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Hi Mark,
Unfortunately, I don't think we've had a 32bit version for many years because Microsoft no longer put out the updates we needed to support it.
Any old versions we might have backed up somewhere would no longer function with all of the changes we've made to the service since then.
I'm one of those people that is trying to hang on to Windows 7 for as long as I can but had to go 64bit since most developers moved on as well.
@markl said in Agent Disconnected:
Hi, I have 2 agents that got disconnected this morning. I tried restarting the Echo, restarting the PC, but still it is disconnected. Can you help me please?
ID: 128664, 128694
128664
This one in Wxxx, Canada seems to have always been connected directly to the Internet and not on your LAN side. I see the PC seems to have always been connected directly to the Internet with a public IP which is dangerous.
That said, you obviously know better than I do what your intended use is so I just felt it important to mention.
128694
This one looks normal in terms of it's connection. I can see it's got private IP so is running on a PC inside your LAN/network. This one is in Vxxx, Canada.
Both seem to have stopped running today, the 27th but both look normal in every other way, sending the correct information, communicating etc then they stop.
Some thoughts I have;
Usually, when an agent stops communicating out of the blue, it means something has decided to block it.
I see the providers are different so no need to suspect if something there might have changed.
Are you using something on both PCs that might have decided to block communications between the agent and OutagesIO? Firewall, virus scanner, something along those lines is the number one thing we see that would stop the service.
While your Windows version might be a bit different, can you check to make sure something didn't block the Echo Networks service.
I tried restarting the Echo
What happened when you restarted the services? No complaints from the system or anything?
If you simply cannot find a reason for this and confirm there is nothing in your PC firewall or LAN/provider firewall that suddenly started blocking, then I would suggest trying a re-install.
Go to the dashboard of the agent, pick Manage then pick Re-install and follow the prompts in the same way as you first installed. Make sure that you uninstall any previous version just to help ensure the installer works perfectly. Make sure you have full administrator rights when you re-install the software.
Do this on both after you've checked the above and we can go from there.
Yes you are right, 128664 is connected directly to the internet with >a public IP, as I am checking whether the outage is caused by our >ISP, or by our MSP. So I agent run within our LAN, and 128664 >runs directly to the internet.
I suspected something along these lines but prefer to point them out just in case someone is not aware.
What you are trying to diagnose is exactly why OutagesIO came to life. When we offered MSP services, customers would point the finger at our managed services before thinking it might be their Internet connection. We needed a way to remotely know where and when problems were happening not only for the customer but to get help from the ISP.
I already reinstalled now, and it is working. Hopefully it will not >disconnect again.
An agent shows Inactive on average around 30 seconds of not being able to communicate. If it remains Inactive for up to 30 minutes, it will then show Disconnected.
In either of these statuses, it's best to ping something like tpw.outages.io and app.outagesio.com from the command line on the same PC before doing anything else.
This helps to see if there is a path problem or if the agent is no longer running. Restarting the service if there is an actual outage in progress will lose all of the data that the agent is keeping until it can send it to your dashboard.
We have seen plenty of cases where a firewall or virus scanner or even a physical firewall will block the agent after a while but not initially making things a bit more confusing.
We've also seen software conflicts so I hope you aren't experiencing any of those things as they are hard to diagnose.
Keep us in the loop please.
Hi,
I just checked and now the status is back.
Yes, this is because we sent it another reboot command to see if would do the same thing again and it didn't.
What you are seeing should be addressed in the next agent version release.
Initially, we thought that the multi-threading function of the agent code which handles a number of simultaneous functions might be not sending some data now and then.
However, situations like what happened here help to confirm that what may actually be happening is that if the agent is not able to send something for what ever reason, it could give up so the data could eventually be lost if it doesn't re-try.
It is supposed to always re-try but there is something in the libraries or method we are using that somehow prevents this re-try now and then. Could even be CPU overload causing the re-try thread to be lost.
The new version should be ready to test internally this week some time. How long that testing takes depends on what we see as problems if they come up as this is a rather heavy re-write.
Hi,
Seems you found something we have to look into.
Report upgrades are done on the application site (app.outagesio.com) but hardware purchases are done on the www.outagesio.com site.
On the www, we use a paypal software package that allows us to automatically calculate the shipping but that code doesn't work and is not available on the app software that we're using.
Thanks for pointing this out. I'll bring it up as something we need to add when a hardware agent is prepared for shipping.
Thank you for using OutagesIO and hope it helps you find the problems you might be experiencing.
The RAS feature is active and available with this hardware agent.
The only thing you need is to add data.
We have a 5GB and a 20GB plan for data usage which you can purchase in the available packages page.
These aren't subscriptions, they are use until you run out. If you buy 5GB for example, it doesn't expire, it just gets used up as you use it. Once it runs out, you purchase another one.
The reason the plans seem small is because RAS is not meant for moving large files or using a lot of data, it's meant solely as a way to get into your own network, where the agent is running, without having to open any firewall ports. The connection is encrypted and secure.
You can have different profiles in your RAS config page meaning, one click to reach different devices on the LAN.
The usage case is to be able to get back into your own LAN to reach routers, switches, alarm systems, anything that has a configuration page. If someone locked you out of your LAN for example, you'd still be able to regain access to reconfigure your router or block out the bad guys etc. It's meant for very low traffic.
The RAS page has an 'About this page' help and there is an article in our blog about it;
https://www.outagesio.com/secure-remote-access-without-opening-firewall-ports-or-port-forwarding/
Hope this helps.
This is what I see.
The sub was created yesterday and then canceled on the same day.
There was a bug where if a sub was created and canceled the same day, it would expire the agent right away.
Let me pass this on to the dev because it should still be in the Extended reports mode for 30 days so we'll get that fixed shortly for you.
Hi,
That's an interesting question because there could be too many IPs.
That said, your agent will always initiate traffic from within your network so there should be no need to whitelist anything.
What problem are you facing?
The problem with using or posting IPs is that they can and do change so posting those publicly ends up being stale information at some point that some people would use only to find that nothing works.
That said, let me explain how the pings work.
The pings are set from source to destination. It doesn't matter what the destination is so long as it's consistent.
The agent is not providing you pings to anything specific or meaningful to the user, it's using those to recognize if ping times are changing.
The agent runs a set of pings, averaging those every minute then sending them to the network, mostly used as a visual piece of data showing when events may or did happen.
The agent algorithm monitors for changes from what it has last re-calculated as average to x percentage difference. If that difference appears to be higher than average, then this triggers other tests such as a short speed test which can in turn trigger a full speed test if enabled.
The point of the service is not to monitor the Internet but the provider so we're just using a target that is beyond the provider as a destination.
Now, on the other hand, if you were a business customer with us, and you needed certain custom things specific to your environment, we would work with you for what ever you need because we would be communicating regularly so if we had to make changes and those could affect you, we would have a contact person to reach out to or that would know about the changes.
Hope this helps to explain a little better why providing IPs would not work well.
