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Fwd: [e2e] Wisconsin network research lab now openly available
by Fergie (Paul Ferguson) 12 Apr '05

12 Apr '05

Forwarded from the end2end-interest list. - ferg -- Paul Barford <pb(a)cs.wisc.edu> wrote: All, It is our pleasure to announce the availability of the Wisconsin Advance Internet Laboratory (WAIL) for open use by the network research community. With support from our partners at Cisco, Intel, University of Utah, NSF, and Internet2 we have extended the Emulab user interface to enable remote access and use of 80 PC's and 34 IP routers (see list below). The remote interface - called Schooner - enables users to connect PC's to fixed configurations of routers (or in PC-only configurations like traditional Emulab) thereby creating testbeds suitable for a range of experiments. Like Emulab, the PC's come with a basic set of tools and can be modified by users with their own experimental code. At present, we offer a library of fixed router configuration principally comprised of simple topologies such as dumbells. We can offer limited support in terms of creating customized topologies and are in the process of expanding the topology library to make all systems generally available. Schooner has documentation which should enable users to get up and running with basic configurations, but we emphasize that the environment is a work in progress. We look forward to supporting projects to the extent that our resources allow and hope you will find this environment useful in your work. Please feel free to access the lab via: http://www.schooner.wail.wisc.edu Best, Paul Barford - director Chris Alfeld Ana Bizarro Dave Plonka Current WAIL Equipment List (new equipment is added on a regular basis - if there is something you need, let us know - we may have it): 80 PC's: Intel 2Ghz Pentium 4, 1GB RAM, Intel 1Gbps NIC 6 Cisco GSR 12000: OC48, OC12, OC3, Gig, FE interfaces 4 Cisco 7500: OC3, GE, FE, Serial interfaces 10 Cisco 7300: GE interfaces 5 Cisco 7200: GE, FE, OC3, Serial interfaces 5 Cisco 3600: FE interfaces 4 Cisco 2600: FE interfaces -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(a)netzero.net or fergdawg(a)sbcglobal.net ferg's tech blog: http://spaces.msn.com/members/fergdawg/

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Dear Linksys: Your broken WET54GS5 makes me sad.
by just me 12 Apr '05

12 Apr '05

Dear Support staff at Linksys: This weekend I made a futile attempt to enable WPA Pre-Shared Key mode on my home wireless network. The network consists of a Linksys WRT54G router, two WET54GS5 bridges, and a pair of Apple iBooks running MacOS X. The iBooks had no problem communicating with the WRT54G in WEP PSK mode. As soon as I made the configuration changes on the router and the laptops, the link was up and consistent. I had no such success with the pair of WET54GS5 bridges. They would report WPA initialization succes, and pass traffic for several minutes. They would then mysteriously drop link and cease passing traffic. The only way to bring the link back up was to "re-authenticate" via the WET55GS5 web interface. I spent quite a long time making sure the bridges were seeing adequate signal, and double-checking configurations everywhere. In frustration, I googled to see if other folks had seen the problem: http://www.google.com/search?q=linksys+wet54gs5+wpa+psk It seems to me that not a single customer of yours who has purchased your WET54GS5 has been able to use WPA PSK mode. I'd like to point out that WPA is advertised as a supported feature on the packaging. This has been a known defect since the product was first offered for sale. The latest firmware (which does not fix the problem!) for the device was released ONE YEAR AGO, in April of 2004. I spoke online with a helpful support person, who let me know that Linksys is indeed aware of the problem, but does not intend to do anything about it. This is dissapointing, and reflects very poorly on your new parent company. Do you plan on remedying the problem before a class-action lawsuit is organized? thank you, Matt Ghali Your former customer --matt(a)snark.net------------------------------------------<darwin>< The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

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RE: Dear Linksys: Your broken WET54GS5 makes me sad.
by just me 12 Apr '05

12 Apr '05

It seems that it's pretty dim there. After acknowledging that the product was broken by design, they offered to replace them under warranty. Great. I wonder how Cisco feels about these jack-holes using their brand. matto On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Roland H. Alden wrote: Mark, rest assured there is no intelligent life at Linksys. I've moved on to Netgear myself for all el-cheapo applications. It would be great if Cisco would flush Linksys and come out with a low cost line that is engineered with real Cisco DNA and a modicom of intelligent tech support. Even a decent bug database maintained by somebody that can spell TCP/IP would be a step forward. As it stands Linksys is just making Cisco look bad. I'm sure they are laughing all the way to the bank. --matt(a)snark.net------------------------------------------<darwin>< The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

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ID theft rabbit hole gets deeper....
by Fergie (Paul Ferguson) 12 Apr '05

12 Apr '05

MSNBC: Lexis Nexis ID theft much worse than thought http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7475594/ - ferg -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(a)netzero.net or fergdawg(a)sbcglobal.net ferg's tech blog: http://spaces.msn.com/members/fergdawg/

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Re: books every network operator should read?
by Roger Marquis 12 Apr '05

12 Apr '05

Janet Sullivan wrote: > I'd like to make a list for the BGP4.net wiki of books that are thought > highly of by the network community. What books stand out for you as > being excellent? If you could only own 5 network related books, what > would they be? One of my favorites from years back though not BGP-related, probably out of date and out of print, a very good read none the less: A Guide to Fractional T1 James E. Trulove, 1992 Artech House, ISBN 0-89006-524-1 -- Roger Marquis Roble Systems Consulting http://www.roble.com/

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article: port 25 blocking
by Gadi Evron 12 Apr '05

12 Apr '05

Larry has been asking a ton of questions of people online, and participating in professional discussions on the subject, on other lists. Here is the result of the information he gathered: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1784276,00.asp Gadi.

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Re: djbdns: An alternative to BIND
by sthaug＠nethelp.no 12 Apr '05

12 Apr '05

> > > I had a play with DJBDNS after using BIND for years. Here's why I > > > switched back: > > > - No AXFR support > > It supports this. > > No IXFR, no automatic notification of bind slaves (you get to run a > separate notify script) ... > > But yes, it is far easier to use, consumes very low amounts of memory > and makes an excellent local resolver cache e&oe no roundrobin DNS > without a patch (as in it returns all the A records in the same order > every time, whereas bind does this in a different order ...) A contrary view from the trenches: Around a year ago we tested DJB dnscache as the recursive DNS server in a high-volume ISP environment - mostly because we were not happy with BIND 9 performance at the time. Our conclusions were: - dnscache used *more* CPU than BIND 9 in our environment, effectively ruling it out - Not possible to get dnscache to listen to more than one IP address unless you introduce hacks/patches - Weird failures reported from users - Annoying installation process with lots of small programs that we don't want or need We then used BIND 8 for a while, due to its better performance than BIND 9. Earlier this year we finally found a BIND 9 configuration and version that worked well for us (but still too low performance). We finally switched to Nominum CNS (two servers) and one BIND 9 server as backup. We really like Nominum CNS, and we're happy. Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug(a)nethelp.no

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Blog...
by Fergie (Paul Ferguson) 12 Apr '05

12 Apr '05

I've decided to take Randy's (and a few others) advice and, instead of "polluting" the list with tech news snippets, post them to a blog. So in my spare time, I'll post stuff there instead of to the list... pointer in my .sig below. Can I get a Hallelujah?! :-) - ferg -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(a)netzero.net or fergdawg(a)sbcglobal.net ferg's tech blog: http://spaces.msn.com/members/fergdawg/

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Today's tech highlights
by Fergie (Paul Ferguson) 12 Apr '05

12 Apr '05

For your perusal: US hospital loses patient info States gang up on Vonage Calif. PUC To Withdraw Appeal Of FCC's Vonage Order VoIP Security Chief Warns of "Life And Death" Security Threats Verizon Buys Out MCI's Largest Shareholder More Big Hosts Becoming ICANN Domain Registrars Windows XP SP2 blocking tool expires Tuesday Brazilian arrested for '01 Airforce hacks Rootkit Web sites fall to DDOS attack F-Secure: "Want to work for us?" Articles & links avialble at: http://spaces.msn.com/members/fergdawg/ - ferg -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(a)netzero.net or fergdawg(a)sbcglobal.net ferg's tech blog: http://spaces.msn.com/members/fergdawg/

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Spam (un)blocking
by Adam Jacob Muller 11 Apr '05

11 Apr '05

Hi, I'm a network operator at a small hosting company that has about a /20 slice of IP addresses. Recently we have suffered a few break-ins (and some fraud) which caused a large quantity of spam to find it's way onto the internet. This has resulted in some of our network space being listed in several DNS blacklists, and being blacklisted by individual ISPs. So my question is this. Firstly, what is the best way to remove myself from each of these blacklists, if there is anything aside from going to each one individually and saying "i'm not spamming anymore". Second, is there some way to mark my block of addresses is owned by responsible responsive system administrators. We have tech support on duty 24/7 and abuse complaints are dealt with in a timely manner, so I am wondering if there is a way to communicate our willingness to help in the fight against spam. Thanks, Adam Jacob Muller

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