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This isn't the big bad government trying to take away your freedoms. I fully support the FCC on this (and I'm pretty close to Libertarian so that means something coming from me).

The issue is weather radar. Shortly after the FCC opened up the 5 GHz band for unlicensed use, terminal doppler weather radar was invented in response to several airliner crashes due to adverse weather conditions. Unfortunately, it relies on frequencies smack dab in the middle of the open 5 GHz band. So the FCC took the unusual step of revising their rules which opened up those frequencies

The intermediate 5 GHz channels were reclassified as DFS - dynamic frequency selection. Devices are allowed to use those frequencies, but they have to monitor for TDWR. If they detected weather radar in use, they had to switch to a different channel. A few devices actually do this and check to see if weather radar is in use. Most manufacturers just took the easy way out and blocked out channels 50-144 entirely in the firmware. That's why many 5 GHz devices only support channels 36-48 and 149-165. (This can cause the mysterious situation you might have encountered, where some devices can see your 5 GHz network while others can't. Your router supports DFS and has picked a channel between 50-144. Devices which support DFS can see the router. Devices which have blocked off channels 50-144 cannot.)

Early open source router firmwares completely ignored DFS. They would spam over the DFS frequencies, interfering with weather radar at airports if someone nearby happened to load the firmware onto their router. DD-WRT added support for DFS (it's the "weather radar" checkbox in the 5 GHz wireless settings, although it really should be checked by default).. If you install third party firmware and use the 5 GHz band, do the responsible thing and enable this functionality if you're going to enable channels 50-144. Unfortunately, some idiots didn't do this, degrading the effectiveness of hundreds of millions of dollars invested into TDWR equipment. It was enough of a concern that the FCC began investigating the need to regulate or ban third party firmware. That's what this is all about. The government doesn't hate you running third party firmware on your router, they're just trying to protect people flying in airplanes from needlessly being killed.

This is why we can't have nice things - a few idiots ruin it for everyone else. I had lots of fun with lawn darts as a kid, but we always treated the target area as if it were a shooting range. Here's an example of what happens to TDWR when an idiot blasts their router in the TDWR frequencies. The unauthorized broadcast shows up as a wedge-shaped area spanning a few degrees and extending to the edge of the radar image, completely obscuring any weather in the wedge. Multiply that by a few dozen open source routers near the airport and it becomes a major impediment.

The cleaner solution would've been for the FCC to simply close the 5 GHz band and reserve it entirely for TDWR. But that would've made billions of dollars of wireless equipment obsolete. So the FCC tried their best to find a compromise between the needs of people who already owned 5 GHz wireless equipment, and the flying public. It's the open source firmware authors who were (initially) acting like jerks here, not the FCC.

Not that it would really be that hard to do in the US either. This talk was from a few years ago but it was fascinating..

https://community.spiceworks.c...

Form what I can tell there's some debate about whether FERPA laws would allow this.

FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act):
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen...

This school admin even asks how he can remove Alexa form the network:
https://community.spiceworks.c...

Use the tool from here: https://community.spiceworks.c.... If you still have problems, use this link: https://community.spiceworks.c...

Use the tool from here: https://community.spiceworks.c.... If you still have problems, use this link: https://community.spiceworks.c...

Hello,

This issue has been going on for more than two days. Reports of it date almost a month:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysad...

https://community.spiceworks.c...

Although reports of it in Microsoft's support forum are more recent:

https://answers.microsoft.com/...

https://answers.microsoft.com/...

https://answers.microsoft.com/...

The December 9th patch - https://support.microsoft.com/... - might contain some kind of fix or workaround, although I don't see anything mentioned on the page which maps to the issue.

Microsoft is keeping customers up to date with a page on its support forum. Here's Microsoft's short link to the page: https://aka.ms/netcom

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

That's a superpower!

https://static.spiceworks.com/...

I'll just throw this out before the article gets locked.

Spiceworks

and my own Tweet

That links to an Office Forums site.

This problem needs some spotlight.

The size of that blacklist (TFA mentions 850,000 numbers, and hundreds of changes a day) may be an issue for a regular phone, particularly the database lookups may be too slow for it to work well.

There are MUCH better ways than what I'm about to suggest, but this is just to get a generic feel for the size of the dataset you're talking about...

US phone numbers easily fit into a 64bit int.
64bit * 850,000 = 54,400,000 bit = 6,800,000 byte = 6.5mb

Even if you just iterated over every item, a phone could search that plenty fast enough (especially if you cache it in memory).

This could also be implemented the same way that the RBL (realtime blacklist) anti-spam lists are managed - DNS. To improve speed when you're not online, sync the data periodically (nightly, weekly, whatever), and let DNS deal with misses by fetching them from the RBL. Lots of ways to do this.

Anyway... the real "problem" or hard part would be in doing PBX-list operations, such as silently answering the call, then doing voice prompts, and interpretting the response from the other end (press 2 if you're a human, etc), and call handling after that point (forwarding them, ringing other lines, voice mail, etc). It all *should* be completely doable on an just about any android phone.... asterisk was out a LONG LONG time ago and handling many calls on single desktop-class machines - versus - on the cell phone, you'll only ever have to handle one call at a time (maybe 2), so there's plenty of power for that. Here's a conversation about it from a couple years ago (plenty of "sure, but I don't know you'd want to do that" naysaying): http://community.spiceworks.co...

I've been using Meraki MDM for a bit over a year now for managing my own devices, and have been quite pleased so far.

Sadly about a year back Cisco acquired them so there have been some changes in pricing and scope, but the free standard version is still available even if slightly hidden (most 'try now' links go to the enterprise signup page)
It now manages Cisco APs, Cisco switches, MDM, and a bit more random stuff.

Their main page is:
https://meraki.cisco.com/

MDM specific info is at:
https://meraki.cisco.com/solut...

Standard version signup is at:
https://meraki.cisco.com/form/...

Note that they now offer two versions, standard and enterprise. Feature wise they are pretty identical except for technical support.
Standard is free for up to 50 devices, then device 51 and after will run you $1/device/month.
I've no idea the pricing details on enterprise, other than the 30 day trial involves them sending you an access point that works with it. I assume even device #1 has a monthly cost.

-
If you run Spiceworks, their latest major-version provides basic access to MDM for free through IBMs MaaS360.
They have a free version that adamantly doesn't have near enough features, and a paid version that is $3/device/month.
The paid version has all the features of IBMs branded version, but is a little cheaper per device.

http://www.spiceworks.com/free...

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If you want free and DIY, check out the "iPhone Configuration Utility" (mac/win versions available from apple) that let you create your own policy files - but you need to get them onto each iPhone "manually".
By manual this can be as easy as an email attachment or wifi-portal webpage download or something.
For devices you purchase and allocate to staff this is usually fine, but BYOD can be a problem without incentives for the user to install the profile themselves.

I used this method at work since I only had two profiles available then.
To get on the wifi network you needed to install our wifi profile, which grants access to the network and then enforces the network policy.
They didn't HAVE to install this policy, but then no wifi access at all.

I have a second profile to setup Cisco VPN client settings for users with VPN access, but my profile is more akin to a .PCF config (shared secret and IP stuff users don't need to worry about) and nothing else, so it just saves some typing for them. Not much arm twisting needed here.

http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/...
(Download links at the bottom of this wiki, or just use Google)

-
Sadly all other MDM platforms I evaluated over a year ago either no longer exist or in the 'rather expensive' category.

The list I used at the time for the higher end providers was
http://www.enterpriseios.com/w...

I found 2-3 good gems in that list at the time (Meraki and MaaS360/Spiceworks being the best priced then)
Might still be worth a look for you.

Without knowing your interests or area of expertise, there are some big ones like:

Spiceworld
Various Microsoft conferences: Exchange, SharePoint, TechEd
Some Cisco stuff

And Probably a whole host of others. Choose a vendor/specialty and search for their conferences.

DirectX11 was back ported to Vista.

The reason DirectX 10/11 was not backported to XP was not because of mean old bad microsoft but rather WinXP is such an obsolete archaic OS that is fundamentally different.

Weird that the system requirements for DX11 suddenly changed later on - to allow XP!

http://community.spiceworks.co...

Some people might think that it was mean old bad microsoft after all...that the "obsolete archaic OS" thing was just a lie.

If Gnome can even win an award for environment of the year, I am so sure my new Toolbars Environment will be a hit with the people!

And we all also know how hard it is to get any support from Google. We all also know that Google Apps is a bit different that personal GMail accounts. And we also all know how to use Google search to find numerous examples of people complaining of the same problem. Here is one of the top results (telling as it is, none of which are from Google support): Google locked a account without notifying me and this is my reply to tech suppor

Yup, bonus points to the progress bar during the startup of Spiceworks which contains many nonsensical processes, including reticulating splines.

I wonder if any of them are the older HP LaserJets where you could change the display to read funny things like "Insert Cheese" or "Low on Mayo"?
http://community.spiceworks.com/scripts/show/1184-change-a-networked-hp-laserjet-ready-message
http://miscellany.kovaya.com/2007/10/insert-coin.html

A few days ago, I just went on about how I block all ads, and don't see advertising. However... I'd allow "acceptable" ads.

Without ads, there would be no Google, no Facebook, no free internet. There would be 1,000 Wikipedias, begging for money. You can't build billions of dollars worth of data centers on sunshine and ponies.

I use Spiceworks. It would be worth millions to their company, able to charge hundreds per copy if they chose. But it's 100% free. I specifically have enabled ads on their web based tools. Why? #1 - I want to support them. #2 - The ads aren't garbage, they are relevant. Very very relevant. I learn about new IT offerings and products through the ads.

Now granted, there are those who will never click an ad. And companies are learning, consumers want ads relevant to them and unobtrusive. I run ad blocking myself, but I'm not 100% behind the idea that I don't want to see any ads. Right now, it's an all or nothing, or manually turning on each site. I want to do the right thing AND have utter crap held at bay.

This is why I think this is a great tool. Rather than saying, "No ads, never, no way!" This is saying to advertisers, "Do a better job, and don't annoy the shit out of people or track them when they don't want to be tracked... and people are willing to see and click on those."

You can try to fight a war of attrition against ads. Or, they can be encouraged to be better.

And so I can't take the position that there's a vast conspiracy of subliminal trash being force fed into our minds by greedy corporations. I'm sure that's true especially in mass media.

But as Sigmund Freud might say, "Sometimes an ad is just an ad."

Go get Spiceworks, and it will do 99% of your requests for you.

You're welcome.

Now, there might be something out there, but I'm not aware of it. I'd love to find (and support!) and open source ERP tool. When I first found Spiceworks (http://spiceworks.com/), I fell in love with its ease of use, feature-richness, and simplicity. I'd love to see an open source project that would do for ERP what Spiceworks has done for network monitoring/management.

When I was the sole admin for a company I started using Spiceworks in it's beta. It's a free network manangment and help desk / ticketing system. Check it out...it's evolved into a very very power tool for small to medium sized businesses. http://www.spiceworks.com/

We've been using Spiceworks for a number of our customers and it does an excellent job of tracking everything you need to know about your network and individual workstations. http://spiceworks.com/ Michael Gray www.surgetechservices.com

I agree with huckda, Spiceworks should cover all of your bases. It's ad-driven for the free version, but you have an option of paying a fee for the ads removed. We use the ad version at work for about 100 users and 175-200 pieces of hardware.

Spiceworks.com

Windows based program yes, but will manage all other devices.

http://www.spiceworks.com/

http://www.spiceworks.com/
Not sure how far it scales but I have played with it on some small installations, very easy to manage.

I have used Cacti but never felt it was mature or robust enough for very large environments

SCOM, System Center Operations Manager we are deploying now for our enterprise, however I would be afraid to manage IT on my own as it is a large system on to it self, yet very powerfull.

I use a program called SpiceWorks to monitor the network, run the helpdesk etc which makes heavy use of interactive content.

I notice that the very last item is about performance.

I can load up the entire inventory of my network in around 3 seconds in Chrome and Opera. It takes 11 seconds in IE8.

Not fast at all.

Did you notice that "It's a tie" was their codephrase for "The other guy has us beat, and we can't even pretend to be better". Their ties were "Firefox and Opera do a better job at evolving standards, but we do better at css 2.1", "Other browsers are more customizable, but our default settings are awesome", and "speed? Well, in Rush hour, all cars are the same" (or in other words, "if the site you're going to is slashdotted, the speed at which it fails to load is the same speed on all browsers")

I use a program called SpiceWorks to monitor the network, run the helpdesk etc which makes heavy use of interactive content.

I notice that the very last item is about performance.

I can load up the entire inventory of my network in around 3 seconds in Chrome and Opera. It takes 11 seconds in IE8.

Not fast at all.

I believe http://www.spiceworks.com/ should solve the issue for you.

Spiceworks is a spiffy tool. It'll get all the software and hardware info you need for your network. Borrow it on their website - it's free!

Take a look at spiceworks. It's not open source but it is free. We use it with 3 techs and ~180 users. Works well for us.

http://www.spiceworks.com/

Spiceworks is light weight, free, I don't think it's open source though, but its fairly customizable. It has e-mail connectivity, so you can have it monitor an address and have tickets auto-create in your system. It also has network monitoring built in to track health of your network. Lots of cool features, plus an online community. It's limited to window's as a platform for running, but it can work with linux, and Mac's. Plus it can run on an XP machine so no need for an expensive server. Check it out. http://spiceworks.com/

I'll google "Dual Internet connections" for you: http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=dual+connections+to+the+internet

http://gentoo-wiki.com/Dual_internet_connections
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/13347

Or just search for "How to build a linux router" otherwise there are some prebuilt linksys/netgear solutions that can handle dual ISP connections.