Tag Archives: fixed

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Last month I reported a problem to my acquiring bank for Credit card payments. About half the credit card payments I handle fail for a variety of reasons. They did a investigation and last week finally came to the conclusion that there was indeed a problem.

Their explaination

Basically what happens is that some credit card distributors give out MasterCard cards with Visa card numbers. Because the customer is not aware of this he/she will choose MasterCard (as per the label on the card). This in itself is not a problem as long as the bank can figure out where the number belongs and process the payment.

Due to a small oversight in the handling process it can occur that if you choose MasterCard the bank goes that route and from that point on will no longer take Visa numbers into account. If that MasterCard has a Visa number the payment will fail.

The payment failure can range from a simple “card declined” to a “invalid card” or even a “failed authorisation” error. Depending on the distributing party and what the acquiring bank makes of the number. In some cases the gateway stopped responding completely and a timeout would eventually occur.

They also informed that this will be resolved before too long but can be worked around quite easily. Simply by having to approach the choice of payment a bit differently.

The solution (workaround)

Send a different request to the bank. Let the customer choose a specific method right from the webshop instead of have the customer choose at the banks gateway. And for credit cards always assume both Visa and MasterCard.

Which is what I did;

omnicard-checkout-multi

 

Available very soon in OmniCard. Prettier, more secure and hopefully no more failures.

Note: No security is compromised and strictly technically speaking there are no flaws in the processing of the transactions. The bank in question is fully PCI compliant and with that adheres to the strictest rules possible to guarantee the security of your transaction.

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getthemessageA quirck I quite often ran into with Apple’s iMessage was that messages didn’t quite sync throughout all my devices. This in itself isn’t such an issue, but if you end up having 3 open “conversations” all with a few messages from the same person that gets confusing quickly.

Apple in part remedied this by allowing devices like iPads and desktop computers to receive messages sent to your phone number. But it turns out that the way you start the conversation makes a big difference also. By chance I ran into this setting and I’ve been trying it for some months now. For me it solved the issue entirely.

How to set up iMessage

To make iMessage start the conversation from the right “sender” is rather easy and takes only a few minutes.

See the below screenshots on how I set up iMessage on my Phone and iMac.

imessage-iphone imessage-desktop
On iOS: Go into Settings > Messages > Send & Receive.
On OS X: Open the messages app and click the “Messages” menu select “Preferences” and look in the “Accounts” tab.

The big trick here is that Apple likes you to be available via EVERYTHING you have. That means, every email address and phone number in your vCard and set up Email accounts. This is crazy. So remove all the ones you do not want to be available for.

I have several email addresses but use only one for iMessage. And my phone number is somehow mandatory. But fine. So 2 ways. It’s also important to set a default starting point on all your devices. I chose my email address as a default conversation starter everywhere.

Set this up on all your devices with identical settings and you’ll find that your iMessages are much more streamlined.

Tip: Some added security for your Apple ID

Since your iMessage ID is by default your Apple ID. My Apple ID is none of your business. And your Apple ID is none of my business. Having a strong password on it is one thing but them having to guess your username as well is just extra safe.
So do not use that email address for sending/receiving iMessage messages. Just a tiny bit of extra security.

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Over the past year we’ve had our share with internet slowness, phone outages and whatnot. Our internet providers help desk never was able to find it and had solutions like upgrading our package to get a different signal, new modem, blaming Apple, replace cables… All the default stuff.

On my own I have replaced both Airport Extremes, bought new switches, new server hardware, endless reconfiguring and resetting of devices.

In the past month or so the speeds were so bad we *actually* made a fuss and demanded that some expert come take a look at it. So they send over a technician. After a 5 minute streak of mumbling and following cables he concluded that my Airport Extreme was the culprit. Explained me how it was not the Internet providers fault and left.

Obviously that didn’t solve the problem for us. So I called support again and got through to their tier 2 support who said they would run some tests. If I could monitor when it was slow, note the time and ping the site we were trying to reach and write that down too. That sounded constructive. We set a date to talk over the results of that a week later.

So we did. Meanwhile the issue had been bumped to tier 3 support because “something was fluctuating the signal” which was cause for some alarm apparently. 2 days ago the Tier 3 guy called, asked me for the results. He also shared his results. Seeing spikes in our signal every so much seconds. If I could confirm this with a endless ping from my end to various points on my network and the internet. We did and indeed saw the spikes on my end too.

If I could go into my modem and restart it, he told me the address 192.168.1.1 or something. To which I replied that I had changed it to 10.0.0.1 to coincide with my network and avoid conflicts with VPN connections to clients.

ohhhh, but that’s a problem!

uh oh…

“Why?” I asked.
His reply; “Well, our VOIP system runs on that segment.”
“But how does that conflict? Does the router run on linux?” I ask.
“Yes, at the core it’s a basic linux OS.” He says.

And that’s it then. As some of you may know. Linux/Unix systems always have trouble separating interfaces which run on the same/similar IP address ranges and what’s worse in the same size subnet. Thus, creates a addressing conflict. Causing phone outages in that network (not just our phone apparently) and every time an address conflict popped up, which was every minute or so, there would be a spike in our Internet signal.

So as a test we reset the modem to factory defaults. And *poof* no more spikes and a much more stable signal. Sooo I was kindly advised to reconfigure my network to something that doesn’t conflict with their stuff. Which I did and things seem better so far.

Now hope it actually works faster… But for now it seems resolved :) yay!

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Over the past few days I’ve had appalling performance on my wifi network using the new 5GHz airport.

Having to deal with numerous networking issues over the past week I kinda assumed/wrote it off as yet again my ISP screwing with me. But various tests consistently showed good connections to the interweb.

Hmm…

So I’ve done some research. My mum didn’t complain. And said to have fast internet. But her iMac doesn’t use the Wifi pipe to upstairs. Every computer upstairs was having trouble.

Alright, so it’s something with the wifi… Some Googling later turned up that *many* people have trouble using Apples Airport Extreme using separate SSID’s for their Wifi (an SSID is the wifi network name). Pretty much everyone I found on forums and blogs reported to have “fixed” their slow throughput by removing the separate name for the 5GHz network. Which is an option in the Airport settings.

Some more testing on my own taught me that various options aren’t even shown in Apples latest and greatest Airport Utility 6. I kinda knew this, but if the lack of such settings prevents my network from working… *sigh*.

Turbocharging your Wifi

This is what seems to work for me. You should know that every combination of settings is very dependant on your situation. What works for me does not necessarily work for you. The only constant here being that Airport Utility 6 is not going to help you. Downgrade to Airport Utility 5.6 (download). This “older” version is far far far superior to the new version which simply lacks options, features and assumes that you’re an idiot. Which you’re not.

So here is what I have changed:

Make sure you use the right Radio Mode

Since most devices and stuff in my house is fairly recent I have *no* need to support 11b or 11g networking. Thus I won’t transmit it either. The Airport Extreme supports pretty much every combination. But if you have modern devices. You might just want to use 11n and banish everything else. I use the blue highlighted setting.

aex4

Disable the separate SSID name for your 5GHz network and set your multicast rate

Under the tab “Wireless” click “Wireless Network Options” and disable the “5GHz Network Name”. As  a sort of quality assurance you might want to raise the “Multicast Rate”.

aex 1

Disabling the separate name basically merges your 5GHz network into your 2.4GHz one. Leaving the computer/device to decide which to use. And you’re kinda feeling in the dark, hoping it picks the fastest. But that’s alright. Most devices are made to use the best connection and switch when required.

The multicast rate is a bit more vague, but from what I’ve seen, read and learned it basically sets a acceptable speed limitation. Such as – If the device can not meet a bare minimum speed. It’s not getting on the network. The default setting is low. Which pretty much lets anything connect regardless of signal quality. I prefer speed. So I’ve set it a tad bit higher, to medium. This forces the computer to find a better signal.

This is especially useful if you use multiple Airports. So that the iPhone does connect to the one which has a stronger signal and not the one downstairs at the other side of the house when you’re standing next to one.

(Don’t) Use Wide Channels

Wide channels is a mechanic in wifi where a signal may utilize multiple frequencies in order to boost throughput. Basically it opens multiple lanes just for you on the highway. In my experience this doesn’t work. At least not when combining a brand new model Airport and an older one which doesn’t have this option (and thus doesn’t support it?). Obviously I don’t know what this option does between 2 newer models since I only have one. But I’ve disabled it and it’s fast now.

You can disable this option in the tab “Wireless” under “Wireless Network Options” same as the above 2 settings. Untick the box “Use wide channels”.

Channel selection

I have always learned that Wifi needs a pre-set channel. Especially when on the 2.4GHz band this is useful because the Wifi station might pick a crowded channel on automatic selection. To avoid this I’ve *always* used manual channels. I also did this for the 5GHz channel. Even though I am the only one using it in this neighborhood.

Turns out that doesn’t work very well.

However, my method still is true for 2.4GHz. Luckily the airport allows a split setting for this. So I have set a manual channel for 2.4GHz and the 5GHz band is on automatic.

aex 2 aex 3

 

And lastly, Security

If you use multiple base stations like I do (I have 3). Make sure that they are on par with security. Obviously using WEP these days is stupid. Also using Mac Authentication is pretty dumb. So if you use that. Disable it.

Why?

  1. WEP has been cracked years ago and is therefor useless.
  2. MAC Authentication – Everyone, even a 12 year old, can copy and spoof your MAC Address in seconds.
  3. MAC Authentication slows down your network. Which is undesirable.

These days using WPA2 (to my knowledge at least) is the way to go. Older base stations also support WPA or WPA/WPA2 (a mix of the two). The latest of Airport Extremes have WPA2 Personal (WPA2) and WPA Enterprise (Using a Radius server). Home users should use WPA2 Personal and make sure every other base station uses that same setting. Not the WPA/WPA2 setting. But WPA2 or WPA2 Personal. This makes sure there can be no communication issue between the 2 stations and thus they work faster.

In closing

As mentioned before, these settings seem to work for me. For now. It took me a few days to figure out and get it right. As usual with Wifi of any kind. Every situation is specific and no manual can tell you “do this and it works”. That manual does not have your concrete walls or interference and only assumes perfect conditions.

If you have other ideas, tips or solutions. Let me know below.

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And so it *kinda* ends. All essential daemons to safeguard the functioning of networking services are now moved to the new server. Which I re-installed with ClearOS. This works a lot faster and more efficient than Zentyal, I discovered. Uses about half the ram and whatnot. Despite some initial issues with the ClearOS website and download, it turned out to be quite enjoyable.

Both Mac Mini’s now *only* have Filesharing active. Not even Open Directory anymore. Mysql and Apache crashed on one of them. I’m not even going to bother figuring out why. Mountain Lion Kindly killed my entire Apache configuration after all. Without telling me. All virtual hosts, files. All gone. MySQL won’t start, or talk to me, so I don’t know what’s going on there. But it doesn’t matter anymore.

ClearOS has taken over. Handling Apache/MySQL/DNS/DHCP and VPN. Without blinking it’s eyes or going nuts over nothing. Yay! I know ClearOS from way back, before I used Apple hardware. It was called Clarkconnect back then. Very solid distribution. I hope ClearOS is as good.

So what will the Mac Mini’s do. Well, they both have their uses. One is now a mere media and file server. The other still runs the Minecraft server. At some point, when either one breaks down further I will reinstall both and swap the hardware for them. Since Minecraft isn’t multicore anyway it can just as well run on the dual core Mac and video encoding and media streaming then can use the full speed of quadcore. But that’s for later.