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I think my Access Point is dead. And that is a BIG deal. One of my clients called on Saturday afternoon to say she couldn’t access the internet. After describing the problem, i concluded a cable had slipped again.

I came to the office to meet a total disaster: the Ethernet LED on the AP was not on. Which meant there was no data. Which meant the AP was off! (it uses Power-over-ethernet). The equipment was made by Demarctech, a Reliawave RWV 802.11a/b/g Access Point/Bridge. It was mounted at the top of an 80ft mast (phew!). And now i have to climb. The day is particularly windy, and my heart is in my mouth as i move from rung to rung on the rather narrow mast. By the time i get to the mount point, the mast itself is swaying somehow. I have to hang on for dear life. [My chicken-hearted colleague downstairs is hollering “Hey, come down, we’ll call the guy who installed the equipment”]

I eventually find that the idiot who installed the equipment had bound a 20 foot pole to the mast, and the AP was in turn mounted on the pole. Getting a steel pole down from 80ft, on a swaying mast, on a windy day is not yams. I was afraid, annoyed, frustrated, tired. And clients kept calling “when will this thing be up now?” Funny how people never comment when service is good, but they are quick to threaten to change providers once there is a slight hitch.

At one point, i lost my grip on the heavy pole and it swung in a crazy arc until the equipment was upside down, with me grabbing the last few inches of the pole. And i was still like 65 feet up. The sudden change in position made the mast sway more. [I dont think i’ll ever try a stunt like this again] I shouted at my colleague “I need help here”, but he was too chicken to climb even 12 feet. What a shame.
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Some how i brought down the pole. With the AP and anteena intact. I found that Demarctech’s AP was just a silly WRAP.1C board in a weatherproof casing, running some version of linux on a 32MB CF card. Somethign i could have done myself. We’ve paid a lot of dollars for things we could have made i the office, i say to myself. But i found it funny that they had scraped off and painted over the letterings on the board that said “WRAP.1C (c) 2003 PC Engines GmbH”. As if we wouldnt know it was a WRAP board!

I also learned that the Geode SC1100 processor is made by AMD, and is 586 based. I saw a MMCX-to-N-Female pigtail with my two eyes for the first time (hah!), and i learned that there are more pretty outdoor cases for a wrap board. Hmm, demarctech was economizing. Most of what I learn comes from when there is a disaster or a fault, anyway. Now I know I can simply buy my own board, put it in a case, fit in the hardware and sell the product as a firewall/router/bridge. Right now I have a headache. Because both ethernet ports seem to be dead. When connected, the first port LAN1 delivers Power over ethernet beautifully, but I cant connect: my PC says “cable disconnected”. A little googling tells me i have to go to the console to find out what’s really up. I need a null modem cable.

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That’s a cable that plugs into the standard DB9 connector (usually labelled COM1 on the back of your PC), but wires crossed so that it can be used to communicate between 2 PCs. Analogous to crossover ethernet cable. Guess what? Nobody here has heard of it before. So I can’t buy it from a shop here in Lagos, anytime soon. I dont have the tools to wire/solder one. I have to order a $5 piece of hardware - shipping it will be $50. Sometimes I hate living among these technologically-backward-and-loving-it people.

So i’m stuck. I can’t access the AP, i’m afraid to format the CF card and install m0n0wall, pfSense or OpenWRT (dont want to void my warranty, argh!). And the old D-Link 2700AP in the store is just crap. The POE adapter has no signal on the Ethernet data-out port. I am beginning to hate D-Link products. I dont know what stories I am going to tell my people tomorrow, because if we have to order anything, it will take two weeks to get here…
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