The Non-Existent State of IPv6 in Canada
Over the last few days I've been attempting to gather information on IPv6 in Canada, and so far the news is grim. Why am I looking in to it? Well, there have been a number of articles posted lately about the impending end of available IPv4 addresses and the sorry state of IPv6 addoption, and I wanted to check in on my local ISPs and see if any of them are preparing for this. The short answer? No.
My region has two primary ISPs - Telus and Shaw Cable. I did a quick Google search to see if either had made any announcements about IPv6 readiness, and I ended up with no relevant results. In fact, a search of "IPv6" on the domain shaw.ca only returns results on user hosted pages. Searching Google for "IPv6 Telus" only comes up with one close match - this PDF document that's basically a beginners guide to IPv6.
So, I opened a ticket with my ISP (Shaw), and tweeted at their customer care guys. I also tweeted at Telus' customer care. Here's what I got back.
Telus tweeted back pretty quickly:
@laslow We don't have any news on implementation of IPv6. It would make sense that everyone will switch eventually. -Trevor @TELUSSupport
I replied, and they came back with this:
@laslow We'll try and help where we can but no real info on this. Hope your day goes well!
Well, that was rather uninformative.
Sean from Shaw Customer Care also replied rather quickly on Twitter:
@laslow hey man, no word on IPv6 yet, hopefully sometime in the near future though.
Shortly after, I received the following reply to the ticket that I opened with Shaw:
Hello [Laslow],
This is [Agent], thank you for your e-mail.
At this time there is no set date that IPv6 will start to be used. As soon as address’s have ran out with IPv4 then everything would be switched over to the IPv6. Kind of like how in B.C. not including the lower mainland we have been using the area code 250 for years. There are no longer numbers available with the 250 area code so they moved to 778 area codes. It will be similar to this when IPv6 is released, sorry we have no further information for you at this time on this.
So in short, Shaw's plans are to wait until they've run out addresses, and then worry about what to do next. I don't know about you, but I'm definitely feeling more confident that Shaw will be able to connect me to IPv6-only services in the next, you know, ten years or so.
Honestly, though, there are a number of ISPs in the states that already have public IPv6 tests available (Comcast, for example) - why is Canada so far behind?
If anyone reading this works for Telus or Shaw and has more information on their progress towards IPv6, please leave a comment or send me a tweet - It would be nice to know if there are at least plans in place rather than just a sense of "we'll cross that bridge when we get there".
Windows Cannot Connect to the Printer: 0x0000007e/0×00000006
An HP P4015dn - This morning, the bane of my existence
Windows 7 has been very good to me so far, but this morning I was literally pounding my desk in frustration over a printer issue. I just received two brand-new Dell Optiplex 780's and was in the process of configuring the printers on them when I happened across this little message:
Windows Cannot Connect to the Printer: 0x0000007e
Now here's the situation. The computers are running Windows 7 Professional x64. The printer (an HP P4015dn) is connected to a Windows XP x86 machine and shared normally. Of all of our printers, this is the only one directly shared with a computer due to a wiring issue I have yet to correct (although now I'm going to make an effort to fix it). I have several other computers running XP and Vista (x86 and x64) that already print this computer without issue, so I was rather stumped. Then I realized I had attempted to install the Vista x64 Postscript drivers instead of the Windows 7 ones.
Unfortunately, Windows 7 no longer provides a dedicated 'Printers' control panel, and the 'Devices and Printers' one doesn't have a Server Properties option to let you manage installed drivers. So, I stopped the print spooler service and manually deleted the drivers from C:\Windows\System32\spool\Drivers. When I tried to re-add the printer, though, I got this message:
Windows Cannot Connect to the Printer: 0x00000006
Hmm. Google wasn't much help, so I went to an old standby - I mannually added the network printer by choosing to create a local port (silly, I know). Here's how to get this working:
- In the Devices and Printers control panel, choose Add a Printer.
- In the new window, click Add a local printer.
- On the following screen, select Create a new port, and then choose Local Port from the drop-down list and click Next.
- When asked to enter a Port Name, use the full path to the printer. For example, if your printer share is called Dave and is a computer with the name PrintSrv1, you would enter \\PrintSrv1\Dave as the Port Name. If you receive an error saying The network path was not found, check the computer name and share name, then try again.
- You should be asked to install a driver. Manually download the correct driver (in this case, the HP Universal PostScript driver worked for my HP P4015dn) from the manufacturer's website and extract it to a folder on your computer. Then click the Have Disk... button in the Add Printer wizard and point it to that folder, then click OK and Next.
- Wait for it to install the driver.
At this point, the printer should be installed and functional. Print a test page to make sure everything worked alright, and then do a little dance (as long as no one is looking)!
Office Apps Stuck on Downloading Files from Network Shares
For a while now I was having problems opening Word and Excel (2007 and 2010) documents on my work computer. Most of the time everything would work, but every now-and-again I'd go to open something and Word or Excel would report that it was "Downloading <filename>", and simply get stuck. Although I could click the little 'X' to cancel and close the window, the process for either Word or Excel would stay active, and any attempts to kill it would fail. In the end, I'd have to hard power off the computer to get it to shutdown, and then do a cold boot.
Oh, 'Downloading' message, how I hate thee.
I wasn't really bothered by it until a few of my users started reporting the same problem. I had a look in to it, and after a lot of fiddling, came across two Microsoft Knowledge Base articles that eventually led me to a solution.
By adding the registry value from the first KB article linked above (EnableShellDataCaching), and by removing the Group Policy object that was creating a persistent drive mapping and replacing it with a login script (below) to map the drive, I haven't had any further reports of the problem.
REM Login Script - Paste these lines in to a batch file, and add that .bat file to a GPO
net use z: /deletenet use z: \\server\share
Getting an External IP Address on a Sun VirutalBox VM
The other night, a few of my friends and I decided to get together and play a game of Starcraft. We got everything installed, but I quickly discovered that SC looks horrible when shown full screen (at 640x480) on a 22" widescreen monitor.
To solve the problem, I fired up a Windows XP VM I had running on VirtualBox. After enabling 3D Acceleration, the game ran fine, and looked great in the windowed VM. We all connected to a game on Battle.net, and then things went downhill. My soon-to-be-brother-in-law Dave was playing as well, and shares my internet connection. Starcraft, apparently, doesn't like multiple people connected to the same game from behind a single router. Much lag ensued.
To solve the problem, one of us would have to bypass the router. As my system is right beside the cable modem and primary router (and Dave connects through a Client-Bridge router), I was the obvious choice.
After digging around and finding a second NIC, I plugged it in to my system and fired it up. Also in prep, I connected a 10/100 5 port switch to my cable modem and plugged the router in to the switch. Once Windows finished booting, I configured everything as follows (these steps are for Windows XP, however this is possible in Vista and Windows 7 as well):
- Installed the NIC Driver
- Opened the 'Network Connections' Control Panel and opened the Properties dialog for the new adapter
- Unchecked the 'Internet Protocol TCP/IP' option -- this prevents the host operating system from obtaining an IP address on this adapter, which is a must for security, and because my ISP only allows me to use two External IP Addresses.
- Opened Sun VirtualBox, selected my VM and chose 'Settings'
- In the 'Network' section, set the adapater to use the Bridged network, and changed the adapter to the new one.
- Connected the new network card to the switch.
- Booted the VM
Now the XP VM has an External IP Address, and the host operating system doesn't.
Once done, Starcraft played beautifully!
Fun with Hex
Old as the hills, I know, but there's nothing like doing an ipconfig /all and getting the following output:
Ethernet adapter RC-LAN:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : D-Link DFE-530TX PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter (rev.C)
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : DE-AD-BE-EF-00-00
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.50(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled
Short: Some days are better than others…
...and some days aren't.
One big mess-o-cables
My predecessor said that he didn't like running cable and wiring patch panels. I believe him.
Watchdog script for misbehaving DD-WRT Routers
I have two Linksys WRT600N 1.0 routers running an SVN build of the DD-WRT firmware (v24-sp1 (09/11/08) mega - build 10305) setup in a Client Bridge fashion. I've tried a few of the more recent builds, but so far the signal quality and throughput just isn't quite as good. I have run in to an issue, however, where one of the routers (the client) will drop it's WIFI connection. The access point stays up on with WIFI and LAN, and while I can reach the client via a LAN connection (and it shows as still having a connection to the AP), nothing gets through on the WIFI side.
As the link I have setup requires relatively high availability, I can't afford to spend days mucking about with each SVN build released. At the same time, getting angry calls from users who can't access a file server mid-day also isn't exactly an option.
Interm solution? A simple CRON-job on the misbehaving router to ping the access point every five minutes (the 5 * * * * part of the below command) and check the output. If it doesn't get any response after four pings, it simply reboots the router. Problem (temporarily) solved.
5 * * * * ping 192.168.100.251 -c 4 |grep "100% packet loss"; if["$?" != 1]; then reboot; fi
For more information on DD-WRT, check their forums.
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