Reactivating a hardware agent

[Tomobiki]

I have two of the yellow hardware agents. I had issues with the agents reconnecting to the service. So I delete them from my dashboard and tried to add them again using the original email codes. The web form says the mac or activation code is incorrect.

[OutagesIO_Support]

Hi,

Thanks for your question.

Yes, once hardware agents are activated, there is no need (or way) to activate them again. The activation process is merely to ensure they go into the correct members reports. Your question brings up an interesting scenario however of removing the ability to delete hardware agents for exactly the reason you mention.

Not a problem, assuming we are still supporting them. We support hardware agents for at least one year after the manufacturer no longer offers the model. Most last several years but if they get too old, it just means they cannot support new features but will continue to work as you bought it.

If you can share the agent ID' in a reply, I can look into it and let you know how we can proceed.

OutagesIO Support

[Tomobiki]

The two agents I have are the GL-MT300N-V2 models. The numbers for the them are 30936 and 30938. The original activation notices were sent on 07/18/2019.

[OutagesIO_Support]

I've re-assigned the agents to your account.

At this point, they will be running older software where lots of bugs have been fixed since then.

They will eventually automatically update themselves once they are back online and active.

Don't forget to set the geo location and generally go over other settings that might have gotten reset.

Let me know how things go.

OutagesIO Support

[Mike]

Hi,

We are still monitoring this situation. You'll have to respond here and let us know when your agents are back online and then we'll be able to upgrade them.

Regards,

Mike

[Tomobiki]

I have the agents connected to my networks. They show only the white light on them. I am unable to ping them with the static IP assigned to them. The network switch show the interface is connecting but it seems the agents are not requesting an IP from dhcp. Is there anyway to test if the agent software is working?

[OutagesIO_Support]

I am unable to ping them with the static IP assigned to them. The network switch show the interface is connecting but it seems the

agents are not requesting an IP from dhcp.

Ok, let's get in sync.

I'm guessing then that at some point, you assigned static IP's from the DHCP server for the agent/s. Or, did you receive the agents when they used to have a web interface on them?

Is there anyway to test if the agent software is working?

Once they get a successful connection to your network, there is a script that keeps checking to see if it can reach the Internet. Once it can, the script will download the agent then run it. Before they do that, they come to life in the most basic way possible with very little running.

You're unable to ping the known IPs and they aren't able to get a DHCP IP?

Can you check if there is already an entry in your DHCP server for the agent/s.

Your 30938 is E4956E4754BC and your 30936 is E4956E47513E.

Is it possible the IP/s you assigned a long time ago are conflicting with something after all this time has passed. Maybe your DHCP range is overlapping, something along those lines.

Is the cable connected to the LAN port of the device? I cannot tell from here if you have a single or dual port device. If dual, try both ports. Of course, this won't answer why you're seeing the interface trying to connect to your DHCP server but getting nothing.

When agents act this way, it's usually because it was reset. They are very simple devices. At worse, you could send them back and we could reset them for you but lets see how far we can get troubleshooting first.

[Tomobiki]

I connected both ports to the network switch. The switch shows both ports have connected at 100M. Looking on the dhcp server no entries start with the MAC orig of e4:95:6e. Trying to ping the IP assigned shows no response. My dhcp server assigns the agents an IP out of the dynamic range. Running an IP scan using nmap doesn't show any IP's starting with e4:95:6e.

[OutagesIO_Support]

If it helps, looking at your dashboard, the 30938 agent last had x.x.54.225 and your 30936 agent had x.x.57.126.

I've been monitoring the logs and have not seen either agent attempt to connect so as you said, there is a network issue.

What ever the problem is, it is unrelated to the agent software itself because once they had network connectivity, they would just download the latest software and run. I wanted to see them online because there is also another update that needs to be done manually since we've automated it since you last used these but this would not prevent them from working.

If you cannot even get an IP on them, there is not much else we can do. You'll have to ship them back and we'll get them back to life for you.

You can send them to;

Echo Networks, Box 12454, Prescott, Az, 86304

Assuming they were not bricked and no sign of abuse, we'll fix them and ship them back to you.

Alex

[Tomobiki]

Ok I will send them back to you.

Thanks for the help

[OutagesIO_Support]

Sorry we could not fix them through the forums only but you'll get back nice and fresh agents :).

[Tomobiki]

Finally sent the devices to you. Post Office says the package should arrive Monday 23 March.

[OutagesIO_Support]

Sounds good. Give us a nudge if we don't acknowledge it here in the forums after a couple of days past the 23rd then.

[OutagesIO_Support]

Ok, good news. Both agents are now live and being tested running the newest firmware.

Initially, both were unresponsive but we were able to get them back.

You can look at your dashboard and you'll see they are live but please, don't make any changes until you get them back as we need to test before we ship them back to you.

[OutagesIO_Support]

Hi, they were shipped back to you yesterday. You'll get them back next week.

If you have any problems, just post a new question and we'll be happy to help you. If you find OutagesIO useful, please tell as many people as you can. There are so many frustrated people out there and we're trying to let them know there is a way to troubleshoot Internet problems.

[Tomobiki]

I received both hardware agents and they are connected and reporting. Thanks for the assistance. Do you know what happened?

[OutagesIO_Support]

Unfortunately, no. We ended up factory resetting them so that we could reload our firmware.

Maybe some sort of DHCP/fixed IP mix up where the agent/s could no longer get a DHCP IP since they were expecting a static DHCP assignment. Really not sure. All I can tell you is that here also, they would not connect to our DHCP server, at all.

I really do not know what happened but very happy that we were able to reload them and get them working.

Please let us know how things are going after you use them for a while.