Now, this device has a default IP address, but it will grab an address from DHCP if possible. That made finding the web configuration very difficult - it has no monitor or numeric display, so there's no way to see its IP2. I didn't have a port scanner or network mapper on hand, so I started trying IP addresses in the DHCP range, one by one, in Chrome. I got tired of that after about 15 tries.
Using my very limited knowledge of VBScript, I threw together a script that opened a browser tab for every possible IP. I then hit the tab-close button like a madman until I saw the right login screen. That was kind of a neat trick, but it made me think that the whole DHCP-on-monitorless-devices thing is kind of a pain.
Wouldn't it be great if such devices had a miniature numeric display that told you its IP address? If that's too expensive, I would be fine with a little button that causes the power light to flash out the IP address in binary3, provided it did so slow enough that I could write the bits down. One could also imagine complicated "grab the network mask from DHCP and add a predefined host section to it" strategies.
Using my very limited knowledge of VBScript, I threw together a script that opened a browser tab for every possible IP. I then hit the tab-close button like a madman until I saw the right login screen. That was kind of a neat trick, but it made me think that the whole DHCP-on-monitorless-devices thing is kind of a pain.
Wouldn't it be great if such devices had a miniature numeric display that told you its IP address? If that's too expensive, I would be fine with a little button that causes the power light to flash out the IP address in binary3, provided it did so slow enough that I could write the bits down. One could also imagine complicated "grab the network mask from DHCP and add a predefined host section to it" strategies.
Footnotes ("Fleex's Lab: now with footnotes!")
- It supports Power-over-Ethernet (which I had never used before), 802.1X supplication, RADIUS authentication, VLANs, 8 SSIDs, and lots of other nice stuff.
- I am aware that I could have checked the DHCP server's lease list. I did not have the password to that on hand; the person with access to that was not present. I am also aware that I could have plugged the device directly in to a computer and use its default IP. There was not a spare machine around with a free outlet space that I could see.
- Probably in Morse code. Guessing the length of a modest zero run would be about as bad as manually trying IPs in web browsers.
No comments:
Post a Comment