Locality Switch

My tenure as Technical Manager at 2CCRfm 90.5 is coming to an end. Earlier this month, I notified station management that I will be finishing up at the end of June. This will end almost three years as a technical volunteer at the organisation. I have learnt a tremendous amount of things, have met some great people, and generally had a good time.

Why am I leaving? It all comes down to time, and a desire to focus on something different. After spending so long working at this one organisation, having everyone relying on my to keep things running, I feel that I need to do something else with the precious time I have. A change of scenery, so to speak.

With the somewhat sad (but yet exciting!) final day approaching, I have been pondering: What could I have done better? If I was to do it again, what would I do differently? Do I have any regrets?

One of things I would have done differently is to be more of a team player. The way things panned out was that I did the majority of the work, and then others around me try and catch up. I very rarely delegated tasks to others, even when they were capable to do them. At first, this didn’t pose many problems, but as the station grew and people changed, it became more and more of an issue.

I could always manage to find a way to get the technology working properly, and doing what I wanted, but as a manager of other people, I fell short. Through the recent circumstances, I’ve been made aware of this. If I was to do it all again, this I would be more conscious about, and I would defiantly act differently.

Another thing I would do differently is to have a clearer plan of where we are heading. Often, due to the chaos of the moment, we were stuck in the mindset of “okay, we need to fix this NOW”, not able to see ahead and plan anything for the future. The problem with this, especially when dealing with technology, is that you often end up duplicating yourself. There needs to be a plan as to what changes should be done in the next year, etc. in order not to replace things multiple times, or reconfigure something only to have it superseded by some other magical device.

Finally, I would make sure I say “I don’t know” more often. I got into this terrible habit of thinking I knew the answer to everything, and when I didn’t, I would lie until I could work out what the answer was. Sometimes this wasn’t such a big a deal; other times it was.

Even after listing these things I would change, I don’t think I have any regrets. What I did was always what I thought was the best action for the moment. I was thrown into the “deep end” at age 14, and now that I’m approaching 17, I’m much wiser. Still a long way to got, I admit, but this has probably been one of the best things I’ve been a part of. The learning is ongoing.

There comes a point when you no longer can rely on a single ADSL connection for your network. Things start getting too hectic through that one little connection running down some 100 year old copper pair, the modem freaks out and dies on a regular basis, and then people start screaming out for a fix.

At Cumberland Community Radio, a sub-metro community radio station in Sydney, we had exactly that problem. We had become very reliant on our connection to the internet, and when it didn’t work, I found out pretty quickly and frequently. It just wasn’t acceptable to have your news feed, internet streams and VoIP fall over so frequently.

We needed a fix, and fast!

A second ADSL connection was sourced with a different provider, but to manage these two connections we needed some fancy piece of hardware. Something smart enough to work out what both connections were doing, fix any issues, and route the traffic in the right direction. We needed a router/firewall with dual-WAN ports.

I initially expected to spend quite a large sum of money on a piece of hardware like this. But thankfully I didn’t have to. The model we picked was a DrayTek Vigor 2910. This little box cost less than AU$280, from OzCableGuy. These guys were able to get the box to us in less than a week, and that was paying with Bank Transfer, too.

Setup was fairly simple. In fact, if you know the jargon of LANs, WANs, and all that jazz, it’s easy. If you don’t, then I suggest you learn that aspect of things before you buy this box. There’s defiantly an expectation that you aren’t a beginner when trying to set up this piece of hardware.

Configuration is via web interface, which can be a little buggy at times. There isn’t much validation of input, so it will sometimes accept invalid input you mistakenly gave it, and you then are left wondering why something isn’t happening as expected. It’s little things like that which tripped me up the most.

The first thing I did was get the two WAN links happening. For this to work, you need to turn each of your two modems into ‘dumb’ modems. This means that the box which interfaces your phone line with the network dosen’t handle any sort of router functionality. In fact, it shouldn’t even handle any PPPoE authentication. The term used to describe this is ‘bridge mode’.

The two cheap consumer modems I had were a little trickier than expected to get into bridge mode, but a quick look at the manual sorted that out. It’s always that one checkbox you miss that trips you up, right?

Once you’re modem is in bridge mode, the DrayTek Vigor2910 handles all of the PPPoE authentication. The beauty of this arrangement is that if your modem disconnects, the DrayTek picks up on it really quickly, and it’s reconnected before you know it. This would be one of the best parts we’ve experienced so far.

Setting up firewall rules and port forwarding was no-nonsense, and done in a similar fashion to ordinary modem/router devices, but with extra functionality. There is also load balancing policy, so you can choose certain services to go through certain WAN ports if that is desired. There are also features available such as URL-filtering, VPNs, and all that good stuff. I haven’t set all of that up yet on this particular box, but if there is a need in the future, we know it’s there, ready to go!

Overall, the DrayTek2910 has been a solid performer, and I would defiantly recommend it in the future for similar situations.

The weekend starts tomorrow; that means only one thing – an Outside Broadcast from Castle Towers shopping centre. I’m really excited – this is the first OB they’ve let me do since Australia Day, so I’m rip-roaring to go! To make it better, we’re using some new technology (well, new to us, at least!).

The whole broadcast will be encoded into an Ogg Vorbis stream by EdCast, and then sent over a borrowed 3G connection back to our studios where it will go to air. This is the first time I’ve done this, so I’m excited, to say the least. It’s a four hour broadcast, so this will be a great chance to test everything out.

How do I know it will work? I’ve been trying this for weeks, broadcasting to myself over the 3G modem back to a PC at the station. I’ve been able to broadcast for quite some time, before being interrupted (usually by the smell of dinner). This whole thing is actually pretty good, and I don’t expect any trouble.

The real questions are, “what could go wrong?” and “what can I do to prevent/fix it?”. Here’s a couple of scenarios:

• People at the studios can’t access the feed. This could happen, if they misplace my instructions or something bad happens to the computer in the studio. To cover for this, I’ve got remote access to one of the PCs, so I can do it all by myself, if need be
• The internet at the studios drops out. This does happen every so often, so I’ve ensured that people at the studio have access to the modem, so it can be power-cycled
• No 3G reception; This would be dreadful. However, I’ve tested the site extensively, and there is full signal strength – hopefully this won’t occur.
• Laptop at the site breaks; I’ll be taking my MacBook which can run Windows, just in case

If you’ve got some free time tomorrow morning and live in the Castle Hill area of NSW, please come down and say hello. It would be great to catch up with you. I’ll be there for a 10am broadcast, running until 2pm. Full details are on the 2CCR Website.