Ugh, this is another of those tales of hours spent trying to cipher out cryptic and unintuitive interfaces that are way too unnecessarily complicated.
This multifunction machine was operating correctly at one location, but once moved ten minutes down the road, the scan to email function completely ceased operation.
It's also really, really frustrating that this machine just fails to send, with next to no feedback as to why.
So, let's dive in and see what happened here.
We moved the machine from one township to another. Once moved, all local functions were fine, but getting it to scan to email no longer worked. The outgoing scans simply came back as "NG" on the log screen.
My first mistake - not asking for "details" right away - and then mistake two - not realizing that the "details" page, when consulted, still was really useless. You get a three digit error code and nothing else. Here is the link for deciphering these error codes.
For starters, to make any changes either on the panel, or the web-based interface, you need to log in to the machine as an admin. The default admin name and password are both "7654321" - it will nag you to change these every time you log in. Be ready to skip this unless you are sure you want to swap them out. In my case, it was a SOHO, so there wasn't really a concern about locking down these settings.
Next up, you will need to consult your ISP about their outgoing SMTP ports - in our case, it was a fairly benign 587, but the scanner didn't default to that. I'll be jiggered if it's nearly impossible to find where to change that setting. You need to press the Settings/Registration button, quickly followed by 2 and 8 simultaneously, then Settings/Registration button once again. Then choose mode. Then choose copier (?), then choose option, then choose Network, then press <Level 1> so that it switched to <Level 2>.
Whew, then clicking directly on SMTPTXPN you can enter in a new port.
Press the Reset button to work your way back out of this menu.
Next up, I will relate the settings that worked for us, not necessarily what will work for you, but it should get you closer.
Now on the regular menu, hit up the Settings/Registration button again, and log in. Use the defaults if it hasn't been changed, otherwise, you're on your own.
Then Functions, Send, and Communication Settings.
On the first screen, enter your email address and SMTP server. POP RX is off, SMTP RX is on.
Next, SMTP TX is on, SMTP RX is on, POP should be greyed out.
Next, SMTP Authentication is on, display auth. screen is off, and the others are greyed out. Username is the full email address, and password is the email password.
That should be it. It took me pretty much a full day to finally get this just so. Hopefully it helps someone out there?
If it does fail, the error codes may be of limited use. Mine were throwing POP errors until I disabled all the POP settings and worked just with SMTP. It was mostly luck that got me here.
Regards!
Wednesday 12 December 2018
Tuesday 11 December 2018
Dealing with a SURFboard Cable Modem (Arris SB6141)
So I had a nice wifi setup that ticked along for a couple of months with no complaints. It was a bit unusual, but nothing terrifically so.
Shaw communications had supplied a SURFboard cable modem, which fed into a Linksys EA9200 router, which then supplied wifi to the household, as well as fed into some TP-Link AV500 power adapters to head upstairs and allow for a hard-wired VoIP box to be installed.
After a few months, some new doors were installed, and suddenly the wifi signal was weak and dropping constantly. The doors were upgraded from glass to solid, fire proof doors (this was a multi-unit house), and so I can only suspect that that was part of the problem.
In any case, I thought maybe I could swap around things slightly, and move the router upstairs into the office of one unit, where it was directly over the main room of the lower unit.
Unfortunately, as soon as I got upstairs, no internet.
Hypothesis - does the powerline adapter somehow not work with the cable modem directly?
Test - plug another inexpensive router into the cable modem first, then the powerline adapter, then the router - kludgy, but one does what one must.
Result - cable modem switched from blue downstream connection light to red, and no internet.
Test Two - plug in my laptop directly to cable modem and see if it's just how the router is configured (even though I did a factory reset on the router).
Result - same as above, red light instead of blue, and no internet.
Bring the original modem back downstairs, plug it in - blue light, and internet. In fact, that's exactly how it played out. ONLY the original modem worked with the cable modem, anything else was "blacklisted" with a red light.
Much head scratching and call to tech support (with escalation) finally revealed the awful truth -
The red flashing light on a SURFboard modem does NOT indicate a problem - but rather that you are not using a 1GB capable device, and have switched to 100MB or whatever - not an issue for these cable connections where you're getting from between 5MB and 10MB connections anyway.
Shaw communications cable modem only gives out ONE SINGLE IP ADDRESS via DHCP. You can only have one device hooked up to it asking for an IP, and then IT has to also be a DHCP server for everything else downstream.
Shaw communications cable modem will only give out a new IP address if it is fully power cycled.
That explains pretty much everything - except my initial problem, which I attribute to me being too impatient with the router, which admittedly takes a few minutes to reboot and connect to the modem at the best of times.
Otherwise - if you try to change any device hooked directly to the modem, you MUST power cycle the modem. This is not intuitive, as every other router/modem that I'm aware of is easily able to ascertain that a device has been swapped, and re-assign it a new IP.
Long story short - did you try turning it off and on again?
Shaw communications had supplied a SURFboard cable modem, which fed into a Linksys EA9200 router, which then supplied wifi to the household, as well as fed into some TP-Link AV500 power adapters to head upstairs and allow for a hard-wired VoIP box to be installed.
After a few months, some new doors were installed, and suddenly the wifi signal was weak and dropping constantly. The doors were upgraded from glass to solid, fire proof doors (this was a multi-unit house), and so I can only suspect that that was part of the problem.
In any case, I thought maybe I could swap around things slightly, and move the router upstairs into the office of one unit, where it was directly over the main room of the lower unit.
Unfortunately, as soon as I got upstairs, no internet.
Hypothesis - does the powerline adapter somehow not work with the cable modem directly?
Test - plug another inexpensive router into the cable modem first, then the powerline adapter, then the router - kludgy, but one does what one must.
Result - cable modem switched from blue downstream connection light to red, and no internet.
Test Two - plug in my laptop directly to cable modem and see if it's just how the router is configured (even though I did a factory reset on the router).
Result - same as above, red light instead of blue, and no internet.
Bring the original modem back downstairs, plug it in - blue light, and internet. In fact, that's exactly how it played out. ONLY the original modem worked with the cable modem, anything else was "blacklisted" with a red light.
Much head scratching and call to tech support (with escalation) finally revealed the awful truth -
The red flashing light on a SURFboard modem does NOT indicate a problem - but rather that you are not using a 1GB capable device, and have switched to 100MB or whatever - not an issue for these cable connections where you're getting from between 5MB and 10MB connections anyway.
Shaw communications cable modem only gives out ONE SINGLE IP ADDRESS via DHCP. You can only have one device hooked up to it asking for an IP, and then IT has to also be a DHCP server for everything else downstream.
Shaw communications cable modem will only give out a new IP address if it is fully power cycled.
That explains pretty much everything - except my initial problem, which I attribute to me being too impatient with the router, which admittedly takes a few minutes to reboot and connect to the modem at the best of times.
Otherwise - if you try to change any device hooked directly to the modem, you MUST power cycle the modem. This is not intuitive, as every other router/modem that I'm aware of is easily able to ascertain that a device has been swapped, and re-assign it a new IP.
Long story short - did you try turning it off and on again?
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