I decided to poke around a bit with the home router, a Cisco WRVS4400N Wireless-N Gigabit Security Router [1] and I must say, it's an odd router from a management point of view.
So I get a list of interfaces (via SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)) on the device:
Table: Interface Dump Status Interface Bytes In Bytes Out ------------------------------ up lo 207454 207454 down ipsec1 0 0 down ipsec2 0 0 down ipsec3 0 0 up br0 304475952 467833506 up ppp0 100525553 80535424 up sit1 0 0 up eth0 246917723 273606969 up eth1 119391487 88802941 up eth2 109882441 191904431 down teql0 0 0 up sit0 0 0 down tunl0 0 0 down gre0 0 0 up ipsec0 0 0
Okay, lo is the local loopback device, I have no idea what br0 is, but I see eth0, eth1 and eth2 which are obviously the Ethernet ports in use. So, what do I have plugged in where? Okay, that's easy to determine—unplug a device, see which interface is marked as “down”. This is typical Cicso behavior, right?
Okay, I unplug the Mac from the network and I see:
Table: Interface Dump Status Interface Bytes In Bytes Out ------------------------------ up lo 207454 207454 down ipsec1 0 0 down ipsec2 0 0 down ipsec3 0 0 up br0 304488023 467841666 up ppp0 100526059 80536312 up sit1 0 0 up eth0 246926120 273617295 up eth1 119393091 88804157 up eth2 109888649 191905881 down teql0 0 0 up sit0 0 0 down tunl0 0 0 down gre0 0 0 up ipsec0 0 0
So. It's not going to mark one of the Ethernet ports as being down. Lovely. Looks like I'm going to have to do this the old fasioned way:
[Physically tracing the wires] [2]
Physically trace each Ethernet cable. Okay, in the above image, the left-most cable goes out to the Intarwebs. The right-most cable (the blue one, in the port labeled “4”) goes to the Mac. The one to the left of the blue cable (in port “3”) goes to my Linux system. The one in port “2” goes to a computer that is currently turned off. And the one in port “1” (the second on the left) wraps around and is hanging in front of the shelves (I use that one for the laptop).
Wait a minute … let me look at the front again …
[Cisco WRVS4400N] [3]
We have the Internet; Mac is at gigabit speed; my Linux system, and … the turned off system? Really?
Okay, it appears that the Ethernet card in the currently off system receives just enough power to maintain a connection status; there's probably a “wake-on-LAN (Local Area Network) [4]” feature on its Ethernet card.
Okay, now that's that's straightened out … um …
eth0, eth1 and eth2 …
Um …
The external ports don't match up with the internal ports. And given that there's a computer that is turned off, shouldn't one of the Ethernet ports return no data? And where's eth3?
What exactly is going on?
Okay, put that aside for now. What's the routing table look like?
Table: Routing Table Dest Mask NextHop Proto Metric Age Interface ------------------------------ 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 70.XXXXXXXXXX local 0 0 ppp0 127.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 0.0.0.0 local 0 0 sit1 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 0.0.0.0 local 0 0 br0 239.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 local 0 0 br0 70.XXXXXXXXXX 255.255.255.255 0.0.0.0 local 0 0 ppp0
Um, 70.XXXXXXXXXX isn't my IP (Internet Protocol) address; it's 74.XXXXXXXXX (I pay extra for a static IP address because of work issues). Okay, it appears that 70.XXXXXXXXXX is the remote side of my connection, but that routing (while it works) just looks odd to me. So, what IP addresses are assigned to which interfaces?
Table: Interfaces Destination Mask Interface ------------------------------ 127.0.0.1 255.0.0.0 lo 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 br0 74.XXXXXXXXX 255.255.255.255 ipsec0
Okay, there's my IP address, but it's … ipsec0? Weird. And it seems that br0 is a grouping of all the Ethernet ports.
But really, the mislableled Ethernet ports, the turned off computer sending and receiving traffic, it just has me skeeved out a bit. And the whole mess makes it difficult to monitor the network (not that I need to monitor my network, but Cisco is selling this as a “Small Business” device and a “Small Business” might want to monitor its network).
Oh, I just thought of something … the wireless interface—it's missing! I mean, it's missing in the interface list; physically it's there or Bunny wouldn't be able to use her laptop on the Intarwebs.
This is one strange router …
My friend Mark [5] fills me in on what might be happening [6] …
[1] http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9931/index.html
[2] /boston/2013/01/21/checking-the-router.jpg
[3] /boston/2013/01/21/router-front.jpg
![[2] /boston/2013/01/21/checking-the-router.jpg](/gemini.conman.org/boston/2013/01/21/checking-the-router.jpg){kind=link}
![[3] /boston/2013/01/21/router-front.jpg](/gemini.conman.org/boston/2013/01/21/router-front.jpg){kind=link}