WL IP doesn't transmit to website? RESOLVED!

[m77]

Right, which is probably 8080 as I saw on my pc internet connections. Just tried ringing davis but of course it is thanks giving. Happy thanksgiving to you dave! I cannot ring tomorrow as I am 8 hours ahead of pacific time and they open 7am til 530pm pacific time. I don't suppose someone in the states would mind giving them a bell on friday and asking them about changing ports and perhaps posting on here? They take about a week to answer my emails.
No worries if not but that would be awesome if you could.

[johnd]

The question is already in to Davis at a senior level, but I suspect it may be Monday (well Tuesday UK time) before there's an answer given the US holidays. If anything does come through tomorrow (actually I mean by Saturday morning) then I'll let you know.

I don't understand about 8080 - it looks to be denied in and outbound, unless it's specifically intercepted and translated to say port 80 externally.

Curiously, as I read your table, 22222 is unblocked, which means that is port forwarding was enabled at the firewall to the WLIP device then (latency permitting) a PC outside the firewall could access the logger. But that's just a curiosity and not of any practical value.

But I'm doubtful about whether there is any readily accessible mechanism for changing the port designation on the uploads - I've certainly not heard anything about this hitherto so I wouldn't hold out much hope for this. (Maybe I'll be proved wrong though!) I think opening the firewall to port 80 from the IP address of the logger is going to be a more likely route for success.

Edit: And actually I've just heard from someone in Australia with a partial answer. It also suggests that the WLIP is stuck at port 80 and that tweaking the firewall is the only way of letting through the weatherlink.com traffic. But the final definitive statement is still to come from Davis.

[d_l]

Port 22222 isn't denied on either list.  Why can't the weatherlink software access the WLIP to download the archives, set the controls, etc. from your school PC?   There might be another confounding element to the problem here.

Just to be certain here, your school PC is on the same subnet as the WLIP, e.g, the first three octets of the PC's IP (aaa.bbb.ccc.---) match those on the WLIP's subnet, right?

[m77]

EDIT: Yes the pc does have the same first few digits as you outline.

when i go wireless, my IP only has the first AA.BB. the same but when i use a network cable, the AA.BB.CCC. is the same.

Both times a proxy server was flagged up as something completely different to the logger IP.

Thanks for giving feedback from davis as and when it occurs.

I think that my job now is to contact Rm myself or politely ask the tech guy to find time to do so.

That covers both bases and we shall see what we get. Fingers crossed.

[m77]

Dave, just to be clear my school pc can communicate locally when I check the correct box in the software comm options. I can download data and see live data etc. The only two things that I cannot do are
1.  Get any response when I type the WL's ip into a web browser at school.
2.  Upload data to the WL website.
I am not primarily fussed by problem 1 but if I could solve 2 then I would be a very happy teacher.

[d_l]

#1 is probably the port 80 denial policy except it is internal to your school's LAN which is strange.  As a guess if this isn't an intentional policy of the network administrator (no internal port 80 traffic for the LAN either), then maybe your school's network is segmented into several routers behind the firewall and you have inadvertently run afoul of a LAN configuration error.

If you can get everything else working properly, then there should be no need to access the WLIP's configuration, except for firmware upgrades!  You are already one firmware version behind and I personally considered this an important one that fixed some problems I was having.  You can probably get around the lack of access problem, by taking the WLIP home and programming it on your home LAN.

#2 is the whole point of having a WLIP. 

[m77]

If I took the WL home what would I programme it to do? Would I type the ip address at home into a browser and then get that stats page? What then? Could I change a port there? Would this be saved when the console is turned off and taken into work?

[m77]

movement. I have got an email from a davis techy asking me to download and run a programme that creates a text file to send back to him to inspect. I will do this at work on monday........

[d_l]

The upgrade firmware simply "finds" the WLIP like the WL software does, tells you which firmware the WLIP has now, and then asks if you want to upgrade. 

I don't know which ports are involved in the upgrade - 80, 22222, or some other port. So the upgrade may or may not work on the school LAN. If it is on port 80 it wouldn't work based on your previous lack of access to the WLIP's configuration page.  OTOH, if on 22222, it would probably work because your WL software seems to work over the school LAN. If some other port is used, then who knows what your school's LAN permits.

Whereas on your home LAN everything worked right off the bat.

[m77]

The programme is from the davis toolbox and basically gathers network info.
what is the firmware and what do I change on the console if I take it home to edit?
I have replied to the davis techy and asked him directly if you can change the port.
Thanks again john and dave. You seem to have infinite patience! 

[d_l]

You shouldn't have to change anything on the console.  As long as WL can find and access the WLIP on your LAN as it did before when you used it there.

The 1.07 version firmware is located here: http://www.davisnet.com/support/weather/software_frmwr.asp  Hold off for now on doing the upgrade until you get some word back from Davis about changing the port 80 communication with weatherlink.com.  The Davis programmers would probably be working on the assumption that you have 1.06 version firmware in the WLIP and you don't want to present a moving target of changing firmware versions to them. 

A tip for when you do upgrade firmware: Don't have your computer working on other tasks during the upgrade and don't have its screen saver running.  You don't want the screen to blank or change on you during the process.  It isn't healthy for the logger and Davis simply doesn't have warnings about these in their upgrade program before the upgrade begins.

[m77]

ok, thanks dave.

is this any use?

http://www.davisnet.com/product_documents/weather/app_notes/apnote_33.pdf

[d_l]

That appnote was developed before the WLIP came out I think and is for the older serial and USB loggers.  It doesn't apply to the WLIP.

[m77]

in the WL software help section look up


internet connection settings

..in the index....it says something about changing ports there - default is 21??
and FTP host information

does this help me at all?

For example could I just put in my Weatherlink user and pword into the FTP host and upload that way? would someone mind trying if they have a WL ip?

i am aware that this defeats the purpose of having WLip as i would still need the PC and software running, but it gets some data on the net as an interim until i hear from RM or Davis.

[d_l]

The only allowed data communication TO the weatherlink.com website is from a WLIP at this time.  Davis explains that in one of their FAQs that asks if data from a serial or USB logger could be uploaded.

[johnd]

i am aware that this defeats the purpose of having WLip as i would still need the PC and software running, but it gets some data on the net as an interim until i hear from RM or Davis.

I suspect you're already aware of this but let me spell it out to be clear. The only area of WLIP operation where there's evidence that you have a problem at present relates to uploads specifially to weatherlink.com via port 80. But remember that the WLIP logger can still do everything else that a standard WL logger (eg the USB logger) can do

If you had a PC running within the school network then these could potentially upload weather web pages generated by the standard Weatherlink program mechanism to a different server from weatherlink.com. The attraction of using weatherlink.com is its simplicity (plus you don't need a local PC running 24/7). But everyone who doesn't have a WLIP logger (ie many thousands of people around the world) can still upload weather web pages, it just takes a little more setting up to do. These pages would typically be based on the standard Weatherlink HTML template which produces a page like this one:

http://www.davisnet.com/weather/cool/images/Current_Vantage_Pro_Plus.htm

and so would look rather different from the weatherlink.com pages, but they would still contain the same weather information.

There are two ways that you could do this:

1. If you have a public-facing school web server (ie one where people from outside the school can see your pages) but which you can save pages to from your weather PC as a local file (eg on a mapped drive) then it should be relatively simple to set up.

2. If you need to use an external public web server then you can set up automatic uploads to that external server. This does require using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) but this typically uses ports 20 (data transfer) and 21 (set up transfer) I believe. Neither of these ports seem to be blocked by your firewall according to your previous listing, but obviously the proof of the pudding...

[m77]

Thanks john. That's a very clear summary of my options should port 80 not budge. I expect the chap at davis to email back mon or tuesday and Rm to be contacted next week sometime. I will hold off until then.
From what I read on the Rm site I think that it is possible to open up port 80 and more probable that they will open it to just the necessary ip address rather than to the whole school . The only limiting factor is how soon Rm are contacted and how soon they reply and or respond.
I would like to avoid using a 24.7 pc as I don't think I will get permission and so will wait on port 80 news. I may even ring davis tech tomorrow to eliminate or confirm that option.
Thanks again john.

[m77]

just spoke to the school techy who is on the case to RM to open port 80 in and out.

fingers crossed.  

i will also ring davis tonight. will only take a minute or so to confirm option of changing ports - my emails seem to take days and days to get answered.

 

[m77]

just got this email from Davis confirming what dave and john thought.

22222 is used for local connection to the data logger, 80 is used for outgoing data to weatherlink.com. Port 80 cannot be changed

so the last roll of the ip dice is with the school techs to get that port 80 opened.

[DaculaWeather]

Gee, I would think they would open an outbound port 80... I could see why they might not open up an inbound port.

I've worked for school systems for 21 years and know how they can be.

[m77]

Still waiting for the tech dept to help out.

As an interim is there a way that I can get the data via a cable from the logger to my pc? The lan link does not work anymore and I have no idea why not.

It may be a port issue but I wondered if there was a cheap ethernet to usb cable I could get to allow me to view the data I have collected over the last 2 weeks on the logger?

This is driving me bonkers and now the lan link is broken. When I search for stations in the comm set up it finds the local address and also the ip but does not download data?

Just as an interim til I get port 80 open how can I get the data?

I need pity!

[d_l]

This idea came up in another thread.  If you unplug the WLIP and console and carry it to where your computer is, you should be able to plug an ethernet cord directly between your computer and the WLIP and download the data once you are no longer on a network.  You would use the Local Device ID to transfer the data as your WLIP won't have an IP.

Chances are you will need a cross over cable to do this and not a regular patch cable.  You can try a regular patch cable at first, but if your computer tells you that you don't have a network connection or the green LED on the WLIP doesn't light up, then you must use the cross over cable.

You ought to be able to borrow a cross over cable from your school's feckless IT department.

This solution is based on the idea the port blocks (the blockage of port 22222, etc.) are imposed at the network level and not something installed on each individual computer such as a software firewall runing in the background.

[dalecoy]

muppet77, I don't recall if we verified that your WeatherLinkIP has the latest version of firmware (1.07) and you have a recent version of the WeatherLink software.

[m77]

Thanks guys.

I now have firmware 1.07 and WL v 5.9.0

Not sure if my cable is a cross over or a patch but will give it a go later today.

Thanks again.

[m77]

i have just tried linking the pc using a patch ethernet cable to a router that is not connected to the school network. i have then plugged the ip logger into the same router using a patch cable.

I can "find" the logger but cannot connect or get any data.

perhaps it just needs a crossover ethernet cable from pc to logger?