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Why Sys-Admins Are Disabling The Lights on WiFi Access Points (networkworld.com)
More than a dozen IT professionals said they've disabled the LEDs on wireless access points, according to a Network World article shared by Slashdot reader alphadogg:
Some users don't want a beacon shining in their eyes as they try to get to sleep and others worry about the health effects of a blue light glowing all night. Some even resort to unplugging the gear when they're not using it.... "It seems when you are sick and laying in a hospital bed and have trouble sleeping, the single LED shining in your eyes is an issue," [says the wireless network staff specialist for Penn State College of Medicine]. "I get it and understand it..."
Network pros say they have begun asking vendors such as Cisco if they can provide an easier way to dim, rather than turn off the lights on the access points entirely, via wireless controllers. And some would like to see more granular control, such that the power light could be left on to comfort end users that the device is working, but blinking lights could be turned off or dimmed to avoid bothering them.
End users have tried "all sorts of makeshift fixes -- from Post-it notes to bandages to condom wrappers," but one network architect complains that when they disable the LEDs altogether, "I invariably get a ticket (or more) that the access point is offline and wireless is broken because there are no lights on..." On the plus side, when they then re-enable the LED lghts, "magically the wireless performance and coverage is perfect!"
Network pros say they have begun asking vendors such as Cisco if they can provide an easier way to dim, rather than turn off the lights on the access points entirely, via wireless controllers. And some would like to see more granular control, such that the power light could be left on to comfort end users that the device is working, but blinking lights could be turned off or dimmed to avoid bothering them.
End users have tried "all sorts of makeshift fixes -- from Post-it notes to bandages to condom wrappers," but one network architect complains that when they disable the LEDs altogether, "I invariably get a ticket (or more) that the access point is offline and wireless is broken because there are no lights on..." On the plus side, when they then re-enable the LED lghts, "magically the wireless performance and coverage is perfect!"
Why can't we get a strip ok old school lcd like in the digital watch of the 1980.
It can show the info without the light.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I once had an expensive micro USB cable that had an extra feature: an exceedingly powerful blue-lit USB logo that turned on whenever it was plugged. Powerful enough that at night I saw a blue ceiling whenever I plugged it in. To this day I wonder who in their right mind would think that was a good idea.
This is newsworthy? Slashdot continues to decline with each transition to a new owner. It's literally become a clickbait site.
I just use a black marker to darken the surface. You can essentially black them out or leave a little light passing through.
So, it has come to this. An article on Slashdot about covering up blinking lights.
one network architect complains that when they disable the LEDs altogether, "I invariably get a ticket (or more) that the access point is offline and wireless is broken because there are no lights on..."
Then cover them with black masking tape. Voila, no lights. Plus, everyone can see why there are no lights, so they won't be psychologically fooled into thinking the thing isn't working. And if there really is a problem, they can peel back the tape and have a look.
Bloody hell...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
At home I used to disable LEDs on router/access point. The reason was: At night they made it harder to fall asleep.
Now a days, router is away from my sleeping room, so I have no reason to disable LEDs.
At work I would disable LEDs on network equipment only if I would be sitting directly in front of it for prolonged time. Blinking lights are distractive.
Have a look at Turris Omnia - the LEDs are dimmable in 8 steps, the last one being completely off.
They should add light sensor and dim based on that. iPhone display does that btw.
Put painter's tape which is easy to detach without damaging the surface of the device on the bottom and packing tape on the top. Brown, semi-transparent plastic changes the color of the light as well, even if only slightly. It's ugly but functional.
At home, I turn off all the beeping on the UPS. On some, I had to remove the speaker. If I'm home, I know the power is out. I don't need a beep to tell me. If I'm away, my UPS shutdown the systems and it was logged that it went down.
Had it here for years; works. :)
"It seems when you are sick and laying in a hospital bed and have trouble sleeping, the single LED shining in your eyes is an issue,"
A LED shining in your eyes is the LEAST of your worries when trying to get to sleep in a hospital.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Don't want LEDs shining on you in the night? Turn the router so the LEDs aren't facing you.
LEDs too bright? Use white tape/masking tape over the LED to reduce and diffuse the light.
Don't want LEDs at all? Use duct tape.
Seriously it's not rocket surgery guys...
Just tape it, do that with my kids computers so they can sleep at night and download stuff at the same time.
No big deal, roll of black electrical tape is like 35 cents
I've been reading slashdot for years and I've never seen a story about blinking lights and not much else.
EnGenius APs also have defeatable status LEDs. You can even turn off individual LEDs, so you can leave on the power LED but turn off the flashing LEDs. Nice hardware.
If they were that concerned about the led's and wanted to do something about them, assuming the device was no longer under warranty, why didn't they just trace the node that the led is connected to and simply bypass the smt resistor by removing it, taking a small guage solid wire, soldering it to the resistor and installing a 5kohm potentiometer that they could mount to a circuit board that can be fastened down using one or two screws, washers and nuts to the casing, with the pot knob exposed outward so that they can install a pot knob cover. All the job needs is a esd safe soldering station, a small hand drill or electric drill, and access to digikey.
Nope, didn't read the article. The summary itself is all over the place. What are they even talking about? Blue light keeping admins who take naps in router closets from being able to sleep? Or millennials complaining because the are living in their moms basements and being kept awake because the router is still down there? Who the hell walks around the office looking for blue lights shining through to see if wifi is working? Who are these people?
This is only done so you wouldn't be able to have a point of control to see when there is unwanted activity. No led and you'll never have any indication of unsolicited networktraffic. Windows has been doing this too, no indication of anything your computer is doing, no hd lights, no network lights, system maintenance indicator gone... It's all done to obscure you being able to spot your hardware being used bu unwanted 3d party. All other excuses are BS.
just put a led enable switch.
So stupid cant understand still works without blinking.
It's even worse outside. Street lighting is now too violent and has too large of a spectrum, while municipalities etc. pass it off as "environmentally friendly" because of the increased lumen/watt ratio. By that logic, we should celebrate the efficiency of newer chainsaw that use less fuel per square kilometer of Amazon forest cut down, or praise the Nazis'e efficiency in conducting the holocaust.
And they won't even turn that shit off at 4 AM or something.
Have to walk or bike a mile or more and go to very specific places if I want a modicum of shade.
Also, I have prescription glasses so I can't just use (cheap) sun glasses. I suppose animal and plant life are disturbed, I haven't seen the kind of seagull flock on the river there sometimes was a few years back.
I'm not pissed off by stray LED much in the zero bedroom flat. I don't have much LED equipped crap and if I did it could be remedied. It's fresh air that's lacking there. To get both fresh air and lack of light? Well, fuck you if you want that, we'll blind you with night-time lighting to give insecure people some false sense of security. Me, I'm rather scared by the cameras instead. Or in some places and times, if you're walking alone you're so well singled out and lit up by the stadium-like lights that you might draw would-be bad guys's attention, if anything.
My last tower's power light was just insane. I used to put multiple layers of tape over it as one layer of opaque tape was not nearly enough. Even during the day, if pointed in your general direction it was painful, and even when pointed away at night it would raise the ambient light level of the room enough to be annoying to sleep with. You could read by it, it must of been equivalent to a ~5 watt light bulb of something in that category. Probably something like 20 times brighter than any other indicator light I have seen before or since.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The problem is not limited to access points. Power strips, monitors, speakers, keyboards, mice — everything has a LED.
Some devices have options to turn off the LED when working, but insist on blinking said LED when in standby. Good luck turning your monitor to face the wall so that its blinking LED doesn’t disturb your sleep.
It's not tiny!
a pulsing mode, reminiscent of HAL 2000 would be a great idea.
I love blinking leds! I want more of it! I want a blinking led for connected users, one of it for transmission errors, one it for internet latency, and more! Nothing is more cool and nerdy than a row of blinking leds :)
Does anybody make a something like Scotch tape except that instead of being transparent its got about a 90% tint to it?
Of course there are about a 1001 DIY equivalents, from electrical tape to permanent (or even paint-type) markers, but often the DIY solutions have drawbacks that make the lights either impossible to see or require some other intervention (getting a ladder to remove the tape..).
Tinting film for cars works, more or less, but it comes on rolls that are impractically large. Something the size of a scotch tape dispenser would be better.
I know they would cost more and take more room, but what about simple electro-mechanical indicators? For something to replace an multi-color/flashing LED you could get by with a simple rotating coloured disc. You can easily display four different states by having each disc quadrant a different colour. Rotate 90 degrees and you're displaying a new status colour.
For a simple on/off indicator a tiny electromagnet could push/pull a rectangle with two different states on each side.
The alternative to these complex and possibly expensive solutions? First of all use a normal LED, indicators aren't flashlights. Second, put a frosted plastic in front of it to diffuse the light and make it less blinding. Third, blue LEDs were cool when they were introduced, now they're just annoying. Blue is blinding, red is agressive. Why not switch back to green LEDs?
I have my router in my basement. I've covered the LEDs with black electrical tape because otherwise, after a few months, I have spiders and all sorts of other little bugs hanging around and trying to get into my router. I'm not sure if the bugs caused any real performance issues, but it's nice to not have to clean the thing for every hard reset.
-USR1
That article was paid for, I think.
How idiotic does a person have to be to not think of covering the leds up with masking tape? People still wouldn't see the lights, but they'd see the tape, and realize that the tape is covering them up and not that they are not even lit.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The Dell SonicWALL SonicPoint Nis that I've worked with come with both the capability to disable the LEDs and a nice clip on trim ring that covers the branding and LEDs, making it look more like a smoke detector than an AP.
I mean, it's bad enough that the stereotype of techies is we're all fat, slovenly weenies who can't pick up a thick book (let alone a lady). But when we're so freaking lazy we can't even turn the AP to face AWAY from us? Well - we just confirmed the stereotype...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Using metric may inflate the reported number - but leaves the dick the same size...
If they were that concerned about the led's and wanted to do something about them, assuming the device was no longer under warranty, why didn't they just trace the node that the led is connected to and simply bypass the smt resistor by removing it, taking a small guage solid wire, soldering it to the resistor and installing a 5kohm potentiometer that they could mount to a circuit board that can be fastened down using one or two screws, washers and nuts to the casing, with the pot knob exposed outward so that they can install a pot knob cover. All the job needs is a esd safe soldering station, a small hand drill or electric drill, and access to digikey.
Try that in a hospital and Bioengineering (or whatever they call the folks that are tasked with fixing things with batteries and / or power cords) will be on you like a ton of bricks. No mods! No kinks! No tape! You leave it ** alone ** or something Very Bad could possibly happen and we don't want that, do we?
Hell, I can give our guys the willies by walking around with some zip ties.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
More than a Dozen sys-admins (we used to call them computer operators in the 80's) have put black electrical tape over some LEDs.
Definitely worthy of an article on Slashdot.
We should discuss the relative merits of different varieties of black electrical tape. It's called 'bush league' in Horowitz & Hill and I agree. But that's topic drift, and we mustn't have that, because this is an IMPORTANT and interesting discussion of sys-admins (we used to call them computer operators) covering up the LED indicators on equipment.
I hate that just about every manufacturer feels the need to put an LED in every piece of equipment. I need total darkness. The best method I've found for blocking the LEDS is to fold a piece of aluminum foil so it's 8-thick and then tape that over the LED.
Sometimes I've opened the thing up and destroyed or disconnected the LED.
Oh, cut the bleeding heart crap, will ya? We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with, Striker. I mean, down here there are literally hundreds and thousands of blinking, beeping, and flashing lights, blinking and beeping and flashing - they're *flashing* and they're *beeping*. I can't stand it anymore! They're *blinking* and *beeping* and *flashing*! Why doesn't somebody pull the plug!
I would hope that Cisco would instead focus on making products that work correctly, before dealing with blinky lights. We just got rid of all of our Cisco equipment because they were shit.
I don't respond to AC's.
I have one in my house. All of my UPSs, routers, TV antenna amplifiers, VoIP interfaces, etc. sit inside the closet, merrily blinking away. If something goes wrong, I check the lights. Otherwise I don't care.
Have gnu, will travel.
I never really minded the red LEDs of the past, but now some idiot decided that was old, and new is white or blue, both of which are horrible in the dark. Blue is especially awful, and apparently bad for sleep.
Wife has a TV box for the TV in the bedroom, and it has a white and a blue LED on the front for good measure. I throw socks and stuff over it every night before bed.
At work, we are in a dark room a lot, and the horrible blue LEDs on the computers there seem like lasers shining in my eyes. I used a label maker (printed BLUE SUCKS) and stuck it over them. Can see enough light through to determine status, but not be blinded.
Use the punch to punch out some small dots that fit perfect over most led's.
I use this in my living room so there are no led's blinding you while trying to watch a movie.
Also to the untrained eye the perfect circular dots makes it look like the device was manufactured that way.
I like to watch movies on my home theater setup with the lights out. However...
* The TV has a bright blue (which can be somewhat dimmed to not quite as bright blue),
* Yamaha AMP (tons of lights here),
* mac mini has a LED on the front...
* PDU (not a powerstrip)
Only solution I've found so far is black electrical tape or coloring in all the LEDs with a sharpie..
Why does everything need to have these ultra bright lights? We're not trying to light up a baseball stadium here.
...putting the router in a room that is NOT your bedroom?
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
https://www.amazon.com/3M-Scotch-Electrical-Value-10457NA/dp/B001B19FDK/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1473608316&sr=8-4&keywords=electrical+tape
bright blue lights are actually a real problem for home users who have devices running overnight - i have to to tape my monitor's bright blue light to use it all day and cover up the bright blue light on an external drive that backs up overnight - when my old switch died and i got a new one the light was 100x brighter
a new low.
The most common drug used to treat breast cancer fails about 10% of the time and that has been tracked to too much light pollution at night. Some of that is from LEDs but most is from street lights. In Australia, that 10% failure rate kills about a quarter of the people that traffic accidents do. There is current research to see if other types of cancer treatments are have light pollution issues as well and the preliminary results are that it does.
The real issue isn't that the light pollution is annoying, it is killing people.
http://lightdims.com/
They used to have these on ThinkGeek. I got one sheet from them, and I've been using them for years.
We need a law where LED's on devices should require on/off switches. 1 on/off switch per device that disables all light activity. A legally required blackout mode by the FCC or UL. I agree that the amount of blinking devices in our lives is growing. They removed the tag from the internet for a reason yet it's being used in our homes on a daily basis in real life. It's rare but sometimes we do need to see those activity lights for diagnostic purposes, 99% of the time I cover them with black electrical tape, especially if it's in my bedroom.
As to the example in the article, "It seems when you are sick and laying in a hospital bed and have trouble sleeping"...
Let me get this straight. Someone is in a hospital bed staring at an AP/Router? Please tell us the name of the hospital that has AP's out in plain view in someones hospital room?
We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm astonished, after all the years, they still don't understand that we don't want bright LEDs on things.
I've never understood why the LEDs can't be low intensity -- just enough so that you can see if they're on or not.
Instead, at least 50% of all the LEDs on the stuff I own are far too bright.
Usually if companies refuse to give us what we want, there is some profit motive behind it. Is that what's going on here?
We bought several AP 230s when they first came out. A year or two later, the white LED would practically burn out. I'm pretty surprised I haven't gotten any calls about them being down. They did offer to RMA them, but that would take way too much time and I'm done with aerial lifts for a while.
White tape pretty much blocks the intensity, but still allows the color to be visible.
I just put a piece of electrical tape over unwanted LEDs.
It's cheap, effective, and totally reversible.
The Digital Sorceress
LightDims - http://www.lightdims.com/ - are just the thing - pre-cut tinted/opaque vinyl(?) clingy dots and squares and rectangles that go over those sleep-disturbing LEDs.
Buy a pack or two in various grades/colours, they'll last you years - I know mine have.
(just a happy customer)
My 10 month old son is recovering from a bone marrow transplant. We LIVE in the hospital. We were in a room recently that had a wireless repeater with a bright blue LED. Nothing contributes more to a less sleepful night for a baby (and a parent who sleeps in the room with him) than that single point of annoying light on the ceiling. Seems to me an old school fuse type device that trips when the access point loses power or signal would make more sense than those stupid LED lights.
http://blog.cerowrt.org/post/n... It's weird how sometimes I'm tapped into the global meme generator. My life is better without all the blinkenlights.
#firstworldproblems
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
It seems like the real problem here is IT workers sleeping in the server closet.
Or are these IT guys actually required to live in the office?
I expected yet another one of those articles that tell us that hackers can spy on us by studying the blinking lights around our houses. They can tell when our shaver is fully charged or when the flickering neon light in our power strip is about to pass on. They can tunnel in to the heart of our system software and plant worms that cause even more blinking until they drive us insane. Those hackers are shameful with their evil intentions.
...omphaloskepsis often...
This is easy - I just don't keep anything with 24x7 lights in my bedroom. When I did, 1 cent worth of electrical tape darkened the room perfectly. If you are an IT pro and worried about losing sleep due to these lights, you are pretty crumby at your job if you have to sleep with the servers or routers.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Blue LEDs are disgusting and should all be replaced with old school green LEDs
I use a hardware solution. Whenever I want to turn off an LED I put electrical tape over it.
Yeah, as a story, not a lot of meat here. But I do have to say my home cable modem/router as five lights, three of them blue. The blue ones are bright as hell, and one of those blinks on activity (which is all the time with all the computers in my house). It creates sufficient light to see across the room relatively clearly. Fortunately I don't have it in my bedroom, but I imagine many people really do have that problem. It would be nice to have them at least not as bright. I see no reason for being so "loud".
"dozens."
Clickbait.
.....just use a little tap over the light...done and done. Though for me I do not mind it
It's opaque enough to block most of the light, but transparent enough that you can still see the light if you need. And it comes off a lot easier than marker.
It pretty much turns these LED lights from something which lights up your room, to a slight glow on the panel.
So, I've used these with relatively good sucess. You can still see the LED's, but they aren't blaringly bright. Relatively cheap too..
https://amzn.com/B00CLVEQCO
Contrary to some posters, this is a classic case of bad, likely unintended, user experience. No product manager said ' let's change the blue lights to something else as we' ll sell more of em.
Likely the same mindset that ended up with cops blue light bars blinding passing vehicles.
I can bet that product managers are asking how hard it'll be to change them out. And will end up changing nothing.
Cited totally out of context. The problem there is the color temperature of your whole screen, which stimulates your brain. This means bluish colors on a large screen (monitor, tablet, phone), not a single tiny bright blue light.
And i solve the led problem mostly with some duct tape.
LED lights are very important IMO. It notifies you that some data packets are being transferred or received.
Blinking LEDs helps you determine if something is wrong with your machines or devices, specifically malwares.
I discovered Mariposa malware on my PC last 2010, thanks to the LED lights blinking while I am already asleep.
If these were replaced with IR LEDs, you wouldn't see them normally, but you could take a look with a smartphone camera and see them if necessary.
Problem solved
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
I still happily use my alarm clock from the 80's which presents the time with LED's which are dimmed based on the ambient light - when the lights are out they are dimmed right down and still visible, very basic electronics.
I wish fire alarms would put an LED on or flash in some distinctive fast pattern when they are going through their "last gasp" series of chirps. I've had enough of being woken in the early hours to try and find which of them is chirping once per minute.
Nullius in verba
To manufacturers: Just put a flap labelled "open for diagnostics" on top of the indicators.
People who want it, will leave the flap open; those that don't, will leave it closed.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
bah!
http://www.targetmap.com/viewe...
If a light sleeper can't sleep with a light on, what can't a hard sleeper sleep with?
Simple solution: Gaffer's Tape
For us older guys that remember -
Wow. Now I know what to do with the wrapper after I put the condom on the machine so it won't get a virus.
I bought a bottle or black fingernail polish at Target and painted most of the LED surface.
led is a diode so the circuits expect diodes. How hard would it be to cut common ground to a switch and put diodes that can replace the leds.
The LED's on my router have various modes, but the default is that they're off unless I trigger a proximity sensor by waving my hand over the device. Works good.
I have a product from Amped Wireless (extender) that has blinkenlights on it, but has something that sort of confounded me for a few minutes because I'd never seen it before. They have two push-button toggle switches on the rear. One is power (derp), and the other is lights. Turn light switch off and it has no lights at all.
I mention this only because I *LOVE* blinkenlights to indicate the exact status and current activity of a device. For years it's pissed me off that the old 10mbps hubs and switches had lights that were so short in duration per packet that you could literally get an idea of the traffic level of different ports just by looking at it from afar. Then came 100. They started to introduce a delay between blinks. If 200 packets come through in a second, the light only blinks about 3-10 times in that second, depending on hardware. Wireless is worse - it always blinks for no apparent reason (beacons aside). Traffic is hard to discriminate if it's not heavy.
I want a device that has 3/sec, it looks like the ports are in constant use. If there is gigabit traffic going over the port, it looks exactly the same. Fairly useless other than indicating that the network is connected and shit's happening. Can't debug much with that. Home equipment is worse. The cost of LEDs is so low today, who cares? Have there be a separate light for connected, 10mbps, 100mpbs, gigabit, full or half duplex, and activity. Power. CPU activity (routers). Wireless packets. Distinguishing between ARP/reg broadcasts and regular TCP traffic is a whole different thing; I digress.
bluetack is a non-invasive, non-permanent , fully-reversable, analog solution to overly bright LEDs. stick a blob over whatever LED is bothering you, and it will become magically "less bright", proportional to the size of the blob you use. :-)
My personal favorite way to resolve this issue is to put a strip of duct tape over the lights. It virtually eliminates the flash at night, but the lights are still visible and I can even differentiate color.
Why not have it off if everything is working and only on or blinking when something is broken?
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
My wifi router (Supplied by Bell Canada, don't know the model off the top of my head) has a feature to disable or dim the lights from the main control panel. I received the router in April. Best feature every! It's nice to have a dim hallway at night. I can brighten up the leds in the evening, and not need to turn on the light either. If only I could have a one click setting to turn them up and down (hey, we need something to grumble about...)