what
> I'm having probs with?
>
> Notwithstanding my above question, this general behavior echoes experiences I've had with some wireless firmware and kernel modules.  In the end, my solution was to remove the module, and reinsert it.  Since your lshw output suggests you use iwlwifi as your wireless driver, here's the relevant action from the command line:
>
>     $ sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
>     $ sudo modprobe iwlwifi
>
> This is the moral equivalent of rebooting, but at the driver level.  At this point, if it doesn't "just work", you should be able to restart NetworkManager (sudo service networkmanager restart).  That simple trick has fixed 90% of my wireless "stopped working randomly or post-suspend" issues on Linux.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Kevin
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
>
> --
> Kirk Gleason
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug


Re: [BLUG] Xfinity, Ubuntu woes

Concur completely. But I did get that line from a technician. It *was* hard not to laugh in his face, but I did manage.


On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 9:48 AM, dosman <dosman@packetsniffers.org> wrote:
Blanket statements like "your wifi is not as fast as our wifi" are laughable at best. There's no magic Comcast wifi protocol that works better. Anything any provider tells you over the phone needs to be taken with a grain of salt, they are just reading from a script. The only people I would trust are the technicians that show up at your door, and even then not all of those folks are as sharp as one would hope, but my personal experience with them has been very good (both AT&T and Comcast techs).


On Aug 13, 2014, at 8:57 AM, Kirk Gleason wrote:

> Also worth noting is that Comcast tries to do some things with their "free wifi-routers" that I find to be suspicious and you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to be able to run your own router -- you have to specifically request that they convert the provided router to a bridge. I've had some serious issues with the provided Comcast WiFi stuff (not just in Linux) and in every case, I've ended up disabling the wifi on the Comcast provided device, getting them to enable the bridge mode, and running my router.
>
> Comcast alleges that this slows down your wifi. Perhaps. I don't have a baseline to test against. I know that in my house, we are able to comfortably run 2 netflix streams and a hulu stream simultaneously.
>
> Are you using the router from Comcast? If so, do you have access to a different router?
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:15 PM, Kevin Hunter Kesling <hunteke@gmail.com> wrote:
> At 5:07pm -0400 Sat, 09 Aug 2014, Lawrence Bottorff wrote:
> I'm on U14.04 on my Thinkpad X201. I could not get Wifi to work at
> all initially. Then a Xfinity support person "changed something" and
> it . . . sort of worked.
>
> In context of the second sentence, it's not clear to me whether you are talking about the Xfinity hardware, or your laptop.  Did the Xfinity support personality help you with Linux on your laptop?  If so (and I gather from the other messages in this thread that they did), then I'm impressed, as I'm not aware of too many Linux support options for the desktop (okay, laptop) user.
>
> I'm also curious: you say they changed "something".  How did they do this?  Did you give them root access to your machine?
>
>
> That means it worked after fiddling with enable, disable, (I'm on
> Gnome classic). Actually, I don't know what I would do, but
> eventually it would work.
>
> For debugging purposes, it's important to describe what you mean by "wouldn't work".  Does the network just stop responding?  For example, are you in the middle of downloading a web page which stops halfway through, and then you note that you can't do anything (open any other website in another tab, ping a google.com, etc.)?  Does the NetworkManager applet animate as if it's unable to connect to a network?
>
> In a later message, you pasted some lines from the syslog.  I think some bits are missing from each session, which may be important for tracking down the issue.  Nevertheless, I do note one difference:
>
>     Bad session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
>
>      'HOME-2D4F-2.4' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
>
>     Good session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
>
>      'HOME-2D4F-5' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
>
> Given just this difference, 2.4 vs 5, I wonder if there is a mismatch in either the Xfinity implementation of 802.11n ("Wireless N"), or -- more likely -- is the wireless N driver incomplete on your X201?  In other words, given 802.11n, it is _not_ strange that it wants to use both frequencies (recall that 802.11n is a MIMO technology), but I wonder if the implementation is buggy.  Specifically, I know that Intel wireless Linux drivers had, at one point, some issues with 802.11n.  Do they still?
>
>
> Then I'd put it in suspend, come back . . . and it wouldn't work.
> Repeat fiddling, rebooting, etc., then it would work. Any ideas what
> I'm having probs with?
>
> Notwithstanding my above question, this general behavior echoes experiences I've had with some wireless firmware and kernel modules.  In the end, my solution was to remove the module, and reinsert it.  Since your lshw output suggests you use iwlwifi as your wireless driver, here's the relevant action from the command line:
>
>     $ sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
>     $ sudo modprobe iwlwifi
>
> This is the moral equivalent of rebooting, but at the driver level.  At this point, if it doesn't "just work", you should be able to restart NetworkManager (sudo service networkmanager restart).  That simple trick has fixed 90% of my wireless "stopped working randomly or post-suspend" issues on Linux.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Kevin
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
>
> --
> Kirk Gleason
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason

Re: [BLUG] Xfinity, Ubuntu woes

Blanket statements like "your wifi is not as fast as our wifi" are laughable at best. There's no magic Comcast wifi protocol that works better. Anything any provider tells you over the phone needs to be taken with a grain of salt, they are just reading from a script. The only people I would trust are the technicians that show up at your door, and even then not all of those folks are as sharp as one would hope, but my personal experience with them has been very good (both AT&T and Comcast techs).


On Aug 13, 2014, at 8:57 AM, Kirk Gleason wrote:

> Also worth noting is that Comcast tries to do some things with their "free wifi-routers" that I find to be suspicious and you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to be able to run your own router -- you have to specifically request that they convert the provided router to a bridge. I've had some serious issues with the provided Comcast WiFi stuff (not just in Linux) and in every case, I've ended up disabling the wifi on the Comcast provided device, getting them to enable the bridge mode, and running my router.
>
> Comcast alleges that this slows down your wifi. Perhaps. I don't have a baseline to test against. I know that in my house, we are able to comfortably run 2 netflix streams and a hulu stream simultaneously.
>
> Are you using the router from Comcast? If so, do you have access to a different router?
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:15 PM, Kevin Hunter Kesling <hunteke@gmail.com> wrote:
> At 5:07pm -0400 Sat, 09 Aug 2014, Lawrence Bottorff wrote:
> I'm on U14.04 on my Thinkpad X201. I could not get Wifi to work at
> all initially. Then a Xfinity support person "changed something" and
> it . . . sort of worked.
>
> In context of the second sentence, it's not clear to me whether you are talking about the Xfinity hardware, or your laptop. Did the Xfinity support personality help you with Linux on your laptop? If so (and I gather from the other messages in this thread that they did), then I'm impressed, as I'm not aware of too many Linux support options for the desktop (okay, laptop) user.
>
> I'm also curious: you say they changed "something". How did they do this? Did you give them root access to your machine?
>
>
> That means it worked after fiddling with enable, disable, (I'm on
> Gnome classic). Actually, I don't know what I would do, but
> eventually it would work.
>
> For debugging purposes, it's important to describe what you mean by "wouldn't work". Does the network just stop responding? For example, are you in the middle of downloading a web page which stops halfway through, and then you note that you can't do anything (open any other website in another tab, ping a google.com, etc.)? Does the NetworkManager applet animate as if it's unable to connect to a network?
>
> In a later message, you pasted some lines from the syslog. I think some bits are missing from each session, which may be important for tracking down the issue. Nevertheless, I do note one difference:
>
> Bad session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
>
> 'HOME-2D4F-2.4' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
>
> Good session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set
>
> 'HOME-2D4F-5' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
>
> Given just this difference, 2.4 vs 5, I wonder if there is a mismatch in either the Xfinity implementation of 802.11n ("Wireless N"), or -- more likely -- is the wireless N driver incomplete on your X201? In other words, given 802.11n, it is _not_ strange that it wants to use both frequencies (recall that 802.11n is a MIMO technology), but I wonder if the implementation is buggy. Specifically, I know that Intel wireless Linux drivers had, at one point, some issues with 802.11n. Do they still?
>
>
> Then I'd put it in suspend, come back . . . and it wouldn't work.
> Repeat fiddling, rebooting, etc., then it would work. Any ideas what
> I'm having probs with?
>
> Notwithstanding my above question, this general behavior echoes experiences I've had with some wireless firmware and kernel modules. In the end, my solution was to remove the module, and reinsert it. Since your lshw output suggests you use iwlwifi as your wireless driver, here's the relevant action from the command line:
>
> $ sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
> $ sudo modprobe iwlwifi
>
> This is the moral equivalent of rebooting, but at the driver level. At this point, if it doesn't "just work", you should be able to restart NetworkManager (sudo service networkmanager restart). That simple trick has fixed 90% of my wireless "stopped working randomly or post-suspend" issues on Linux.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Kevin
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
>
> --
> Kirk Gleason
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
> http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Xfinity, Ubuntu woes

Also worth noting is that Comcast tries to do some things with their "free wifi-routers" that I find to be suspicious and you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to be able to run your own router -- you have to specifically request that they convert the provided router to a bridge. I've had some serious issues with the provided Comcast WiFi stuff (not just in Linux) and in every case, I've ended up disabling the wifi on the Comcast provided device, getting them to enable the bridge mode, and running my router.

Comcast alleges that this slows down your wifi. Perhaps. I don't have a baseline to test against. I know that in my house, we are able to comfortably run 2 netflix streams and a hulu stream simultaneously.

Are you using the router from Comcast? If so, do you have access to a different router?


On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:15 PM, Kevin Hunter Kesling <hunteke@gmail.com> wrote:
At 5:07pm -0400 Sat, 09 Aug 2014, Lawrence Bottorff wrote:
I'm on U14.04 on my Thinkpad X201. I could not get Wifi to work at
all initially. Then a Xfinity support person "changed something" and
it . . . sort of worked.

In context of the second sentence, it's not clear to me whether you are talking about the Xfinity hardware, or your laptop.  Did the Xfinity support personality help you with Linux on your laptop?  If so (and I gather from the other messages in this thread that they did), then I'm impressed, as I'm not aware of too many Linux support options for the desktop (okay, laptop) user.

I'm also curious: you say they changed "something".  How did they do this?  Did you give them root access to your machine?


That means it worked after fiddling with enable, disable, (I'm on
Gnome classic). Actually, I don't know what I would do, but
eventually it would work.

For debugging purposes, it's important to describe what you mean by "wouldn't work".  Does the network just stop responding?  For example, are you in the middle of downloading a web page which stops halfway through, and then you note that you can't do anything (open any other website in another tab, ping a google.com, etc.)?  Does the NetworkManager applet animate as if it's unable to connect to a network?

In a later message, you pasted some lines from the syslog.  I think some bits are missing from each session, which may be important for tracking down the issue.  Nevertheless, I do note one difference:

    Bad session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set

     'HOME-2D4F-2.4' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.

    Good session: NetworkManager[1525]: <info> Policy set

     'HOME-2D4F-5' (wlan2) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.

Given just this difference, 2.4 vs 5, I wonder if there is a mismatch in either the Xfinity implementation of 802.11n ("Wireless N"), or -- more likely -- is the wireless N driver incomplete on your X201?  In other words, given 802.11n, it is _not_ strange that it wants to use both frequencies (recall that 802.11n is a MIMO technology), but I wonder if the implementation is buggy.  Specifically, I know that Intel wireless Linux drivers had, at one point, some issues with 802.11n.  Do they still?


Then I'd put it in suspend, come back . . . and it wouldn't work.
Repeat fiddling, rebooting, etc., then it would work. Any ideas what
I'm having probs with?

Notwithstanding my above question, this general behavior echoes experiences I've had with some wireless firmware and kernel modules.  In the end, my solution was to remove the module, and reinsert it.  Since your lshw output suggests you use iwlwifi as your wireless driver, here's the relevant action from the command line:

    $ sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
    $ sudo modprobe iwlwifi

This is the moral equivalent of rebooting, but at the driver level.  At this point, if it doesn't "just work", you should be able to restart NetworkManager (sudo service networkmanager restart).  That simple trick has fixed 90% of my wireless "stopped working randomly or post-suspend" issues on Linux.

Cheers,

Kevin

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@bloomingtonlinux.org
http://lists.bloomingtonlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason