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X-Bone - IP Overlay for Automated VPN Deployment
DarkSword writes "The X-Bone system for automated deployment of VPN / overlay networks
is now publicly available. This is the first major public release, v1.2.
X-Bone dynamically deploys and manages Internet overlays to reduce
configuration effort and increase network component sharing. X-Bone
discovers, configures, and monitors network resources to create
overlays over existing IP networks. It's available for both Linux and BSD."
Aren't vpn-s old news?
I work at a fortune 100 company and I haven't called into a company modem pool for 2 or 3 years. Our IT group gave us a connection tool where you select the city you're in (worldwide) and it calls a local ISP number (mci or uunet or one their partners?), authenticates (radius?) and then tunnels thru to the corporate (ras?) servers. I've used it in places like greece & malaysia and taiwan without problems (and a dozen cities in the US).
Lately now that many hotels have either cable or DSL modems in the rooms I've been able to use a similar tool, but it's just like being on the corporate net (sometimes it feels even faster).
I hear that our IT budget for dial in connections dropped from over $10M a year to less than $1M. Pretty spectacular. I don't know if there are security problems with this stuff but I never did trust the phone company so whatever this is it has to be better.
-- S.I.
Cross-bone does sound nice. That will do fine.
Easy, simple steps -- yes, even you could do it:-
1. Moderate DOWN all posts questioning or saying negative things about Open Source, no matter how reasonable or accurate they may be.
2. Moderate UP all pro Open Source posts, no matter how stupid or inaccurate.
3. Moderate UP all posts from people saying nice things about VA Linux/Andover/Malda.
4. Watch VA/Andover/Slashdot stock $$$$ rise
and have a really good laugh at all those suckers who let them get away with it.
The commercial VPN vendors are offering some incredible hacks (in the bad sense). They all have "issues." A good sys. admin. could come up with a better VPN using open-source software than these sleaze-bag, self-appointed security experts will ever offer.
couldn't they have come up with something different? How do I recommend something called X-bone to a PHB?
Consider reading and spending your mod points at (cause we're so lonely without you):
http://slashdot.org/index.pl?section=bsd
What the hell is this?
Oh c'mon.. shouldn't this have been moderated WAY down?
You should make a hidden forum to post these stories in like sid=stories. That way if we miss some, then we can go to the url and see what you have written. It should just be for story posting, then we could add sid=stories.d to talk about them.
Yes, it does. Yes, they have. No, it's not. It is not a company. We won't.
moderate this post down to a -1.
No. missed by over 5 minutes, you do however get an award for being 1st Retard.
What the don't mention on the site is the fact that this product does not exist, they have no developers, and in fact they don't even have a completed spec yet.
Vaporware?! Hell, it's worse than vaporware. It's vacuumware. If you look at their financials, it's extremely unlikely that the company will still exist six months from now.
When a company announces a new product on the same day as it reports that it's examining its Chapter 11 options, all is not well.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
IP may or may not live forever. Efficient overlays and active networks help abstract away the lower levels, so it won't matter. Hardware is fast enough to still perform well, and advanced software techniques help reduce the overhead... Keep your eyes open...
>I worked at a place that had one of these packages installed, which also filtered timesuck places like interplay.com, etc. The problem is it would also regularly slam me when trying to read things like hardware or software reviews that could in no way be construed as "harmful".
Isn't the company's real problem that they are too lazy to fire the lazy bastards that surf the web aimlessly instead of getting real work done? (not that surfing for hardware info isn't work, but interplay.com, sure...)
Why the heck is it that people have to use this babysitter crap (which doesn't work well at all) when the boss could simply say "Johnson, I've seen you looking at porn 10 times this week. It is in our logs. As per rule number xyz, you are fired. Pack up yer stuff and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.".
Oh well, maybe people will learn eventually.
Was that a trick question?
my bone is totally covered in hot grits that i poured down my pants. thank you.
Hi, my name is Woody.
You're right.
It would be nice to assume everyone will behave like adults and I see nothing wrong with surfing on over to interplay.com for a work break if your company allows it.
Installing a filter, however poorly it works, is less work than actively monitoring what people are actually doing, so they're going to be used.
It's generally easier to treat people like children and prevent them from having to be repsonsible than to treat them like adults and require them to be responsible. Welcome to modern corporate life.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I think it helps to delegitimize censorware.
Hypothetical argument to PHB:
"Ever since you installed that NetNuisance(tm) censorware package, I can no longer download the latest x-bone updates. Our VPN just went down and we've lost 3 million dollars."
I worked at a place that had one of these packages installed, which also filtered timesuck places like interplay.com, etc. The problem is it would also regularly slam me when trying to read things like hardware or software reviews that could in no way be construed as "harmful".
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Simple question: does this project here have anything in common with/A> for BeOS, or are am I simply caught in a hell of Acronym Overlap Confusion?
--sugarman--
vpnstarter can be used to initiate the tunnel over ssh and monitor the link. Works well, although vpnstarter cna be a pain to set up properly.
So, open source vpn solutions do exist now, and they do work.
test, test, 123
no sig.
HOW many VPN packages are there on Freshmeat? More than any person could imagine using. That they are 100% incompatiable, because they're all implementing VPN in a different way, merely makes it all the more annoying.
Then, there's the assorted approaches to IPSec, IP6-in-IP4 (note that IP4-in-IP6, an essential format for a half-migrated network, does not exist), multicasting (plenty of choice, there!), routing (eeep!), etc.
Yes, I can see the case that it's better to have lots of packages that do one thing each, really well, than one package that does lots of things very badly. However, when it comes to a protocol, that argument doesn't fly. The object is to get the payload from A to B, with minimum fuss. The information required to carry out that process is not overly well-defined, and each method requires different information, but there's a lot that IS the same and anything else can be bundled up in it's own packet.
I don't know how X-Bone works, but the idea of an IP(any)-over-IP(any) VPN system with automatic detection andsemi-automatic configuration sounds a very attractive deal to me.
Personally, I think it would be much nicer to have an (any-protocol)-over-(any-protocol) VPN system, with multi-ended tunnels. To me, THAT would be the ideal. Then, you could layer over any network, regardless of underlying architecture.
As for those complaining about the name, the other two semi-mainstream backbones are named the Multi-Bone and the 6-Bone. If you want to complain about the X-Bone, why not poke fun at those, too, whilst you're at it? Or do you just enjoy messing with groups smaller than your IQ?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Am I the only one who thinks that you should call a internet-related product "x-bone"? That has censorware-bait written ALL over it.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
VPNs are going to be incredibly important. The flexibility it gives is astonishing. Unfortunately, they haven't been very well implemented yet. Even Cisco have had 'issues' with them. One of the major complexities is designing and implementing good overlays
I don't know how good X-bone is, but if it helps with overlay management it deserves to be successful.
I'm off to check it out now.