Activation portal cannot find PLG1000

[aaronletheren]

I have a PLG1000 Thunderbolt device and I am having severe difficulty assigning it to a customer site within the OnPlus portal. When I try and activate the device i get the following text appear on a web page:

Unable to determine a local IP address for any OnPlus Network Agent on your current network.

• Verify that the OnPlus Network Agent is connected to the same local network as this browser. The OnPlus Network Agent must be located on the same public WAN IP address block (82.70.x.x) as your current web browser.
  
• Non-activated OnPlus Network Agents will attempt to broadcast their IP for up to 30 minutes and if successful will display here for up to 4 hours. Try power-cycling the OnPlus Network Agent if it has been online for longer than 30 minutes.
  
• Check that DHCP service is running on the local network so that the OnPlus Network Agent is able to acquire an IP address via DHCP. You will be able to change the OnPlus Network Agent to use a static IP address if you choose to (recommended), but DHCP service is required to initially access the OnPlus Network Agent.
  
• Check that DHCP clients can route to the Internet.
  
• If the site hosting the OnPlus Network Agent has multiple WAN paths to the Internet, try refreshing this page. Your browser must access this page from the same WAN IP address as the OnPlus Network Agent.
  

The device is connected to a router with no firewall, and my PC is connected to the same router. Internet access is up and working. My XP machine cannot find the device. but my Windows 7 machine sees it quite happily in the Network window. Please help. Any and all help gratefully recieved. Many thanks.

[jamwyatt]

Hi Aaron,

We did have a batch of the 'PLG1000' trial devices that had some factory defaults and I'd like to verify that this isn't one of them. When you say that your Windows 7 PC can see the PLG1000, can you attempt to connect to the device's default web page and tell me what you get? Can you 'ping' the PLG1000?

Also, is there any chance that you are working in an environment that has multiple subnets and/or multiple internet connections (from different ISPs)? Does the PC you are using to activate the PLG1000, have multiple network connections? If multiple network connections are in play, try activation with only one network connection, on the same subnet as the PLG1000. Activation generally works best with a single ISP and a PC that is on the exact same subnet as the PLG1000 (without multiple network connections).

Thanks,

Robert

[aaronletheren]

The Windows 7 pc can navigate to the IP address off the PLG1000 and it gets a login page. Username is in default admin but the password is unknown to me. DOcumentation suggests it it a 6 digit code assigned when creating a site, but as we havent got that far, I don't have a code.

The environment I have set up is a router which connects to the internet via an ADSL connection. One subnet only. I have the wireless network adapter turned off. Single ISP and the Router/PC/PLG1000 are all on the one subnet - 192.168.1.0/24

Thanks for your help.

[jamwyatt · Accepted solution]

Hi Aaron,

Excellent information! I see what's happened. It appears that your device had previously been activated. Given the nature of the trial, that has happened a couple of times. It is easy to fix too. Since we won't know the login credentials, we can simply trigger a factory restore. The PLG1000 was an off-the-shelf purchase for the trial and it didn't have the features we ultimately built into the Cisco ON100 version. One of the big feature upgrades was the 'reset' button. On the PLG1000, that button is more akin to a power switch and thus can't be used to trigger a factory restore. To factory restore the PLG1000, you will need to use a 'Flash Drive/key' that is formated for Windows (i.e. FAT32). The drive doesn't need to be cleaned, but it does need to have the file 'RESTORE.TXT' on the root directory/folder.

Once you have the USB flash drive that contains the 'RESTORE.TXT', power off the PLG1000, insert the flash drive and then power it back on. The device will boot up and do some cleaning of the internal storage and finish with the front LED (the one closest to the Ethernet port, on most devices, it is Blue, but a few are RED) flashing quickly and then going off for a few seconds, then flashing, then off ... repeat forever.

When the device reaches the 'flashing LED state', power off the device, remove the USB flash drive, and re-apply power to the PLG1000. It is now factory fresh and after about 5-10 minutes updating its firmware, your activation will proceed as planned.

Thanks,

Robert

[aaronletheren]

Hi, thank you for your response. I tried this but the lights don't seem to follow the pattern you have described. Does there have to be anything in the RESTORE.TXT file please? Do I have to name the file RESTORE.TXT (for example, if I hide file extensions all I see is RESTORE). I will give it another go in a second with the file on a clean USB drive. I look forward to your response.

Thank you,

Aaron

[jamwyatt]

The file name by itself is the trigger, no contents needed. The filesystem on the flash USB key must be Windows FAT16/32. The filesystem doesn't support case sensitivity, so the filename case doesn't matter. If you're sure it is formated as FAT, can you use the Windows 'cmd' window and the command 'dir' to verify that the file was created as 'restore.txt'. Since I'm on an Apple, I just gave this a test run on a Windows 7 virtual machine just to be sure and it worked fine.

Other than ensuring the filename is correct, making sure that the USB flash device is snuggly inserted before powering on the PLG1000 is the only other advice. If it still doesn't power on and end up with an alternating off and blinking LED, then we'll likely need to to request a fresh replacement from our marketing folks.

A just a test, you might also remove the USB flash drive after leaving the device for 5 minute and see if it reboots and comes up with the same login screen. I guess there's a chance that the LED isn't working? Do you see the Blue LED flicker on initial application of power to the PLG1000?

Thanks,

Robert

[aaronletheren]

Thank you so much for your support with this Robert. I was being a little too hasty with the process. I can confirm that this is the solution to my issue 100%.

Thanks for your swift response.

Kind regards,

Aaron Letheren

[jamwyatt]

Wonderful! Glad it has worked out. :-)

As I mentioned earlier, the official Cisco engineered device (ON100 Network Agent) is easier to restore to factory defaults. We never liked the 'restore.txt' process during early trials, but we didn't come up with a better solution. The detectable reset button was a critical feature for the ON100 for just this situation.

Keep us posted on your experiences as we are always eager to find ways to improve!

Thanks,

Robert