Recent Work || Call for help: (206) 347 7600

Problem

A Buckley, WA customer’s Comcast Internet connection frequently goes down — and almost always when needed — during late-night work.

Solution

After assessing the situation, including customer’s finances, a low-cost backup alternative was identified and implemented. This included selection of a (wireless) Internet Service Provider and selection of appropriate hardware for the home office network. From the customer: “My [Comcast] Internet access failed at 01:50 this morning. I switched to the backup you recommended and downloaded 4.0GB until 02:39. Xfinity was still down when I went to bed. Thank you for the backup plan, it worked great.”

Problem

Health care clinic was moving to a new facility. They needed guidance on getting a network up and running in short order. Move in on Monday, open on Wednesday. Among the requirements they need 12 printers to be on the network and accessible from any computer. The network was to also provide a connection for VoIP phone service, staff wifi, and guest wifi.

Solution

Met with general contractor and client at the new facility to see the physical layout, provide suggestions for ethernet runs, provide specifications on the ethernet cables to run, and placement of wifi access points. General contractor pulled the ethernet cable to the desired locations. When cable ethernet cable was in place waited for business Comcast to be installed. Met with the Comcast installer to coordinate a few things then proceeded over two day to a) install and configure access points and b) program 12 printers with node names, and c) implement guest wifi.

Problem

Customer had three ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and associated LANs (Local Area Networks). He wanted the ability to REMOTELY change the ISP and associated LAN of the computer.

Solution

A Windows batch file and PowerShell commands were combined to create simple double-click commands to change the ISP in person or from a remote location.

Problem

Customer needed regular, automatic Internet speed tests to help document poor speeds from T-Mobile’s Business Internet service.

Solution

A Windows batch file script was developed to automate the process. The batch file is called through the Windows Task Scheduler. The script invokes a command line program that does the speed test and writes the results to a CSV (comma separated values) file. These results do not include a date and time stamp. An additional process was developed to add the date and time stamp to the beginning of the CSV file. The results written to the CSV file included upload and download speeds that are not human readable. A Windows Powershell script was developed to convert those numbers to human-readable numbers. The final line of CSV results (with time stamp and converted numbers) is appended to a CSV file that can be imported into spreadsheets or databases.

The automation also required and upgrade to Windows 10 Pro and changes to the Local Security Policies.

The entire sequence of scripts is executed by one batch file invoked by Windows Task Scheduler.

Problem

A customer with T-Mobile business Internet wanted ability to do port forwarding to enable remote access to various devices and services. Regular T-Mobile business Internet uses CGNAT — Carrier Grade Network Translation — that prevents remote access to devices and prevents port forwarding from the Internet (WAN side).

Solution

The customer was advised that adding a static IP number to the T-Mobile business Internet would remove the device from CGNAT and allow port forwarding, in turn allowing for remote access to devices and services. Taking charge of the transition became a hassle because of T-Mobile. Through the process of adding the static IP number to the business Interent T-Mobile mis-configured a back-end system that caused the Inseego FX-2000 gateway to no longer work, meaning no connection could be made to the T-Mobile network. T-Mobile then decided that another Inseego gateway needed to be provided that was provisioned with the static IP number from the start. The new Inseego device was sent via next-day delivery. For the second Inseego T-Mobile gave wrong advice on how to configure the Inseego device for the static IP number. With the correct Inseego settings, the static IP number was working on a solid Internet connection. Port forwarding to devices was then implemented in the Inseego device. One of the services the customer wanted was a Wireguard VPN server set up so remote use of the static IP number could be used (for services that require the WAN IP number to be whitelisted). To create the Wireguard VPN server a special router with Wireguard VPN server was obtained and configured.