In my last post, I built a script to poll my modem via Telnet to retrieve ADSL stats.
In this post, I’ll be using the output of the last script to put the values into Zabbix so I have some history to refer to.
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Oct 212015
Oct 072015
I’ve finally gotten around to working on my projects again after doing some exams.
I wanted to get some ADSL monitoring going so I could get some history on the state of my line, get sync rates etc.
The first thing I needed to do was get the modem stats via a script as Zabbix couldn’t login to the modem properly.
I did a quick python script that can be called from Zabbix to get the modem stats.
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Dec 222014
I recently had some issues with my single pfSense VM crashing, bringing down the whole entire network with it.
I thought the problem was flakey hardware, so I setup a second pfSense VM…and that crashed too.
So I decided to setup pfSense in high availability mode with CARP. The only problem there being that I’m on ADSL, with a single modem to share between 2 pfSense servers.
After I followed the CARP Guide from pfSense, I’d end up with 2 PPPoE sessions open. One from each pfSense server.
The solution to that was to change the WAN interface configuration on the backup CARP node to be a dial-on-demand configuration, and by disabling apinger by disabling Gateway Monitoring. With this configuration, since the backup node has no traffic directed at it, the WAN link stays down until the primary CARP node goes down. Then, the backup node will establish a PPPoE session to the internet.
Mar 102014
I’ve been trying to use Cacti to graph my ADSL’s Sync rate and SNR/Attenuation Ratios for the past few weeks as I’ve been having issues with my ADSL.
Originally, I was using a BigPond Thomson ST536v6, but unfortunately, the SNMP agent on the Thomson will only expose the Sync Rate, and not the SNR and Attenuation.
So I have decided to use an old SpeedStream 4200 instead. The default SNMP community string is ‘public’ but I wanted to change it to my private one.
To change the SNMP community string, you need to telnet onto the modem to change it.
telnet 192.168.254.254
Once you’ve telnetted in, you can show the current snmp settings with this command –
xsh> cfg snmp
The output will show you the current configuration.
snmp
comm#[0..6]
nam = ""
rd = n
wr = n
dsbl = n
These settings just mean that the default settings are applied.
To update the snmp community string, you need to use the following command –
cfg snmp{comm#0{nam=skynet
cfg snmp{comm#0{rd=y
Those 2 lines will set the community string to “skynet” and set the permissions to readonly.
After setting these, run the command cfg save to save the configuration, and then reboot the modem. This will allow the new settings to take affect.