The idea of "We've stopped this many attacks", and information coming out where federal agents have encouraged stupid people to follow the agents plan, and finally bust them for it, does not constitute a real threat. That is unless you consider the largest threat to the security of the United States of America to be it's own government.
As for the number of "terrorist" attacks, that number is very low, but it's in how you look at it. A terrorist manipulates a group with fear. Serial killers, rapists, and bank robbers can be categorized as terrorists. We are really looking at the kind of suicide terrorist who straps semtex or C4 to a vest, walks into a crowd, and blows themselves up. They may blow up a city bus, car, or air plane, or crash any of the above into a target. Those numbers have been relatively low.
The middle eastern terrorists aligned with al Queda, our primary focus of fear in the second view above have struck one day on American soil. Still, the government has guided the people into a constant state of fear, where the citizens have allowed their own rights to be quickly eroded. If an officer of the state wants stopped you to search you, regardless if you were doing anything wrong, you would accept it. If you refused, you would be physically compelled to their will. This is not the free America that our forefathers envisioned. We have rapidly declined to the state that our forefathers were fighting against.
But, that's how things go. Everything is a circle. We have not, and will likely never, learn from our own mistakes. We are doomed to repeat them.
Policy changes not only by airport, but by the person inspecting you.
I've flown hundreds of times (at least) since 9/11. I use my passport as my identification, partly so I don't have to pull my wallet out all the time (or keep my drivers license separate) and partly because people get confused looking for info in different areas on different drivers licenses. In my state, it shouldn't be a problem, but when I'm out of state (like, umm, where an airplane might take me), it saves the 30+ seconds of "ummm, where is your name? Oh, ok, where's the expiration date? umm, ok, it's you."
I keep my passport in a leather cover. It's been in that cover for a while, because the cover was starting to get beaten up, carrying it in my pocket.
I'd never had a problem until last year. One TSA agent went ballistic because I had it in a leather cover. I may as well have been burning a flag while urinating on a cross and singing in Arabic. Rather, I'm a good white American guy who was tired, and just trying to get on a plane to go home. He demanded I remove it from the cover for inspection. Ok, whatever. It's not like it's superglued in or anything. I asked him when the rules changed, just trying to understand my mistake, and that set him off again. I've never been allowed to put my passport in a cover, and it must be presented without a cover upon demand by any and all federal agents, including himself, and that always has been the policy at this airport and all airports in our fine United States of Amerika. I smiled, said thank you, and once he decided that it was really me, I went on my way. The funny part was, I'd flown through there a few times already that year, and was never asked to remove it from it's cover.
The cover is a nice cover made specifically for passports. It's embossed with the seal and text, just like the passport cover is.
I've carried other items through from time to time. For example, screwdrivers that were accidentally left in my laptop bag. I use the laptop bag exclusively when working at a site, but when I'm packing to leave, I transfer all my tools to my checked luggage. Once in a while I miss one. It was caught a couple times, and the TSA agent said "it's ok, it's not of the illegal length", and a few have been seized. What was funny last time I had a screwdriver seized was, there was a pair of scissors in the laptop bag with it. I didn't find out until I was unpacking it at home.
So, sure you can walk through with an empty water bottle a few times. Don't be surprised when you get face planted to the floor, and body cavity searched because of it. Definitely don't talk back.:)
I've had a drink bottle with me, that I've already drank most of the contents. Forgetting to dispose of it before getting to security, I finish it (not wanting to waste it), and they still make me throw the container away. I would have been happier filling it from a water fountain once I was past security.
I don't see why they aren't considering it as dangerous. In the right container, the powder from a single charge could be rather dangerous. The powder from several (say a D cell battery size) would likely be enough to pop a small hole in something. All it would need is a decent container (err, a D cell battery casing) to make it go boom instead of fizzle. If we learned nothing from the Aloha Flight 243, we've learned even a small breach can become catastrophic. Some accounts I've read of that incident indicate a small breach occurred first, which one of the crew was sucked into the resulting hole. The sudden change in depressurization caused the rest of the panel to give way. Sure, it was a damaged plane to start with, but can you guarantee any plane is in good shape?
I made a decent explosion with black powder in a ping pong ball once. The ball was only half full. We never did find any the pieces.
While I'm not suggesting that anyone should do it, the rules are so screwy it isn't even funny. A few ounces of toothpaste are dangerous, but gunpowder isn't?
In handling the ammo, I should have had at least some chemical residue. Have you ever handled lots of ammo before, and noticed the smell on your hands?
Ammunition powder makes a good bang, otherwise they wouldn't be used in ammunition. Excluding one type of explosive from an explosives test is stupid. At least it could identify "ammunition powder residue. probable law enforcement. verify and pass."
Ive checked firearms in as luggage before. Perfectly legally, and all appropriate parties were notified prior and at the time of check in. I never had any funny looks. Then again, I didn't bring ammo either. That's always a pain, when you have to go buy more ammo at your destination.
The idea of the swab test is that if there's been exposure of any sort it would be detected.
Like, if "the badguy" were to take a box of ammo, empty the contents into a ziplock bag, and then wash both the outside of the bag and his hands, there should be at least some residue for them to detect.
It means possibly a couple things to me.
1) The tests they run are worthless. The machines don't do anything, but are an expensive ruse to keep the illusion alive.
2) They aren't deploying fully functional machines at many/most locations, so it would be hit or miss if a bad guy could get through.
3) The bad guys aren't quite as mysterious as the general public is made to believe. If they were that good to pull off such a large scale attack, wouldn't you think they'd at least been partially successful with at least one by now? I won't go off on conspiracy theories, but it makes you wonder.
For the Mac, take it to the Apple store, and ask a tech to open the case. He can remove the camera, control board, etc, etc....
For most PC laptops, the same can be done by any retailer with a tech on site.
For the phones, it may be a little harder to get an authorized tech to open it. You may have to ask the store who is a local authorized repair tech.
If you're not worried about the warranty, do it your self. It's not very hard. If you do it carefully, you can replace the camera later, and if you have to return it for warranty work, they won't be able to tell.
In any of those cases, I recommend keeping the removed parts, should you want to replace them later.
Another option may be to "decorate" the case. Home Depot sells glue backed foil for sealing air conditioning ducts. No, not "duct tape", it's foil tape. Some have written marks, and some don't. I'd go with the unmarked ones. Carefully line the edges of your display with the foil, so it doesn't look ugly. Voila, no camera.
Or option 3.. Bust out the camera with a drill or punch, and fill the hole with a dummy plug or epoxy.
Since you're in a real security environment, I'd go with options 1 or 3. Option 2 can open you up to liability. Since the camera still exists, you're just hiding it, you could in theory uncover it, use it, and then cover it again before you leave the facility.
I used to work in a few pseudo-secure facilities. Their rules were that no recording devices of any sort were allowed on the premises. They were datacenters, so the most I could really get was a picture of what other providers were using. Really, that could prove embarrassing if say I came out of an Equinix facility, showing that the IBM enterprise eBusiness managed hosting service was just a mess of desktops and rackmount machines, badly cabled, in partially filled racks at best. Since they advertise that they have their own facilities, even knowing that they are simply a few cabinets in a cage buried in an Equinix facility would be embarrassing.
I've seen quite a few "enterprise" providers, who run on a few desktop machines jammed into a cabinet. Then again, I've seen even more "enterprise" providers with beautiful setups. It's funny, their customers never get to see the real setup, but a tech who is there to work for another company gets the full view.:)
Anyways, I used to carry cameras, my cell with a camera, or whatever I wanted in. It was a simple matter of burying it so deep in my laptop bag that the security guards wouldn't want to dig through all of it. In the same environments, they require property passes to remove equipment. If you have enough stuff moving, you can move extra stuff too. I've accidentally removed more than the pass showed. It wasn't intentional, it's just that we overlooked a piece, and noticed when we cross-checked the list later. It would have been a lot harder to walk in, and then walk out with just one piece of undocumented equipment.
I've had the same happen with the TSA. They want to search, so I tell them "Go ahead, but you have to put it back like you found it." They unzipper a few compartments, see that they're jammed with cables for various purposes (I come prepared), and then just wipe it down so they can do their attempt at detecting explosives.
On the TSA explosives testing (as I digress)... A friend was driving me to the airport to catch a flight back home. We had already arranged with another friend to go to a local shooting range. I burnt off several hundred rounds of 9mm,.45 ACP and 12 Gauge, which means I handled plenty of ammunition and the residue was all over my hands, arms, face, and clothes. I also handled my carry on (obviously). I didn't really think about i
They just had Interweb Cleaning Day on April 1st. I received the notice. It coincided with the telephone sanitation day. I had my computers turned off and phones wrapped in plastic bags all day, per the notice I got by email.
I just ran the same test. One was from my laptop (wireless). One was from a wired machine. Both are on the same physical network. On the wireless side, I'm showing 54Mb/s "Very Good" signal.
Ping statistics for 10.0.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 50, Received = 49, Lost = 1 (2% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 1238ms, Average = 112ms
--- xx.xx.xx.xx ping statistics --- 50 packets transmitted, 50 received, 0% packet loss, time 48987ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.654/0.697/0.784/0.038 ms
Have you ever tried to gain access to a wiring room?
Sometimes a fake telco badge and a clipboard will do it. Sometimes you only need to ask.
I've never gone into a wiring room for illegal purposes. They've always been legitimate, for companies that need me to do work. I don't think I've ever identified myself to building management, other than to say "Hi, I need to get into the wiring room to hook up some phone lines, can you show me where it is?"
The only exception was a building close to One Wilshire. Very secure buildings tend to be a different story. Even still, it can be done with a little social engineering.
If you don't like that point, buy a crappy white van and some orange cones. Find the manhole cover marked "TELCO". Park with the back of your van there at 3am, put your orange cones out, pry the cover out, and have at it.
Your building may be secure, but somewhere up stream isn't.
Actually, we were serious. For almost 30 seconds.:) It then broke down into an hour of laughing at the possibilities.:)
Thank god it was a non-tech person who suggested it. I promised to entertain any idea. This one didn't just get rejected, it gave us plenty to laugh at.
Assuming wireless did give you full advertised speed, we had another problem. An AP with a 100Mb/s uplink, and a couple dozen servers with 54Mb/s wireless connections were obviously a problem. Well, we had a GigE uplink, and frequently used the capacity. So, we'd have to set up an AP for each server, with each AP on a network port. In the end, it became very obvious to the non-technical person that we weren't going to do it, but we kept going on the idea anyways.:)... and then you could bridge in the next rack... and resell service to other customer racks... and put a high power transmitter on, and a high gain antenna, and bounce the signal off the moon to service China!
That's a given of wiring networks.:) You can get the same problem running it over florescent lights in a drop ceiling. I've seen plenty that were run there, but I've only seen it cause a problem once. I complain about it a lot though, because it's bad practice.
That's easy to do. Set up a Linux box as the only thing attached to the AP, set an iptables rule to redirect any:80 traffic to the machine, and then put a 404 error in to direct everyone to your offensive image.
But that would be rude, and I'd never consider it. Except on Fridays. What day is today?:)
Mine isn't that bad, but I've seen it. Right now, it reports 48Mb/s "Very Good". Still, it disconnects randomly. Sometimes it doesn't want to talk to my AP any more. We have two here, and I'll find myself on the wrong one. I do different things between specific AP's, because of the machines that are physically attached to those segments. I gave up, and set one to manual, so I always connect to one, it just disconnects occasionally. I blame.... [spinning the wheel of excuses].... solar flares.
With default settings from a few providers (who I won't name), if they have a 5 character SSID, it's trivial to find the key. It's just math. Well, more math than I'm willing to do, but there are tools line.
For giggles, I left my laptop on with netstumbler running on the drive home from work the other day. Over 90% of the AP's were encrypted. About 90% of the encrypted had the default 5 character SSID. So, all these "protected" AP's really aren't.
For proof of the concept, I know someone who tried the keys on a few AP's in his apartment building. The ones with a decent signal strength, he got in, and was able to sniff their traffic. Sure, they're encrypted, but they don't do per-client isolation.
Your plausible deniability may be a defense in court (but most likely not). If caught for nasty stuff, you will end up in court either way though, so I wouldn't gamble on it. Use a neighbor's unencrypted AP for bad things, not your own.:)
> For the love of god don't even think of putting a server on wireless...
Oddly enough, when 802.11g came out, we entertained the thought of adding new servers wirelessly. We were serious for the first... umm... 30 seconds. It would have been neat, and reduced cabling, but where we actually wanted them to work well, it wasn't an acceptable solution.
I have put AP's in a rack before, but it was so I could fire up my laptop, and be assigned an IP. Sitting 6' from the rack, with clear line of sight, it wasn't really a good option, so we strung a cable from the closest switch to the workbench. Oh my gosh, like 20' of wire (to keep it out of the way).:)
If I had the talent, I'd likely do the same thing. I can play music (but am a bit out of practice), but I can't write to save my life. When I did play for people, I didn't charge for the performance. I played because I enjoyed it. Not that my performances were much more than friends listening saying "play more! play more!"
I never pursued the idea of being paid for performances. Well, the thought crossed my mind, but I'd believe the need for woodwinds or keyboard were rather limited, so I fell out of practice. My keyboard now is a computer keyboard, and yes, my "performances" are well reimbursed.:)
Someday, I hope to get back into practice. I dusted off my sax and started playing again. I have to find the accessories for my keyboard, so I can get back into at least playing for friends. The most keyboard time I've had in the last 10 years was sitting down on friends piano's, because they were there.
A network is tailored to the site and needs of the customer. Where they say 50% to 90% of a client's network ports are unused, does that mean that they've had users migrating from wired to wireless, or did they overpurchase on projected growth?
Using this logic, oh my gosh, even my company must be going wireless. We have a few hundred unused 10baseT connections on our Catalyst 5500. Know why? Because we original projected them to be used for VoIP. When they finally settled on the VoIP provider, they insisted that we use their switches. We simply haven't pulled the extra cards, because we don't have blanks to fill the holes, and we can't find anyone in the office who would prefer to be on an 10Mb/s line, rather than a 100Mb/s line.
WiFi is great and all. I'm on it right now as I write this. But, that doesn't mean it's the end all of networking. When I want true reliable speeds, I go to where there's a network jack, and plug in.
At work, every desk is wired. There are AP's, but people use the wired jacks. Why? Because they appreciate the reliability. There's no random interference. No cell phone, microwave over, or transient event on another floor is going to disturb their connection. I appreciate that they use the wired connections. At any given point, I may have 4 or 5 users on wireless, and a few hundred devices on wired. I can wonder "are those wireless connections legitimate?" If a user has a problem, I'm looking at physical facts (is their cable plugged in. Did they damage the cable) rather than random environmental facts (Is there a thunderstorm? Did someone fire up a new yet not well shielded microwave two floors down?). I had to trace a wireless problem once, and it turned out to be a small portable radio in the corner of someone's office. It was turned off, but it was effectively blocking all RF for about 10 feet. Once I found it, I unplugged it, and the wireless problems there went away.
Right now, I'm sitting at home, away from the office. There are a number of devices that are connected wirelessly. Why? Because I haven't run wires to the places that we may use it. The back porch, where I'm sitting right now, smoking and writing, doesn't have an ethernet drop. The PS3 doesn't have a drop, so it gets it's updates wirelessly. But every machine I depend on for work has an ethernet cable going to a Cisco Catalyst switch. Ask me why a connection goes weird on a wired port, and I can find the problem (it happens rarely, but...) Ask me why my connection drops on the back porch and it's a little harder to find the answer.
We had a problem on the back porch a while back. As it turned out, a neighbor just got DSL, and their AP was on the same channel as ours. Since I was closer to theirs, it interfered with the signal. I spend 20 minutes listening to channels to find the least used spectrum, and changed over. What happens when someone else comes up on that channel? I'll run out of channels eventually. But hey, it's ok, I can set up more AP's with more power, and drown them out. Then it's their problem, right?
Trust me, it wasn't worth the time. Usually people who spew that kind of crap never took the time to research it. They are just blindly repeating what they were told. You'll never have more credibility than their sources, so you'll always be wrong, and thus begins a flame war.
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Zzzzz..
The idea of "We've stopped this many attacks", and information coming out where federal agents have encouraged stupid people to follow the agents plan, and finally bust them for it, does not constitute a real threat. That is unless you consider the largest threat to the security of the United States of America to be it's own government.
As for the number of "terrorist" attacks, that number is very low, but it's in how you look at it. A terrorist manipulates a group with fear. Serial killers, rapists, and bank robbers can be categorized as terrorists. We are really looking at the kind of suicide terrorist who straps semtex or C4 to a vest, walks into a crowd, and blows themselves up. They may blow up a city bus, car, or air plane, or crash any of the above into a target. Those numbers have been relatively low.
The middle eastern terrorists aligned with al Queda, our primary focus of fear in the second view above have struck one day on American soil. Still, the government has guided the people into a constant state of fear, where the citizens have allowed their own rights to be quickly eroded. If an officer of the state wants stopped you to search you, regardless if you were doing anything wrong, you would accept it. If you refused, you would be physically compelled to their will. This is not the free America that our forefathers envisioned. We have rapidly declined to the state that our forefathers were fighting against.
But, that's how things go. Everything is a circle. We have not, and will likely never, learn from our own mistakes. We are doomed to repeat them.
And did it not occur to you that lower explosives could do significant damage?
But hey, as long as it doesn't happen to me, then it's someone elses problem, right?
Policy changes not only by airport, but by the person inspecting you.
I've flown hundreds of times (at least) since 9/11. I use my passport as my identification, partly so I don't have to pull my wallet out all the time (or keep my drivers license separate) and partly because people get confused looking for info in different areas on different drivers licenses. In my state, it shouldn't be a problem, but when I'm out of state (like, umm, where an airplane might take me), it saves the 30+ seconds of "ummm, where is your name? Oh, ok, where's the expiration date? umm, ok, it's you."
I keep my passport in a leather cover. It's been in that cover for a while, because the cover was starting to get beaten up, carrying it in my pocket.
I'd never had a problem until last year. One TSA agent went ballistic because I had it in a leather cover. I may as well have been burning a flag while urinating on a cross and singing in Arabic. Rather, I'm a good white American guy who was tired, and just trying to get on a plane to go home. He demanded I remove it from the cover for inspection. Ok, whatever. It's not like it's superglued in or anything. I asked him when the rules changed, just trying to understand my mistake, and that set him off again. I've never been allowed to put my passport in a cover, and it must be presented without a cover upon demand by any and all federal agents, including himself, and that always has been the policy at this airport and all airports in our fine United States of Amerika. I smiled, said thank you, and once he decided that it was really me, I went on my way. The funny part was, I'd flown through there a few times already that year, and was never asked to remove it from it's cover.
The cover is a nice cover made specifically for passports. It's embossed with the seal and text, just like the passport cover is.
I've carried other items through from time to time. For example, screwdrivers that were accidentally left in my laptop bag. I use the laptop bag exclusively when working at a site, but when I'm packing to leave, I transfer all my tools to my checked luggage. Once in a while I miss one. It was caught a couple times, and the TSA agent said "it's ok, it's not of the illegal length", and a few have been seized. What was funny last time I had a screwdriver seized was, there was a pair of scissors in the laptop bag with it. I didn't find out until I was unpacking it at home.
So, sure you can walk through with an empty water bottle a few times. Don't be surprised when you get face planted to the floor, and body cavity searched because of it. Definitely don't talk back. :)
Well.... yes.
I've had a drink bottle with me, that I've already drank most of the contents. Forgetting to dispose of it before getting to security, I finish it (not wanting to waste it), and they still make me throw the container away. I would have been happier filling it from a water fountain once I was past security.
I don't see why they aren't considering it as dangerous. In the right container, the powder from a single charge could be rather dangerous. The powder from several (say a D cell battery size) would likely be enough to pop a small hole in something. All it would need is a decent container (err, a D cell battery casing) to make it go boom instead of fizzle. If we learned nothing from the Aloha Flight 243, we've learned even a small breach can become catastrophic. Some accounts I've read of that incident indicate a small breach occurred first, which one of the crew was sucked into the resulting hole. The sudden change in depressurization caused the rest of the panel to give way. Sure, it was a damaged plane to start with, but can you guarantee any plane is in good shape?
I made a decent explosion with black powder in a ping pong ball once. The ball was only half full. We never did find any the pieces.
While I'm not suggesting that anyone should do it, the rules are so screwy it isn't even funny. A few ounces of toothpaste are dangerous, but gunpowder isn't?
But.....
In handling the ammo, I should have had at least some chemical residue. Have you ever handled lots of ammo before, and noticed the smell on your hands?
Ammunition powder makes a good bang, otherwise they wouldn't be used in ammunition. Excluding one type of explosive from an explosives test is stupid. At least it could identify "ammunition powder residue. probable law enforcement. verify and pass."
Ive checked firearms in as luggage before. Perfectly legally, and all appropriate parties were notified prior and at the time of check in. I never had any funny looks. Then again, I didn't bring ammo either. That's always a pain, when you have to go buy more ammo at your destination.
That bothered me a lot.
The idea of the swab test is that if there's been exposure of any sort it would be detected.
Like, if "the badguy" were to take a box of ammo, empty the contents into a ziplock bag, and then wash both the outside of the bag and his hands, there should be at least some residue for them to detect.
It means possibly a couple things to me.
1) The tests they run are worthless. The machines don't do anything, but are an expensive ruse to keep the illusion alive.
2) They aren't deploying fully functional machines at many/most locations, so it would be hit or miss if a bad guy could get through.
3) The bad guys aren't quite as mysterious as the general public is made to believe. If they were that good to pull off such a large scale attack, wouldn't you think they'd at least been partially successful with at least one by now? I won't go off on conspiracy theories, but it makes you wonder.
This is a silly question.
For the Mac, take it to the Apple store, and ask a tech to open the case. He can remove the camera, control board, etc, etc....
For most PC laptops, the same can be done by any retailer with a tech on site.
For the phones, it may be a little harder to get an authorized tech to open it. You may have to ask the store who is a local authorized repair tech.
If you're not worried about the warranty, do it your self. It's not very hard. If you do it carefully, you can replace the camera later, and if you have to return it for warranty work, they won't be able to tell.
In any of those cases, I recommend keeping the removed parts, should you want to replace them later.
Another option may be to "decorate" the case. Home Depot sells glue backed foil for sealing air conditioning ducts. No, not "duct tape", it's foil tape. Some have written marks, and some don't. I'd go with the unmarked ones. Carefully line the edges of your display with the foil, so it doesn't look ugly. Voila, no camera.
Or option 3.. Bust out the camera with a drill or punch, and fill the hole with a dummy plug or epoxy.
Since you're in a real security environment, I'd go with options 1 or 3. Option 2 can open you up to liability. Since the camera still exists, you're just hiding it, you could in theory uncover it, use it, and then cover it again before you leave the facility.
I used to work in a few pseudo-secure facilities. Their rules were that no recording devices of any sort were allowed on the premises. They were datacenters, so the most I could really get was a picture of what other providers were using. Really, that could prove embarrassing if say I came out of an Equinix facility, showing that the IBM enterprise eBusiness managed hosting service was just a mess of desktops and rackmount machines, badly cabled, in partially filled racks at best. Since they advertise that they have their own facilities, even knowing that they are simply a few cabinets in a cage buried in an Equinix facility would be embarrassing.
I've seen quite a few "enterprise" providers, who run on a few desktop machines jammed into a cabinet. Then again, I've seen even more "enterprise" providers with beautiful setups. It's funny, their customers never get to see the real setup, but a tech who is there to work for another company gets the full view. :)
Anyways, I used to carry cameras, my cell with a camera, or whatever I wanted in. It was a simple matter of burying it so deep in my laptop bag that the security guards wouldn't want to dig through all of it. In the same environments, they require property passes to remove equipment. If you have enough stuff moving, you can move extra stuff too. I've accidentally removed more than the pass showed. It wasn't intentional, it's just that we overlooked a piece, and noticed when we cross-checked the list later. It would have been a lot harder to walk in, and then walk out with just one piece of undocumented equipment.
I've had the same happen with the TSA. They want to search, so I tell them "Go ahead, but you have to put it back like you found it." They unzipper a few compartments, see that they're jammed with cables for various purposes (I come prepared), and then just wipe it down so they can do their attempt at detecting explosives.
On the TSA explosives testing (as I digress)... A friend was driving me to the airport to catch a flight back home. We had already arranged with another friend to go to a local shooting range. I burnt off several hundred rounds of 9mm, .45 ACP and 12 Gauge, which means I handled plenty of ammunition and the residue was all over my hands, arms, face, and clothes. I also handled my carry on (obviously). I didn't really think about i
I was quietly leaving that one off.. Layoffs are bad for morale.
They just had Interweb Cleaning Day on April 1st. I received the notice. It coincided with the telephone sanitation day. I had my computers turned off and phones wrapped in plastic bags all day, per the notice I got by email.
Your times are terrible. :)
I just ran the same test. One was from my laptop (wireless). One was from a wired machine. Both are on the same physical network. On the wireless side, I'm showing 54Mb/s "Very Good" signal.
Ping statistics for 10.0.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 50, Received = 49, Lost = 1 (2% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 1238ms, Average = 112ms
--- xx.xx.xx.xx ping statistics ---
50 packets transmitted, 50 received, 0% packet loss, time 48987ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.654/0.697/0.784/0.038 ms
The obligatory question is.... are you hiring? :)
Have you ever tried to gain access to a wiring room?
Sometimes a fake telco badge and a clipboard will do it. Sometimes you only need to ask.
I've never gone into a wiring room for illegal purposes. They've always been legitimate, for companies that need me to do work. I don't think I've ever identified myself to building management, other than to say "Hi, I need to get into the wiring room to hook up some phone lines, can you show me where it is?"
The only exception was a building close to One Wilshire. Very secure buildings tend to be a different story. Even still, it can be done with a little social engineering.
If you don't like that point, buy a crappy white van and some orange cones. Find the manhole cover marked "TELCO". Park with the back of your van there at 3am, put your orange cones out, pry the cover out, and have at it.
Your building may be secure, but somewhere up stream isn't.
Actually, we were serious. For almost 30 seconds. :) It then broke down into an hour of laughing at the possibilities. :)
Thank god it was a non-tech person who suggested it. I promised to entertain any idea. This one didn't just get rejected, it gave us plenty to laugh at.
Assuming wireless did give you full advertised speed, we had another problem. An AP with a 100Mb/s uplink, and a couple dozen servers with 54Mb/s wireless connections were obviously a problem. Well, we had a GigE uplink, and frequently used the capacity. So, we'd have to set up an AP for each server, with each AP on a network port. In the end, it became very obvious to the non-technical person that we weren't going to do it, but we kept going on the idea anyways. :) ... and then you could bridge in the next rack ... and resell service to other customer racks ... and put a high power transmitter on, and a high gain antenna, and bounce the signal off the moon to service China!
Trust me, it got worse as we went on. :)
That's a given of wiring networks. :) You can get the same problem running it over florescent lights in a drop ceiling. I've seen plenty that were run there, but I've only seen it cause a problem once. I complain about it a lot though, because it's bad practice.
That's easy to do. Set up a Linux box as the only thing attached to the AP, set an iptables rule to redirect any :80 traffic to the machine, and then put a 404 error in to direct everyone to your offensive image.
But that would be rude, and I'd never consider it. Except on Fridays. What day is today? :)
Mine isn't that bad, but I've seen it. Right now, it reports 48Mb/s "Very Good". Still, it disconnects randomly. Sometimes it doesn't want to talk to my AP any more. We have two here, and I'll find myself on the wrong one. I do different things between specific AP's, because of the machines that are physically attached to those segments. I gave up, and set one to manual, so I always connect to one, it just disconnects occasionally. I blame .... [spinning the wheel of excuses] .... solar flares.
Here's a little side note on that.
With default settings from a few providers (who I won't name), if they have a 5 character SSID, it's trivial to find the key. It's just math. Well, more math than I'm willing to do, but there are tools line.
For giggles, I left my laptop on with netstumbler running on the drive home from work the other day. Over 90% of the AP's were encrypted. About 90% of the encrypted had the default 5 character SSID. So, all these "protected" AP's really aren't.
For proof of the concept, I know someone who tried the keys on a few AP's in his apartment building. The ones with a decent signal strength, he got in, and was able to sniff their traffic. Sure, they're encrypted, but they don't do per-client isolation.
Your plausible deniability may be a defense in court (but most likely not). If caught for nasty stuff, you will end up in court either way though, so I wouldn't gamble on it. Use a neighbor's unencrypted AP for bad things, not your own. :)
> For the love of god don't even think of putting a server on wireless...
Oddly enough, when 802.11g came out, we entertained the thought of adding new servers wirelessly. We were serious for the first ... umm ... 30 seconds. It would have been neat, and reduced cabling, but where we actually wanted them to work well, it wasn't an acceptable solution.
I have put AP's in a rack before, but it was so I could fire up my laptop, and be assigned an IP. Sitting 6' from the rack, with clear line of sight, it wasn't really a good option, so we strung a cable from the closest switch to the workbench. Oh my gosh, like 20' of wire (to keep it out of the way). :)
You've just made a serious breech of Slashdot protocol. You shouldn't post AC, when your comment would be modded funny..
As I'm sitting here, I'm getting comments from the peanut gallery.
On the wireless Internets, there are no tubes, so there are no tubes to get clogged. Therefore wireless is muchly superior.
Ahh, how I still love Senator Stevens and his amazing insight into the functionality of that there interwebtubenets.
That sir, is true love of your art.
If I had the talent, I'd likely do the same thing. I can play music (but am a bit out of practice), but I can't write to save my life. When I did play for people, I didn't charge for the performance. I played because I enjoyed it. Not that my performances were much more than friends listening saying "play more! play more!"
I never pursued the idea of being paid for performances. Well, the thought crossed my mind, but I'd believe the need for woodwinds or keyboard were rather limited, so I fell out of practice. My keyboard now is a computer keyboard, and yes, my "performances" are well reimbursed. :)
Someday, I hope to get back into practice. I dusted off my sax and started playing again. I have to find the accessories for my keyboard, so I can get back into at least playing for friends. The most keyboard time I've had in the last 10 years was sitting down on friends piano's, because they were there.
Dammit, you beat me to the first post.
At least we said the same thing. You said it in a few words. I said it in an essay. :)
What a pile of marketing crap.
A network is tailored to the site and needs of the customer. Where they say 50% to 90% of a client's network ports are unused, does that mean that they've had users migrating from wired to wireless, or did they overpurchase on projected growth?
Using this logic, oh my gosh, even my company must be going wireless. We have a few hundred unused 10baseT connections on our Catalyst 5500. Know why? Because we original projected them to be used for VoIP. When they finally settled on the VoIP provider, they insisted that we use their switches. We simply haven't pulled the extra cards, because we don't have blanks to fill the holes, and we can't find anyone in the office who would prefer to be on an 10Mb/s line, rather than a 100Mb/s line.
WiFi is great and all. I'm on it right now as I write this. But, that doesn't mean it's the end all of networking. When I want true reliable speeds, I go to where there's a network jack, and plug in.
At work, every desk is wired. There are AP's, but people use the wired jacks. Why? Because they appreciate the reliability. There's no random interference. No cell phone, microwave over, or transient event on another floor is going to disturb their connection. I appreciate that they use the wired connections. At any given point, I may have 4 or 5 users on wireless, and a few hundred devices on wired. I can wonder "are those wireless connections legitimate?" If a user has a problem, I'm looking at physical facts (is their cable plugged in. Did they damage the cable) rather than random environmental facts (Is there a thunderstorm? Did someone fire up a new yet not well shielded microwave two floors down?). I had to trace a wireless problem once, and it turned out to be a small portable radio in the corner of someone's office. It was turned off, but it was effectively blocking all RF for about 10 feet. Once I found it, I unplugged it, and the wireless problems there went away.
Right now, I'm sitting at home, away from the office. There are a number of devices that are connected wirelessly. Why? Because I haven't run wires to the places that we may use it. The back porch, where I'm sitting right now, smoking and writing, doesn't have an ethernet drop. The PS3 doesn't have a drop, so it gets it's updates wirelessly. But every machine I depend on for work has an ethernet cable going to a Cisco Catalyst switch. Ask me why a connection goes weird on a wired port, and I can find the problem (it happens rarely, but ...) Ask me why my connection drops on the back porch and it's a little harder to find the answer.
We had a problem on the back porch a while back. As it turned out, a neighbor just got DSL, and their AP was on the same channel as ours. Since I was closer to theirs, it interfered with the signal. I spend 20 minutes listening to channels to find the least used spectrum, and changed over. What happens when someone else comes up on that channel? I'll run out of channels eventually. But hey, it's ok, I can set up more AP's with more power, and drown them out. Then it's their problem, right?
Trust me, it wasn't worth the time. Usually people who spew that kind of crap never took the time to research it. They are just blindly repeating what they were told. You'll never have more credibility than their sources, so you'll always be wrong, and thus begins a flame war.
Careful, you're treading very close to the territory of Godwin's Law.