Heh, you can forget about the .php part ;-)

This tool is not useful, though...

Hello All, 

I have received and inquiry from the Marketing Team on what this URL would be for the Baby's feature guide.  Any update on this?  Per Matthew Martin and Dan, should be:

mysqueezebox.com/asciitohex


This is for the feature guide, and I was advised that this is now a P1.

Thanks,

LaRon

This is an invalid bug and should not/can not be implemented.

In what way is this invalid?  It can certainly be implemented-- rather easily I'd even argue.  Can you explain more?

If you can find a spec documenting how to perform WEP ascii -> hex conversion that is compatible with all routers, then maybe we can.  But I don't believe any such thing exists.

Can I guaranty compatibility with all routers, certainly not.  All I can say though is this issue came up last week with one of the new agents in class and they tried the ascii to hex converter and were then able to connect their Squeezebox.  

So this is apparently still an issue and our current converter fixes the issue for some percentage of users.  It would be silly to junk it because it might not fix *all* users.

The current converter just does a simple ascii -> hex conversion, i.e. A = 0x41.  I think this will only confuse users more.  Tech support should instead tell people to switch to WPA or WPA2 which are far more secure than WEP.  If for some strange reason you have no choice but to run WEP you might as well just run your network open.

Andy-- while I agree with you 100%, neither of those things are reasonable things to tell a customer.  

 * Telling them to enter "45 76 61 6E 73" instead of "Evans" is not that confusing.  

 * Telling them to change their encryption type is _very_ difficult, to the point where I'd say it's just not an option for the majority of our customers.  (if they change it, then they need to change it for every other wireless device on their network. _Not_ easy!)

I think the converter provides a reasonable solution.  I'm reopening this.

Dan: I'll assign this bug to you then, so you and "The Marketing Team" can decide on the best path forward to follow.

Well you are going to have to come up with a better spec then, because what's on http://www.slimdevices.com/asciitohex.php is worthless, for example "It does not perform md5 hex conversion used by many routers."  So, if you want to do this you'll need to define a better tool that has maybe a drop-down box with router type and then performs the correct conversion depending on which was selected.

Hello Guys,

Just to chime in - the current ascii to hex converter has worked for all the customers that I have encountered with this issue, and is just a tool if we notice that their passwords are in HEX, and they are using WEP.

Thanks,

LaRon

Given that the current tool assists us in helping customers, then I can safely say it has value.  Here is the plan:

1. Create mysqueezebox.com/asciitohex and duplicate its functionality as is.

2. Support will assess how often when using this tool it fails to assist the customer and/or the situation.  If that number is high enough, we will design a new, better tool.

Please advise who can complete step #1 and the bug will be assigned appropriately.

Hello All,

I have just spoken with Seth, and he is researching this request, and will let us know the decision.  


Thanks,

LaRon

We do not currently display the specific URL www.mysqueezebox.com/asciitohex in any of our current communication.

So, if this is something we can add support for just using the CMS tool using the "support page" template (which is essentially an open page template) and adding a link to this from the support page copy and the feature guide copy then we should do so.

If it requires additional server config work to support then we should not.

Andy? Matthew? What would need to be done to support this on our site?

If we don't host it ourselves, we will need to include a link on the Support page to a conversion tool hosted by a third party. There are several out there to choose from and I'd leave it to the support team to select which one they'd want to use.

My guess is that nobody is going to be happy with this solution, but I'm extremely mindful of a) how much work is on Andy's plate and b) this is a functional tool we need to access from time-to-time to help users and support personell solve a specific problem. It's not something that is somehow intimately tied to Logitech/Squeezebox branding.

Seth--

Please note:  this tool is already built and live on slimdevices.com.  See:

http://slimdevices.com/asciitohex.php

We are only asking this be moved/copied to mysqueezebox.com.  We are not asking to have a tool built from scratch.

Your previous comment suggested maybe that was the thought or assumption, and I want make sure that's clear.

Okay, I need to restart this process given that Slimdevices.com is going away. I want this tool added to mySqueezebox.com and available at this URL:

  http://www.mysqueezebox.com/asciitohex

Here is a copy of the proposed plan from comment #13:

1. Copy slimdevices.com/asciitohex to mysqueezebox.com/asciitohex and duplicate its functionality as is.

2. Support will assess how often when using this tool it fails to assist the
customer and/or the situation.  If that number is high enough, we will design a
new and better tool.

Please advise who can complete step #1 and the bug will be assigned
appropriately.

Andy-- Would that be you?

I'm not going to implement this as-is.  I need you to provide a mapping table of router type/model -> ASCII WEP conversion method so we can make it work properly.

Andy-- as you can guess I have been avoiding this argument.  I don't believe providing the table you request is necessary.  The tool works currently as-is **for the purposes of Support** for which it was created.

But.....

Can anyone tell me if/when the slimdevices.com domain is being retired?  Or more to the point, how long will this converter URL be live?

We have FAQ articles that point to it and need to know long-term what to do about it.  If it's sticking around a long time, then Andy and I needn't both arguing. 

Thanks.