Disaster Recovery Testing — 3
Reviewing and rehearsing disaster recovery plans is prudent and helpful. Even with a home network. Such was the case one recent morning.
The first clue of a disaster was after powering on the Asus router. The office desktop did not power on from a wake-on-lan (WoL) packet from the router. The office desktop is the LAN file and media server and is the primary workstation on the LAN. Most of my computer work is performed on the office desktop. While the office desktop can be powered on manually, the WoL is a convenient tweak. The WoL tweak also lets me know if there are switch or network card issues.
I manually powered on the office desktop only to find no internet access. Nominal troubleshooting indicated the Asus router was not functioning correctly.
Attempting to connect using a web browser and SSH both failed. A power cycle did not help.
An nmap scan indicated the only open port was port 80. Ports 22 and 443 were not open. Something was awry with the router.
Fortunately a backup router sits on the shelf. The first router used in the house — a Linksys WRT54GL 1.1. Both devices use DD-WRT. Fortunately the disaster recovery plans include router failures. As much as practical on a yearly basis, the Linksys router is synchronized with the Asus router.
The short term solution was moving Ethernet cables to the older router and powering on. Within a few minutes the LAN was fully connected again.
Onward to troubleshooting the Asus router failure.
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: DD-WRT
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