Well, it’s been a while since I posted anything. It’s been a combination of work at TAFE and my business being busy. At TAFE I’ve been having a nightmare with Adobe CS5 on the Macs – the individual applications (mostly) work with the administrator account and a local user account but not with network accounts. All of the problems are during the creation of the user’s profile. The applications hang as they’re trying to write some of the files in the user’s Library. I’ve even been talking to Adobe about the problems, as well as the DET guy who controls the Adobe CS5 suite. It’s still not sorted out because the problems are in the actual applications and major changes need to be made to Adobe’s programming. I’m not the systems administrator with this problem, it exists for everyone with Open Directory accounts.
Anyway, there is a really good (geeky) cartoon on xkcd for all Linux users … lol
Well, I got a quick response from ACMA and they say that Australia doesn’t regulate channel usage and European channels align with Australian channels, so Telstra isn’t really doing anything wrong.
For 802.11 b/g/n, there are 13 usable 22 MHz channels spaced 5MHz apart in the allocated 2.4 GHz band (with adjacent channel overlap).
Some countries and regions apply their own regulations/restrictions for allowable channels. Australia does not regulate the channel usage, only that allocated spectrum and EIRP (power) limits are not exceeded.
Australian and European requirements align, with the full 1-13 channels available. The US allow only Ch 1-11, however US configured equipment would still be operational here (on Ch 1-11 only).
On the other hand, equipment made for Japan may be operating illegally in AU – outside the allowable spectrum – as they add a 14th channel at the top end in 802.11b.
It just makes things confusing and I can only guess that some drivers (the Netgear ones) are having issues with the configuration settings.
I have been to two new customers in the last week who have Telstra Bigpond Thomson TG782T Modem Router Wireless Network devices for ADSL2+ and wireless Internet access. These have been a PITA to configure because of a confusing web interface.
The first customer had tried on numerous occasions, including talking with the Bigpond “Helpdesk”, but couldn’t get access with all of their computers. After sorting out the wired connection on a Windows Vista box, I turned to the Windows XP box that needed wireless access. The customer had a Netgear W311 Wireless PCI card and had attempted to install this on well over a dozen occasions (there were at least that many devices listed), so I deleted them all to start from scratch. These cards are quite simple to install – run software on CD, shut down computer, install card, start computer, let Windows install drivers for new device and then add the network security key (WPA2-PSK these days). The card could see the network connection but just couldn’t connect. I tried again and had the same result, so I started going through the configuration one line at a time on both the TG782T Router and the PC – it was only then that I noticed the router was configured to use European Wi-Fi settings. First up I tried changing this to Australia on the Thomson Router but it is hard coded with no method of changing the settings. I tried changing the Netgear card to European settings but it refused to install with those settings.
The second customer had everything working but wanted to block some file sharing software one of his daughters was using. She was chewing up his data allocation very quickly each month. The easiest way I know to do this is to create an account with OpenDNS and use this on the ADSL Modem Router. I logged in to the Thomson TG782T Modem Router but found that the DNS is hard coded into the router to use DHCP, no option is available to specify your own. It was then that I noticed his router was also set to use Europe as the Wi-Fi region.
My understanding of the ACMA regulations is that you must use the Australian settings for 802.11 b/g/n networks. I have submitted an enquiry to ACMA and I’m waiting for a ruling on this matter.
Luis Mijangos, 31, of Santa Ana, California has been arrested on charges of extortion. Nothing unusual so far, but he wasn’t extorting money – he was extorting women to make explicit videos. He used Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks to distribute malicious programs disguised as popular songs to women which then infected other friends’ and relatives’ computers. He then searched for explicit photos or videos on their computers and threatened to send them to work colleagues and relatives if they didn’t make more videos for him. He would also activate webcams remotely to catch his victims in “intimate situations”. If he couldn’t find any he would crack email accounts, then posing as a boyfriend, he would ask them to make some explicit videos.
I keep getting told that Windows supports hardware but I keep finding that Linux supports hardware much better. I am reconfiguring the network at TAFE and I moved the proxy server because I need a Windows WSUS and Symantec Virus management server. I had been using a Dell PowerEdge 1850 server which only has a CD-ROM, so this is the hardware I tried to install Windows Server 2008 r2 from my USB DVD-RW. I changed the BIOS so that the USB drive was selected but the system would just not boot from the Windows DVD. Bugger! So I grabbed a Windows Server 2003 CD and the server booted up without any problems. I chose the new install and everything skipped along until Windows couldn’t find any hard drives.
So I’m reduced to searching the Dell web site with the Service Tag – do you know how much stuff there is to download for each server? There are 5 ISO files for burning to CD, a few PDFs and a dozen or so executable files. I selected all of the files and chose download – up pops a message about multiple files having to use Dell’s Download Manager. Click OK and nothing happens. Try a few more times and still nothing happening. Luckily you can email the list as a hyperlink, so I emailed it off. Of course I was doing all of this from Linux, so I rebooted my laptop into Windows 7. I opened up the emailed URL and nothing happened again … so it wouldn’t work in Firefox. Started up Internet Explorer 8 and the “Download Manager” wanted to install an ActiveX object! I allowed this and everything started downloading – all 3.6GB of it! So I’ve got to try again next week to get this up and running.
This server, and another just like it, have been running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS for 18 months. All of the hardware was detected and worked straight from the CD. The only downtime has been reboots for kernel updates and power outages. How can support for a massive range of hardware be built into Linux, developed by the community, and not into Microsoft Windows, one of the worlds largest companies?
What would be the most important skill required for a Communications Minister? The ability to communicate should be right up near the top. Unfortunately, Senator Conroy displays his inability to communicate and his lack of knowledge about the Internet. He also shows that he doesn’t understand any of the real threats to Internet users, except his conviction that there must be child pornography readily available everywhere and we need protecting from it.
Just to make sure you heard what was said:
There’s a staggering number of Australians being in having their computers infected at the moment, up to 20,000, uh, can regularly be getting infected by these spams, or scams, that come through, the portal.
A musician in Germany sued an Internet user after his home network was used to download music illegally. When he successfully proved that he had been on holiday at the time the court in Karlsruhe fined him $164 because there was no security password on his wireless access point.
“Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorised third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation,” the court in Karlsruhe said.
That’s a unique perspective!
However, I agree with the court – it isn’t hard to enable WPA2-PSK level security on your wireless network. WPA2-PSK can possibly be cracked by brute force but the longer the password the more difficult this becomes. As an example a WPA2-PSK key can contain upper-case, lower-case and numerals so their are 62 possibilities for each character. That means there are 62*62*62*62*62*62*62*62=218340105584896 possibilities for an 8 character password. WPA2-PSK can have up to 64 characters, so this is a relatively weak key. Testing 600 keys per second would take over 101083382 hours or over 11539 years – which obviously isn’t feasible. Setting a longer password (key) makes it even harder. If that password is random characters it also prevents any dictionary based attacks. You can generate free random passwords securely at PC Tools Secure Password Generator from 4 – 64 characters in length. You can use a USB key to copy and paste the key into the fields as required for each laptop or wireless devices, except for Apple iPod Touch which are PITA typing out by tapping the screen
In my experience, just about every wireless network I have set up for clients has been close to an insecure wireless network. It is getting better, the last few I’ve set up there has only been one insecure network each time but that is one too many. It is a really simple process to follow the manufacturer’s instructions or to get someone in to make sure your network is secure. It could also save you money it your neighbour is “accidentally” connecting to your network whilst surfing the Internet.
Senator Conroy is at it again, trying to make his Internet Filter sound good. He has promised to review the filter when the list gets bloated or to 10,000 URLs. There are over 205,000,000 web sites (April 2010) which almost certainly have more than one page and contain images, videos, music, podcasts, Flash animations and so on which all have their own URL. Each of these elements has to be reviewed separately and added to the list if they are Refused Classification. Senator Conroy has said that any URLs that promote or show how to commit a crime will be on the Refused Classification list, do a Google search for “how to steal a car” and the result is “About 16,700,000 results (0.25 seconds)” so that is 16.7 million URLs that have to be added, after the ACMA manual review at between $173 and $685 for each item, to Senator Conroy’s Internet Filter.
Lets say that ACMA gets more efficient (I know this would make them the first government department in history to achieve this) and they can process each URL for $100. Adding these URLs would cost $1,670,000,000. That’s right – $1.67 billion to stop people knowing how to steal a car! Do you want to try that for every crime? What about “graffiti photos”? That returns another 20,900.000 URLs – or over $2 billion more to stop graffiti.
Who would be the best people to deploy, support and manage a Windows 7 based global network? Well Microsoft obviously can’t manage their own products because they’ve just contracted Ifosys to manage theirs – Infosys lands deal to manage Microsoft’s internal IT services.
Infosys will provide Microsoft with IT help desk, desk-side services, and infrastructure and application support from multiple global centers. Infosys will manage Microsoft’s internal IT services for applications, devices, and databases in 450 locations across 104 countries.
If Microsoft can’t employ and train people to manage the software they have created, what has gone wrong? You can understand large corporations like automotive manufacturers, banks, pharmaceutical manufacturers, etc outsourcing their IT requirements because IT isn’t their core business but surely an IT company can manage their IT systems.
