If you use openwrt, you don't just have an access point. You have a surprisingly capable Linux-based computer. There are hundreds, and maybe thousands of packages for openwrt. For a $99.00 router plus a $20.00 flash drive, you get an amazingly flexible little linux box.
I have over 30 OpenWRT boxes in the wild, out at my customers' sites. They act as WAPs, VPN endpoints, stateful packet filtering firewall, NAT, usb print server, usb external drive smb shares, testing points (nmap, tcpdump, ngrep), and the list goes on. A similarly functional device from cisco would be thousands of dollars. For a small business running a single T1, DSL, or cable internet, it is the best thing going.
In a large organization, every department shows scorn to every other department. Look at all those office hens that have the various "Talk to the boss or to the woman who knows what's going on" or similar things pasted all over their cubicle. IT is no better or worse than they are.
And this is why I hate the enterprise environment, and left it... The tech is cool, but the people suck ass, no matter what department they work in.
In a small business, such as a VAR who visits various customer locations, one is much more careful of how one expresses scorn. This is true of other service-oriented businesses as well, which have nothing to do with IT.
I use OpenVPN all the time, both on windows and linux platforms (openvpn on openwrt rawks!)
The OpenVPN windows client creates a tun/tap device, which looks like just another network device under windows.
If you had a site to site openvpn-based vpn up and running, connecting two subnets, you could easily use windows' IPSEC implementation between two microsoft boxes, across the VPN - they would never know it was there.
I *think* you could do the same thing, even if the openvpn package is running directly one or both of the windows machines - by setting the IPSEC stuff up for the tun/tap device.
I had pretty much the exact problem you did. I started my SMB lan service business a few years back, ran into the same problem.
I tried many software solutions, web-based databases, etc etc etc.
My solution:
Pre-printed, carbonless, two-copy order forms I buy at the local Office Depot, along with "Big Clock" for my treo phone. (any "timer" application for any phone/handheld should be fine - you could also just look at the clock).
It works MUCH better than any of the multitude of more technical solutions I found.
You do, however, have to keep up with the pad... Losing one that has a lot of jobs written on it can be a bad, bad thing.
I have this metal box/clipboard thing with the forms on it(I am sure you have seen service people carrying these around). I put my keys in it as soon as I exit my vehicle.
It really works well.
Run the openwrt linux distribution on a linksys wrt54gs router (make sure you do not get a ver 5 box).
This will allow you to partition the network however you want. Linux CLI skills are a definite must.
That will give you all the capabilities of a $1000 or so name-brand wireless router.
I had a gnome rogue named "Grabnasty". Only level 11 or so when it was changed, so no big deal to me. He is now Filchfinger, but for how long I wonder?
Technically this is against the rules, as they state that your name cannot be two consecutive words strung together as a phrase. (I had to change his name before I figured out which rule I had broken) That wouldn't bother me too much, but all the dwarves (and other npcs) are named stuff like Jonas Beerbarrel or Thurgin Foambrew or some such.
Yeah, sure it is a sport... Now, being a meat eater, I have no moral objections to hunting... But calling it a sport is silly. You kill an 8 point buck with a bowie knife and nothing else, I will call you a sportsman. You use a high powered rifle or a composite bow? That's hunting...
Sport... heh...
Regardless of the merit (or lack thereof) of the Outlook mail client (note that this is the full outlook client, not outlook express), this could be really really big in the small/med business world.
Exchange server is pretty expensive to set up and maintain for the average small business, but integrated, shared calendaring/scheduling/contacts/etc. in the familiar Outlook interface is a nice feature for most businesses with more than a few employees.
The roadwarrior aspect is quite nice too. If the office person can get online and add/edit appointments for the travelling person's contacts and calendar, then that's the shiz, as far as many of my clients are concerned.
I am not sure how much of exchange's functionality they will be selling with this, but if its essentially Exchange connectivity for 60 bucks a year per seat, I can think of several clients I have that will be immediately interested.
disclaimer: I support Windows, Linux and Novell, pretty much in that order of volume. I am not married to Microsoft, but not a basher either. I have over a dozen Linux boxes in the field, in active use at my clients.
Not everyone is in an enterprise environment. An expensive KVM installation at each client site would be overkill for anything but large installations - what about all the small and medium sized businesses with IT on a budget?
I service several small networks, and often due to space constraints, or frugality/cheapness, the server(s)are cheap, commodity x86 boxes sitting in a corner, or a closet (and I don't mean data closet) or a shelf somewhere. I have multiple Linux boxen out there acting as dsl/cable and vpn gateways for small businesses, and all of those are headless. Usually the only time I have to touch them is when hardware dies - considering many times the linux boxes are someone's old desktop, it does happen.
A laptop form-factor device with battery, keyboard and lcd screen that all hooked up to a PC's normal mouse/kbd/video connectors would be really really nice. I would pay $400-$500 for something like that. I am thinking that would be pretty feasible financially to manufacture too - not nearly as much stuff in it as a regular laptop.
If you get people, especially business users, to the point that they run open office, firefox, and other open source software in a KDE environment on top of windows, then it is a VERY short hop over to running it all on Linux (or a bsd flavor).
Most SMBs would leap at the chance to not pay the Microsoft tax. Even amongst the common folk, most have heard about Linux, that it is free, and that it is very reliable and not so prone to spyware and viruses as windows.
If users and decision makers are already comfortable in KDE and using OSS apps on the windows platform, then they will not have the fears or reluctance to move over to a linux desktop.
I had a pretty nice job with a large, large company, I totally loved it the first three years - was "Sr. Network Support Analyst" - was responsible for about 400-500 seats among 3 facilities, as well as several other responsibilities that spanned our division (PC Security, head of the y2k effort on intel platforms, I did the division intranet, a few other things too), handled two big wiring projects at two of our facilities.
We went through several mergers, where our division bought smaller (and one pretty big) company, and, well, merged them into our business. I went with the flow on all of them, even the second to last one where the company we bought was almost as big as our division up to that point. Those IT guys became my new bosses, and they were cool. everything went good for maybe another year. Previously, I had went through 95 to 98 conversions, then 98-w2k conversions a few years later. We even went from AS400-based systems to SAP, and everyone knows how much fun that is.
Let me mention that I was Golden Boy in this division, even after all the new mergers and conversions and y2k, etc. I took great (and I hope understated) pride in that my team met our objectives on time, and often on budget. I saved the company several thousands of dollars by moving most TCP/IP services over to Linux(like dhcp, dns, ftp, the intranet, etc). It worked so well, we used Linux as printservers for the SAP system when it went in. (The actual machines running SAP were in remote, hosted locations). So, in large part, I was the go-to guy in our division - and I loved it. Worked long hours maintaining cool equipment - it was great.
The unions up north went on strike, down here in the south, we had no unions. The higher ups decided to expand the biggest plant down here in the south, and tell the unions where to stick it. They did all of the planning in secret, and the morons DID NOT INCLUDE IT/PHONE CONSIDERATIONS IN THE PLANNING AT ALL! Being the IT guy, I knew this was coming, but the higher ups were unwilling to discuss it with me until it was going to be made public. I did not know how fast it would be, though. Construction started within a WEEK of the announcement. What's more, they did not consider any budget increase.
The division was not-so-well managed. I was the one who notified the head of our IT department - he either had no clue about it or he was lying. Given that the guy is pretty cool, and the division was pretty badly mismanaged, I honestly believe he did not know about it. From what I hear, it was a closely guarded secret to keep the union from finding out until the last possible second.
So, after the public announcement, you may well imagine I was jumping through hoops. Our data/phone center was a modular office type thing in the middle of a huge manufacturing plant, by design it was pretty much in the middle of the plant. They decided to move the data center into a corner, out of the way for a while. It was QUITE amusing to tell them I thought it would take anywhere from 500k to 1 mill to move it, and re-run all the cabling. I got the blank, puppy dog look when I told them that IT operations would be severely interrupted for the duration. The time frame they wanted this done in was, shall we say, unrealistic. It would have required several wiring companies 24-hour shifts, and even then I doubt it would have worked.
Then our division merged with another division in the same large corporation. This happened within weeks of the construction announcement, and the subsequent scramble to get a working plan. _That_ IT management team became everyone's new boss. So, _Their_ head IT guy came in, and "took over". This means that he made a bunch of unrealistic promises, and told everyone to come to me if they had problems.
So, at this point, I and my one assistant were trying to juggle our normal support duties, dealing with plans for the construction, trying to handle NEW responsibilities with all the mfg lines and eqpt and peopl
...and thinking, how much more stupid can it be? I saw the ad in a publication aimed at IT professionals (e-week, I think). Now granted, I know a lot of CIOs and other IT executive types might see it, but at least with the magazine I saw it in, I would think the target base would have enough tech savvy to know that a mainframe is going to cost more to run than a dual-xeon system.
It's probably bad form to reply to one's own post, so excuse me in advance. Seeing as how I seldom post at all, I foolishly trusted the preview button, and did not put the appropriate html tags in.
It looked good in the preview at least.
I apologize for the poorly formatted underpants gnome profit list. If I could edit it, I'd fix it. Please pretend it is properly formatted, instead.
1. Observe thousands of geeks rage-filled reaction to SCO Linux IP claims.
2. Write poorly-researched, inflammatory book claiming Linus the Chosen One did not, in fact write the Linux kernel.
3. Thousands and thousands and thousands of pissed-off Linux zealots buy said book, in order to debunk it, burn it, sit it on the shelf and laugh at it, whatever...
4. Profit!!!
I think the author probably saw an exploitable reaction in the Linux community and wrote this book in order to, um, exploit it...
I wonder if the same strategy would work in other formats? I could write a book called "Eating Puppies", do the talk show circuit, and as long as I was not shot or something, the book would sell a million copies!
I'm a genius!
*starts typing up first draft*
or maybe a few days back. I have no idea if the two are related, I can't remember any of the guest names. But for us online gamers, this is pretty familiar to us... I play UO, and items there have been sold for real world cash for a long time.
They won't block it, but I bet they'll transparently proxy it and cache the results. Thus, you'll think the link is up but you're actually getting the data from a previous call.
I sure hope your program checks the content to make sure it's not being spoofed by some man in the middle.
Actually, caching would not be a good thing, but the scripts would still mostly work... All the pulling of http pages down does is verify (hopefully) that the machine can access the outside world via direct IP addresses, and via DNS. Proxy caching would be a bad thing, but the script would still tell the machine that it had as much a connection to the internet as it ever had.
As for spoofing, that would be totally useless. All the script does is check three different sites, none of which are the ones I am connecting to, first via IP, then via DNS. It does not even look at the content of the pages it pulls, just checks for success or failure and tosses the content straight to the bit bucket.
If the box thinks the internet is up, and that dns is working too, then it checks to see if it's Internet Interface matches a dynamic dns service. If all those check out, it uses standard IPSEC authentication methods (rsa public/private keys) to actually authenticate to the other box.
Oh, and this idea is now my exclusive IP, so if any readers use it, you owe me $699.00! I will be waiting for the check!
Many of the cookie cutter ISPs cannot keep their own mail server running reliably. I have many customers with DSL or cable broadband at work and at home. Most of these customers have a linux box sitting there as a firewall/vpn/mail server, etc. A properly configured Linux box running postfix is WAY more reliable than most mom-n-pop ISPs seem to be. You can also actually figure out what's wrong if there are mailing problems, if you have control of the server.
It should be up to users to protect themselves, or it should be an OPT-IN value-added service provided by the ISP, even if it costs extra.
I pay for bandwidth, plain and simple. I want every port open for whatever use I so desire, with no blockage from the ISP period.
Some morons at certain ISPs recently decided to block all pings, period, on their broadband networks. I run a small computer consulting business, one of my specialties is ipsec-connected subnet-to-subnet VPNs for small businesses with dynamic IP broadband connections. The scripts that make all this work depend(ed) on being able to ping various places to determine if the internet was up, if the peer host was up, and if the tunnel was up.
Since someone didn't RTFM on stateful packet filtering, and figure out how to safely allow ping traffic while blocking DDOS attacks, all my scripts broke (well, among those home users using those certain ISPs that connected into the office). Who in the seven hells ever thought an ISP would block ping!!! I can see a popular website doing it, but an ISP?!? Across their entire network?!?!? Baka!
Anyway, I had to quickly rewrite the scripts to pull entire webpages down to test connectivity, and dump them into the bit bucket, instead of nice, tiny little ping packets. (Let's see 'em block http) Wastes bandwidth, and less elegant too! wheee!
Cookie-cutter broadband ISPs without the technical knowledge to properly configure their routers are NOT people who I want determining what ports/protocols I can and can't use. I pay for bandwidth. Leave my ports alone!
The only thing wrong with Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are the other players. I have played Ultima Online for years now. Most of the people you see in the forums are the hardcore fans, not casual gamers. Most of them are, indeed, maladjusted trollish wastes of breath, cat-assing their lives away, going into jittery, spit-flinging caniption(sp?) fits over the latest class nerf or PvP change.
I myself am a maladjusted, trollish waste of breath...but I don't spend my time going into paroxysms of infatile, futile outbursts on the boards about it....any more, anyway. I avoid gaming/dev boards like the plague that they are.
I generally side with the devs on issues like this. I read that guy's response, and based on some of the feces I have seen thrown at devs on the UO boards in the past, I can guarantee that my response would have been less coherent, less polite, and have had a great deal more expletives in it.
On the other hand, I would not have been stupid enough to take a job holding bees in my mouth in the first place. I have already lost any expectations of decent behavior from the vast majority of humankind, most especially those who huddle in darkened rooms in front of their multi-headed gaming systems, even as I myself do...
You might want to check out Cygwin. It gives you a very Linuxy interface and toolset to your windows box. I have only tried it on w2k and xp, no idea if it'd work on anything earlier. You get a "real" bash shell, with most of the commonly used command line tools you are used to in Linux. You can also compile many (but not all) linux apps from source to run in Cygwin. It has a package manager with many precompiled progs. You can run X in it. I am pretty sure you can run an ssh daemon in it too.
I run a small computer consulting company, one thing I usually do is replace their linksys/dlink/netgear broadband router with a linux box. Although much smaller in scale that what you are talking about, I moved from redhat to debian for the exact same reasons you are talking about. Once RH moved to its frequent.0 releases with one-year updates, I knew I had to pick a different distro. Debian is fast, stable, and compact compared to red hat. The package system kicks major ass as well. I don't need support, the only problems I have ever run into were hardware related (or my own stoopid errors)... I will, however, say that dselect is one nasty mofo of a whatever it is... If I want a new package, I just search the debian site for it, and use apt-get. Like others have said, if the support is what you need, you will have to evaluate whether its cost-effective vs other major unix-y providers. If security updates is what you want, then there are several cheaper alternatives to red hat. Redhat needs to provide an alternative for those who don't want actual support, but do need long term updates for multiple years - otherwise, they will see their piece of the Linux pie shrink. That may be what they want, it may be a simple business decision on their part to make mo money. However, I know many, many people who are ditching red hat for the exact reason I did.
UO 2 (or, TGFKAUWOO)was the original successor to UO that EA cancelled after much hooha and to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of many. This is likely a rehash of that game.
Slashdot Mirror
If you use openwrt, you don't just have an access point. You have a surprisingly capable Linux-based computer. There are hundreds, and maybe thousands of packages for openwrt. For a $99.00 router plus a $20.00 flash drive, you get an amazingly flexible little linux box.
I have over 30 OpenWRT boxes in the wild, out at my customers' sites. They act as WAPs, VPN endpoints, stateful packet filtering firewall, NAT, usb print server, usb external drive smb shares, testing points (nmap, tcpdump, ngrep), and the list goes on. A similarly functional device from cisco would be thousands of dollars. For a small business running a single T1, DSL, or cable internet, it is the best thing going.
In a large organization, every department shows scorn to every other department. Look at all those office hens that have the various "Talk to the boss or to the woman who knows what's going on" or similar things pasted all over their cubicle. IT is no better or worse than they are. And this is why I hate the enterprise environment, and left it... The tech is cool, but the people suck ass, no matter what department they work in. In a small business, such as a VAR who visits various customer locations, one is much more careful of how one expresses scorn. This is true of other service-oriented businesses as well, which have nothing to do with IT.
I use OpenVPN all the time, both on windows and linux platforms (openvpn on openwrt rawks!)
The OpenVPN windows client creates a tun/tap device, which looks like just another network device under windows.
If you had a site to site openvpn-based vpn up and running, connecting two subnets, you could easily use windows' IPSEC implementation between two microsoft boxes, across the VPN - they would never know it was there.
I *think* you could do the same thing, even if the openvpn package is running directly one or both of the windows machines - by setting the IPSEC stuff up for the tun/tap device.
I had pretty much the exact problem you did. I started my SMB lan service business a few years back, ran into the same problem. I tried many software solutions, web-based databases, etc etc etc. My solution: Pre-printed, carbonless, two-copy order forms I buy at the local Office Depot, along with "Big Clock" for my treo phone. (any "timer" application for any phone/handheld should be fine - you could also just look at the clock). It works MUCH better than any of the multitude of more technical solutions I found. You do, however, have to keep up with the pad... Losing one that has a lot of jobs written on it can be a bad, bad thing. I have this metal box/clipboard thing with the forms on it(I am sure you have seen service people carrying these around). I put my keys in it as soon as I exit my vehicle. It really works well.
Run the openwrt linux distribution on a linksys wrt54gs router (make sure you do not get a ver 5 box). This will allow you to partition the network however you want. Linux CLI skills are a definite must. That will give you all the capabilities of a $1000 or so name-brand wireless router.
TrendMicro appears to have added it Nov 12. Looks like they just removed the cloaking, and leave the rest, like many of the others.
I had a gnome rogue named "Grabnasty". Only level 11 or so when it was changed, so no big deal to me. He is now Filchfinger, but for how long I wonder? Technically this is against the rules, as they state that your name cannot be two consecutive words strung together as a phrase. (I had to change his name before I figured out which rule I had broken) That wouldn't bother me too much, but all the dwarves (and other npcs) are named stuff like Jonas Beerbarrel or Thurgin Foambrew or some such.
Yeah, sure it is a sport... Now, being a meat eater, I have no moral objections to hunting... But calling it a sport is silly. You kill an 8 point buck with a bowie knife and nothing else, I will call you a sportsman. You use a high powered rifle or a composite bow? That's hunting... Sport... heh...
Regardless of the merit (or lack thereof) of the Outlook mail client (note that this is the full outlook client, not outlook express), this could be really really big in the small/med business world.
Exchange server is pretty expensive to set up and maintain for the average small business, but integrated, shared calendaring/scheduling/contacts/etc. in the familiar Outlook interface is a nice feature for most businesses with more than a few employees.
The roadwarrior aspect is quite nice too. If the office person can get online and add/edit appointments for the travelling person's contacts and calendar, then that's the shiz, as far as many of my clients are concerned.
I am not sure how much of exchange's functionality they will be selling with this, but if its essentially Exchange connectivity for 60 bucks a year per seat, I can think of several clients I have that will be immediately interested.
disclaimer: I support Windows, Linux and Novell, pretty much in that order of volume. I am not married to Microsoft, but not a basher either. I have over a dozen Linux boxes in the field, in active use at my clients.
Not everyone is in an enterprise environment. An expensive KVM installation at each client site would be overkill for anything but large installations - what about all the small and medium sized businesses with IT on a budget?
I service several small networks, and often due to space constraints, or frugality/cheapness, the server(s)are cheap, commodity x86 boxes sitting in a corner, or a closet (and I don't mean data closet) or a shelf somewhere. I have multiple Linux boxen out there acting as dsl/cable and vpn gateways for small businesses, and all of those are headless. Usually the only time I have to touch them is when hardware dies - considering many times the linux boxes are someone's old desktop, it does happen.
A laptop form-factor device with battery, keyboard and lcd screen that all hooked up to a PC's normal mouse/kbd/video connectors would be really really nice. I would pay $400-$500 for something like that. I am thinking that would be pretty feasible financially to manufacture too - not nearly as much stuff in it as a regular laptop.
If you get people, especially business users, to the point that they run open office, firefox, and other open source software in a KDE environment on top of windows, then it is a VERY short hop over to running it all on Linux (or a bsd flavor).
Most SMBs would leap at the chance to not pay the Microsoft tax. Even amongst the common folk, most have heard about Linux, that it is free, and that it is very reliable and not so prone to spyware and viruses as windows.
If users and decision makers are already comfortable in KDE and using OSS apps on the windows platform, then they will not have the fears or reluctance to move over to a linux desktop.
I had a pretty nice job with a large, large company, I totally loved it the first three years - was "Sr. Network Support Analyst" - was responsible for about 400-500 seats among 3 facilities, as well as several other responsibilities that spanned our division (PC Security, head of the y2k effort on intel platforms, I did the division intranet, a few other things too), handled two big wiring projects at two of our facilities.
We went through several mergers, where our division bought smaller (and one pretty big) company, and, well, merged them into our business. I went with the flow on all of them, even the second to last one where the company we bought was almost as big as our division up to that point. Those IT guys became my new bosses, and they were cool. everything went good for maybe another year. Previously, I had went through 95 to 98 conversions, then 98-w2k conversions a few years later. We even went from AS400-based systems to SAP, and everyone knows how much fun that is.
Let me mention that I was Golden Boy in this division, even after all the new mergers and conversions and y2k, etc. I took great (and I hope understated) pride in that my team met our objectives on time, and often on budget. I saved the company several thousands of dollars by moving most TCP/IP services over to Linux(like dhcp, dns, ftp, the intranet, etc). It worked so well, we used Linux as printservers for the SAP system when it went in. (The actual machines running SAP were in remote, hosted locations). So, in large part, I was the go-to guy in our division - and I loved it. Worked long hours maintaining cool equipment - it was great.
The unions up north went on strike, down here in the south, we had no unions. The higher ups decided to expand the biggest plant down here in the south, and tell the unions where to stick it. They did all of the planning in secret, and the morons DID NOT INCLUDE IT/PHONE CONSIDERATIONS IN THE PLANNING AT ALL! Being the IT guy, I knew this was coming, but the higher ups were unwilling to discuss it with me until it was going to be made public. I did not know how fast it would be, though. Construction started within a WEEK of the announcement. What's more, they did not consider any budget increase.
The division was not-so-well managed. I was the one who notified the head of our IT department - he either had no clue about it or he was lying. Given that the guy is pretty cool, and the division was pretty badly mismanaged, I honestly believe he did not know about it. From what I hear, it was a closely guarded secret to keep the union from finding out until the last possible second.
So, after the public announcement, you may well imagine I was jumping through hoops. Our data/phone center was a modular office type thing in the middle of a huge manufacturing plant, by design it was pretty much in the middle of the plant. They decided to move the data center into a corner, out of the way for a while. It was QUITE amusing to tell them I thought it would take anywhere from 500k to 1 mill to move it, and re-run all the cabling. I got the blank, puppy dog look when I told them that IT operations would be severely interrupted for the duration. The time frame they wanted this done in was, shall we say, unrealistic. It would have required several wiring companies 24-hour shifts, and even then I doubt it would have worked.
Then our division merged with another division in the same large corporation. This happened within weeks of the construction announcement, and the subsequent scramble to get a working plan. _That_ IT management team became everyone's new boss. So, _Their_ head IT guy came in, and "took over". This means that he made a bunch of unrealistic promises, and told everyone to come to me if they had problems.
So, at this point, I and my one assistant were trying to juggle our normal support duties, dealing with plans for the construction, trying to handle NEW responsibilities with all the mfg lines and eqpt and peopl
...and thinking, how much more stupid can it be? I saw the ad in a publication aimed at IT professionals (e-week, I think). Now granted, I know a lot of CIOs and other IT executive types might see it, but at least with the magazine I saw it in, I would think the target base would have enough tech savvy to know that a mainframe is going to cost more to run than a dual-xeon system.
It's probably bad form to reply to one's own post, so excuse me in advance. Seeing as how I seldom post at all, I foolishly trusted the preview button, and did not put the appropriate html tags in.
It looked good in the preview at least.
I apologize for the poorly formatted underpants gnome profit list. If I could edit it, I'd fix it. Please pretend it is properly formatted, instead.
1. Observe thousands of geeks rage-filled reaction to SCO Linux IP claims. 2. Write poorly-researched, inflammatory book claiming Linus the Chosen One did not, in fact write the Linux kernel. 3. Thousands and thousands and thousands of pissed-off Linux zealots buy said book, in order to debunk it, burn it, sit it on the shelf and laugh at it, whatever... 4. Profit!!! I think the author probably saw an exploitable reaction in the Linux community and wrote this book in order to, um, exploit it... I wonder if the same strategy would work in other formats? I could write a book called "Eating Puppies", do the talk show circuit, and as long as I was not shot or something, the book would sell a million copies! I'm a genius! *starts typing up first draft*
or maybe a few days back. I have no idea if the two are related, I can't remember any of the guest names. But for us online gamers, this is pretty familiar to us... I play UO, and items there have been sold for real world cash for a long time.
That's probably because MySQL is used more than any other database.
They won't block it, but I bet they'll transparently proxy it and cache the results. Thus, you'll think the link is up but you're actually getting the data from a previous call.
I sure hope your program checks the content to make sure it's not being spoofed by some man in the middle.
Actually, caching would not be a good thing, but the scripts would still mostly work... All the pulling of http pages down does is verify (hopefully) that the machine can access the outside world via direct IP addresses, and via DNS. Proxy caching would be a bad thing, but the script would still tell the machine that it had as much a connection to the internet as it ever had.
As for spoofing, that would be totally useless. All the script does is check three different sites, none of which are the ones I am connecting to, first via IP, then via DNS. It does not even look at the content of the pages it pulls, just checks for success or failure and tosses the content straight to the bit bucket.
If the box thinks the internet is up, and that dns is working too, then it checks to see if it's Internet Interface matches a dynamic dns service. If all those check out, it uses standard IPSEC authentication methods (rsa public/private keys) to actually authenticate to the other box.
Oh, and this idea is now my exclusive IP, so if any readers use it, you owe me $699.00! I will be waiting for the check!
Many of the cookie cutter ISPs cannot keep their own mail server running reliably. I have many customers with DSL or cable broadband at work and at home. Most of these customers have a linux box sitting there as a firewall/vpn/mail server, etc. A properly configured Linux box running postfix is WAY more reliable than most mom-n-pop ISPs seem to be. You can also actually figure out what's wrong if there are mailing problems, if you have control of the server.
It should be up to users to protect themselves, or it should be an OPT-IN value-added service provided by the ISP, even if it costs extra.
I pay for bandwidth, plain and simple. I want every port open for whatever use I so desire, with no blockage from the ISP period.
Some morons at certain ISPs recently decided to block all pings, period, on their broadband networks. I run a small computer consulting business, one of my specialties is ipsec-connected subnet-to-subnet VPNs for small businesses with dynamic IP broadband connections. The scripts that make all this work depend(ed) on being able to ping various places to determine if the internet was up, if the peer host was up, and if the tunnel was up.
Since someone didn't RTFM on stateful packet filtering, and figure out how to safely allow ping traffic while blocking DDOS attacks, all my scripts broke (well, among those home users using those certain ISPs that connected into the office). Who in the seven hells ever thought an ISP would block ping!!! I can see a popular website doing it, but an ISP?!? Across their entire network?!?!? Baka!
Anyway, I had to quickly rewrite the scripts to pull entire webpages down to test connectivity, and dump them into the bit bucket, instead of nice, tiny little ping packets. (Let's see 'em block http) Wastes bandwidth, and less elegant too! wheee!
Cookie-cutter broadband ISPs without the technical knowledge to properly configure their routers are NOT people who I want determining what ports/protocols I can and can't use. I pay for bandwidth. Leave my ports alone!
The only thing wrong with Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are the other players. I have played Ultima Online for years now. Most of the people you see in the forums are the hardcore fans, not casual gamers. Most of them are, indeed, maladjusted trollish wastes of breath, cat-assing their lives away, going into jittery, spit-flinging caniption(sp?) fits over the latest class nerf or PvP change.
I myself am a maladjusted, trollish waste of breath...but I don't spend my time going into paroxysms of infatile, futile outbursts on the boards about it....any more, anyway. I avoid gaming/dev boards like the plague that they are.
I generally side with the devs on issues like this. I read that guy's response, and based on some of the feces I have seen thrown at devs on the UO boards in the past, I can guarantee that my response would have been less coherent, less polite, and have had a great deal more expletives in it.
On the other hand, I would not have been stupid enough to take a job holding bees in my mouth in the first place. I have already lost any expectations of decent behavior from the vast majority of humankind, most especially those who huddle in darkened rooms in front of their multi-headed gaming systems, even as I myself do...
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You might want to check out Cygwin. It gives you a very Linuxy interface and toolset to your windows box. I have only tried it on w2k and xp, no idea if it'd work on anything earlier. You get a "real" bash shell, with most of the commonly used command line tools you are used to in Linux. You can also compile many (but not all) linux apps from source to run in Cygwin. It has a package manager with many precompiled progs. You can run X in it. I am pretty sure you can run an ssh daemon in it too.
I run a small computer consulting company, one thing I usually do is replace their linksys/dlink/netgear broadband router with a linux box. Although much smaller in scale that what you are talking about, I moved from redhat to debian for the exact same reasons you are talking about. Once RH moved to its frequent .0 releases with one-year updates, I knew I had to pick a different distro. Debian is fast, stable, and compact compared to red hat. The package system kicks major ass as well. I don't need support, the only problems I have ever run into were hardware related (or my own stoopid errors)... I will, however, say that dselect is one nasty mofo of a whatever it is... If I want a new package, I just search the debian site for it, and use apt-get. Like others have said, if the support is what you need, you will have to evaluate whether its cost-effective vs other major unix-y providers. If security updates is what you want, then there are several cheaper alternatives to red hat. Redhat needs to provide an alternative for those who don't want actual support, but do need long term updates for multiple years - otherwise, they will see their piece of the Linux pie shrink. That may be what they want, it may be a simple business decision on their part to make mo money. However, I know many, many people who are ditching red hat for the exact reason I did.
UO 2 (or, TGFKAUWOO)was the original successor to UO that EA cancelled after much hooha and to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of many. This is likely a rehash of that game.