January 2011 – Page 2 – The Tech Blog of Dan Usher

PanTech UML 290 LTE–First Thoughts

So I bit the bullet and bought the PanTech UML 290 from Verizon Wireless, flat out. Works like a champ… when it works. The above speed test was taken from my house. I noticed that after about ten minutes, the card would stop transmitting traffic. At first I thought, “alright, maybe there’s a hardware issue.”

Oddly enough though I would run an NSLookup and get a valid response. I would try to ping Google.com and it would ping. So I was left scratching my head wondering why I wasn’t able to transmit and receive anything other than just a DNS record or an ICMP. So what did I do? I called Verizon’s tech support.

So I disconnected and then reconnected and all was back to normal with super fast network connectivity that scared me (yes, scared me thinking to myself that just a few years ago these speeds in a wired environment were usually only in corporate data networks or academic environments). Then about ten to fifteen minutes later, boom, disconnect. Third times a charm I figured, and gave it another reconnect request, this time the session was flawless and had no issues, lasted 45 minutes long and then I disconnected manually and left for dinner with a few friends. When I got back, I opened a ticket with Verizon support – they called back pretty quickly and left a message since I wasn’t available. Rather than shy away from the issue I went ahead and gave them a call to further discuss.

After talking with a gent about what was going on, it was confirmed from my network traffic that there were “at cause” issues where the modem would attempt to talk to a specific node of the LTE cell and be disconnected from transmitting at that level and cease data traffic altogether. Because it’s the network side an official ticket was opened and network engineering team will investigate the network hardware and routing to correct the issue.

So first thoughts, LTE is blazing fast. LTE is expensive in that Verizon wireless is capping at 5 GB for $50, 10 GB for $80. I’d like to see VZW man up and do what MetroPCS is doing with unlimited usage for $60

Nevertheless, according to VZW, they should have the issue resolved in 5 to 7 business days, I’m interested to see it get fixed and will report back then.

December 2010 Cumulative Updates for SharePoint

This one goes out to my friend and SharePoint colleague, Mark Rackley, also known to many of you as @MRackley. Gotta help my Dev friends that wonder at times why the underlying infrastructure doesn’t work properly – hopefully these bits will help.

Seem like you just got the good bits for the October 2010 Cumulative Update for SharePoint 2010? Just like that *snap* the December 2010 Cumulative Update is available.

The cumulative updates contain several fixes that go across the entirety of the platform from REST to Search to e-mail notifications that should be sent to task assignee’s.

Information Articles for December 2010 Cumulative Updates:

SharePoint Foundation Server 2010 – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2459108
SharePoint Server 2010 – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2459257
Project Server 2010 – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2459258

Windows SharePoint Services v3 – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2458606
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2458605

Full server downloads from the automated hotfix system available at:

SharePoint Foundation Server 2010 (x64 – 50.5 MB) – http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2459125
SharePoint Server 2010 (x64 – 325 MB) – http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2459257
Project Server 2010 (x64 – 330 MB) – http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2459258

Windows SharePoint Services v3 (x86 – 29.5 MB, x64 – 33.4 MB) – http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2458606
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010 (x86 – 63.7 MB, x64 – 60.5 MB) http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2458605

Please be aware that there are some known issues with the SharePoint 2010 Cumulative Updates which may incur issues with some functionality, namely this:

Important notes about the cumulative update package

The Microsoft Office 2010 hotfixes are now multilingual. This cumulative update package contains updates for all languages.

This cumulative update package includes all the server component packages. Additionally, this cumulative update package updates only those components that are installed on the system.

Known issue 1
Consider the following scenario:

You install the Cumulative Update in this KB article on a SharePoint 2010 server.

You restart the server as it prompts you at the end of the installation.

You run the Psconfig.exe tool after the server restarts.

In this scenario, you see an error page when you access the Manage User Profile page in Central Administration.

Workaround

To work around this issue, follow these steps:

Open the Central Administration page.

Click Manage Services on the Server link.

Find the User Profile Synchronization service, and then restart the service on the Server.aspx page.

Perform iisreset after the service restarts successfully.

Known issue 2

2490381 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2490381/ ) You cannot create an AD DS synchronization connection that has multiple domains selected after you install the Cumulative Update in either KB 2459257 or KB 2459258

(Reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2459257)

As always, be sure to install cumulative updates in a testing environment prior to implementation on a production system.

Lastly remember that for SharePoint 2010, you only need to download the patch for the product you’re working with whereas with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 you’ll need both the WSS v3 patch and the MOSS 2007 patch.