Transportation Problems

Hello readers,

It is always amazing sharing my technical experience and other personal stuff with you all.

On my way back from a regular IT maintenance in Buchanan, Grand Bassa County, I decided to drop off few IT equipment back to the office from the client site. While approaching the Tubman Boulevard, the taxi car got impounded by the police for plying the streets with unregistered vehicle. 

We pleaded with the officers to give the driver just a second chance to make his trip to town and do the needful at the Ministry of Transport, but they refused. So, we had to get off the vehicle and search for another available one going our directions. Standing along the roadside and watching the beautiful lines of cars from different manufacturers conveying Liberians to their various destinations, the cars in different colors with varying engine sounds have produced a beautiful rhythm that keeps one totally unaware of the loudness it all creates, regularly.

Then I saw a very strange looking vehicle coming with unfamiliar patterns painted on the outside. The sighting caught the attention of pedestrians and onlookers in communities close to the road. As the car made a momentary stop to drop off some passengers, there was an outburst of a contagious laughter amongst us. Separated discussions immediately followed the laughing and amazement.

I quickly remembered a movie I watched a couple of years ago that I don’t remember the name; in the movie, the hero beat an entire army of protagonists on the bus-like car and flew through the back as it was heading for a crash. However, this was not a movie. I think this is a traditional Chinese or Korean transport vehicle. 

Our economy has gone bad to the extent that the fare from Broad Street to Redlight ( a popular market site in the Paynesville area) has doubled.

With the designs and colours on this car, I am thinking if an ordinary man can afford riding on it.  "I feel for the common and less fortunate who cannot afford to catch a bus neither a taxi cab," I whispered to myself while standing for almost an hour in search of a taxi as the car pulled out. The approach taken by this vehicle owner is very welcoming… It will be great if all roads are connected in and around Monrovia including the coastal highways and rural area to encourage investors in the transport sectors in helping our people. 

My experience last year while heading to Nimba County, outside of Monrovia on a VSAT project was a terrible one. 

Before then, I reached out for my phone, in my pocket and made a few clicks on the camera to share my amazing sighting with my readers.

Prepared by Daniel Collins

SKD Tower comes falling down!

On 6th May 2018 Sunday our client Last Mile Heath complained that the Internet service was not working. My Boss Mr. Haresh called me and informed me about this incident.

We have Access Points at strategic locations all over the city that we normally get a clear line of sight and connect our numerous clients.

One of our AP’s is located on a tower at SKD complex. This client was connected to this AP. There was heavy rain the night before and the whole tower came crashing down around 05:00 p.m. when a big gust of wind came in. 

Internet service to all clients connected to this AP was affected.

The tower is still being rebuilt, as we write this blog, but we had to find an alternate solution to connect our client(s). 

I called our technicians and asked them to be available as early as possible on Monday morning so that we could go to LMH and reposition the AP’s direction to another AP located at Old Road.

Here are some pictures of the fallen giant tower at SKD:

We arrived at the LMH office much before 8 AM on Monday morning to begin our work. Below is a picture of the Internet dish antenna pointed to SKD tower side.

We shifted the direction to old road AP.

We changed IP and SSID. Using MikroTik Interface via Winbox software.

The signal strength from Old Road tower is very good and the internet connection to our client is stable.

Thanks,

Farman Elahi,  IT Technician

Something never seizes to amaze me when it comes to IT, especially networking........

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while now and nice getting back to you guys. Something never seizes to amaze me when it comes to IT, especially networking. One of our clients, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has relocated from its UN Drive, Mamba Point office to the Pan African Plaza building, formal United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) Headquarters in Sinkor, Tubman Boulevard. Our task was to create a new Local Area Network (LAN) and terminate all ends in a mounted rack in the server room, transfer and setup all IT equipment including security cameras to function.

The client already had an initial internet service provider therefore, connecting all devices back to same network would have a plug and play setup. Instead, they decided to get connected to another UN agency. Out of 15 LAN ports the new provider offered to connect 6 users which include a network printer and a file sharing server. I entered the server room of their provider and saw a lots of huge Cisco devices; I mean latest Core routers, switches HP & DELL blade servers all mounted in a freezing environment. This was so amazing, getting a glance at them. I have always wished to work in an environment and on live devices as well and that’s going to be soon. The customer provided us with a 24 - port Net-Gear switch which was being used at their old office to connect to their provider, the UN agency, but they condemned the equipment that it was far way below the UN standards. They preferred a Cisco Meraki MS 225-24P HW (PoE Managed Switch) which cannot be found locally and would take up to a week to be delivered if ordered. We left with the option of connecting to the 6 available ports given.

All four users were connected to a real-time high speed internet connection via a Cisco Meraki MS 225-24P HW switch except for the network printer and the file sharing server. To connect the printer and server, I had to get a static IP from the IT officers. All the printers are on a different Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) therefore an IP must be given from the VLAN range. It took us nearly a week from one floor to another in getting the information from these guys until finally that morning they were able to generate two static IPs addresses for our client, JICA. I started by configuring the addresses into the printer. After several re boots, the printer could not be accessible on the network. Than I compared the subnet mask given to me by the IT officer with that of the one I gathered via windows command interface, I noticed the guy had made a mistake by giving me a slash /24 small network eg (255.255.255.0) network instead of slash /27 eg 255.255.254.0 medium and large networks. Rectifying this issue had the printer hooked up to the network as well as the mini server. As of now, our client has upgraded to a more big and high-speed internet. I am glad to have a hand on these equipment as I am also preparing for my Official CISCO Certifications Exams (CCNA) coming up soon!

Daniel Collins

QuickBooks Enterprise 17 installation error due to lack of important Windows Updates.

While a on a maintenance visit to one of our clients in Buchanan, 3 laptops were delivered to us from another client, Population Services International (PSI) for installation of:

1. Microsoft office
2. QuickBooks Enterprise Solution 17.0 
3. and other software

My colleague managed to install the MS Office and other software on the laptops except for QuickBooks. According to him, he tried several times, but the installation keeps giving an error message. He quickly messaged me about what was unfolding on our WhatsApp channel. I requested him to give me full access to the laptop via TeamViewer connection. Disabling the anti-virus and other security features still didn’t help us out.

Due to insufficient time and bad internet connection from my end, we had to inform the customer and escalated the job until my return. I got back Monrovia on a weekend with a lot of research on resolving this issue.  I powered on both laptops to run a system check and know if the system meets the requirement to have QuickBooks installed. The result showed that the RAMs, Hard Drive, Operation System, BIOS, Video card and others were okay for installation.

I copied the QuickBooks software from one of the client’s laptops to a USB drive to run a test on my computer and it ran very smoothly on my PC. But there was one thing I noticed during the installation process which was the Microsoft NET Framework 4.6 and 4.7. 

This important update was lacking from the many Microsoft Updates downloaded on the client’s PCs as NET Framework is a software development platform developed by Microsoft to create applications and support web services. I became more concerned as to why Windows wouldn’t download such an important update. Than I discovered that the Operation System installed on these PCs were counterfeit and not a genuine copy of windows instead. 

My mind ran back to one of the days where we had an issue with a counterfeit Windows installed on a customer PC when they brought it in to do a hardware repair. The moment the customer received the PC in a few days he said the PC was giving pop up notification of counterfeit Windows and blamed it on the repairs we did. 

But in this case, there’s no notification or pop up message to display. Even if you check the System properties it shows ‘Windows Activated’. 

There are lots of software tool available on the internet to crack Windows OS, Office suites and other applications. But the good thing I have learned and like about Microsoft is that you may use your crack software on any of their products but once it gets on the internet, Microsoft automatically recognizes or detects the counterfeit or pirated copy you are using and blocks all important updates to it. 

This leads you to future problems until the right thing is done and this is what our client's problem was.

I backed up all the data from the Client’s PC and an external HDD and pulled out a CD from one of our many Windows Operating Systems. To be specific, Windows 10 Pro. A fresh installation of Windows 10 Pro was installed including MS 2016 office suites, and a transfer of all data from the external HDD back to the PCs with all important updates downloaded and installed; giving these laptops a new life once again.

Early Monday morning I took the 2 laptops to the customer site. I ran the QuickBooks Enterprise version 17 on the laptops with a successful installation. I mapped the QuickBooks server data drive on each PC to locate the data files for backup. The end-user could work in their respective departments using his/her username and password to have access since it was configured on a multiple user mood

So, Windows 10 Pro Activated did the trick. It could be any edition of Microsoft Windows Operating Systems - reach out to New Africa Technology Company for genuine licensed copy of software to safe yourself the stress of future problems.

Prepared by:

Daniel Collins

New Africa Technology Company

CCTV Cameras Synology Setup

From behind the IT desk of the Population Services International Liberia (PSI), I can piece together some troubleshooting and resolution of their CCTV cameras being disconnect/shutdown.

We got an approval to install 8 D-Link CCTV cameras to strategy areas in the premises of PSI office, connecting through a battery bank for power/electrical backup. After a week of smooth access to the cameras both in and outside the network, the client started to notice a slow connectivity to their network even to the extent they couldn’t access the camera’s server (Synology NAS) remotely.

I got back from Buchanan on an ICT maintenance trip to one of our clients site only to check my mail with lots of email exchanges about the situation with my boss: the Head of Operations.

As I learned the CCTV technicians who set up these cameras didn’t understand the network layout of the client and also didn’t follow instructions from the ISP in my absence. They assigned any IP of their choice to the cameras as they could in other to complete their job. This was very embarrassing getting back to them as there was no answer on their phones. My boss then instructed me to accompany another tech who was recommended by a friend to assist us. We arrived at the client site and explained to him about the situation of the cameras switching OFF and ON.

The tech admitted to me that he had no idea about D-Links cameras and Synology NAS server; on HKVISION and told me that he would be back the next morning to figure out the problem.  We scheduled the time for 10:00 AM prompt. I was on site before the time by the tech didn’t show up. I was left alone to solve this issue. I downloaded the D-Link DS cam and Synology catalogues. I first took out all of the cameras down and reset them to factory default and assigned a static IP addresses that are not in used and all fall behind the DHCP rang to avoid disruption of access as it used to be. The DHCP range of the core router was from 192.168.11.30-192.168.11.254 that means any number below 30 can be assign to a device. So I assigned 192.168.11.28 to the Synology NAS server and the rest of the eight cameras were from 20-27. 

The port forwarding was configured both on the router and the NAS server for remote viewing with secure password protection enabled and shared with the client. After doing all this, I called the ISP to bypass the hotspot on the network from accessing internet which is one of the aspects in the MikroTik which I love. I really like working on these devices especially when it comes to networking. This was my very first time handling camera issue but because networking access was attached to it, I got a few clues and interested in understanding how it works. To be frank, the installation/setup was quite simple and easy; just the matter of understanding how the IP blocks were arranged before assigning them manually to those devices. At least I can say the cameras are now accessible with a 24hr battery backup system running to keep them on throughout the night. I was glad to be a part of this project and looking forward to more prospect development in the fresh start of 2018.

Prepared by:

Daniel Collins