Sputnik AP 160 - New Thoughts

Part 1 Part 2

So, I finally managed to set aside the time to get the Sputnik AP 160 setup earlier this afternoon. To start with, everything was going to plan. Unfortunately, they forgot to email me some needed verification information. OK, mistakes happen. This is not a big deal.

Figuring it might pay off to be prepared, I called them from my cell which had the number on voice dial. I was able to connect to a live person in under 30 seconds by choosing two simple options - nice. I explained that I needed the information to be sent and sure enough, they took care of it right off the bat.

A few minutes later, I had the needed info and had plopped it into the required text boxes. Rebooted the PC, things did come up for me with one major exception - the login page was nowhere in sight. Nope, instead I had to deal with an error which made little sense to me. In simplest terms, the error was informing me that the portal page was nowhere to be found.

From here, I decided that I needed to get my caffeine fix before things got really ugly. After soothing the savage beast with some suckling from my soda of choice, I felt that I was once again ready to face the challenges placed before me.

Now before I get too ahead of myself, something to note is that did use their remote control panel feature (accessed on Sputnik’s servers) from my home to make a key adjustment. Until I could get some defined policies in place, I opted to set everyone up as a logged guest. This way I could keep an eye on any bizarre network behavior until I had a chance to create a firm, worthwhile security policy that even a mother could love. Don’t get me wrong, I did have a loose policy in place that for security reasons, I am not going to elaborate on. But it was not a long term setup, trust me on that.

So anyway, I called the Sputnik support line and explained my problem at length. Unfortunately, the guy I was dealing with was not familiar with this specific issue. So with that in mind, he asked me to take a screen shot so he could show his co-workers in an effort to get this resolved. ‘Agreeing’ to his challenge, I then hung up and decided to take this on for myself instead. After all, I am pretty creative with obvious workarounds.

As it turns out, it was an issue with the fact that I had already set things up for guest usage without any sort of specific user or credit card validation. So, there was a bug that prevented me from accessing the AP/Router’s login page (in any capacity). Well, I decided to backtrack the url being used, in order to see if I could find out something new. I mean, rebooting the PC, router, clearing cache and half a dozen other things certainly did not help.

Boom! Yes folks, I scored gold in one try. I also likely made their support dept feel a little off, too. They were telling me to by-pass the AP. Then login into the server at their offices (access the CP in other words), reset the guest module, and on and on. Boy, glad I didn’t listen!

So what are my impressions on the layout of the CP once I got into it? Nice, very nice. For the network pro, you ought to feel right at home. For everyone else, it is going to be a little daunting I think. Still, it should be said that it is setup this way for a reason - admin control.

Am I ready to go and is everything done? Not just yet. I still need to make some changes to the long term network policies, filter some MAC addies and do a rain dance for good measure. I should have the final scoop come Thurs along with some final thoughts. Thus far, it’s not too bad for the money! Just remember though, abide by your ISP’s TOS. Ignore this and you might just find yourself without Internet access.

[tags]wireless,broadband,access point,sputnik,security policies,remote control panel[/tags]