I'll start this off by saying that everything works fairly well, now. 768 SDSL, FlowPoint Router, block of IPs.
It took quite a while to get to this point, though. After a lot of reading, I decided to go with Internet Connect. I heard about problems during installations, but mostly with ADSL, and it seemed that once things were up and running, they stayed up and running (so it has been).
A few weeks after signing my contract, I received an e-mail asking me to verify the details. They had everything right except the phone number, which was a work number at a completely different location, that I told them was for daytime contact only. I should have known then this wasn't going to be fun...
After this, I found out that my contact at the company had left when they moved their office location. More confusion, I finally got a new point of contact, but he was not technical. Not at all. I reverted to using the regular tech support/installation status people when I needed to find out what was going on.
When I was finally given an install date, I took the day off work, stayed home, and did not find out until the following week that there was a problem with the line. Or so they said.
Another install date, another day off work, same thing.
I tried to work my way up the tech support ladder, but to no avail. I got a different answer from everyone, and they were all wrong.
Enter Northpoint. They are a sort of go-between, doing the onsite install piece, and setting up the installation with the local telco (Bell Atlantic). I gave them a call, talked to a few people, and found out that Bell Atlantic hadn't done anything yet.
During the next few weeks, I talked to Northpoint a number of times, and everyone there was extremely helpful. The few times I tried calling Internet Connect, I got the same wrong answers to my questions, and no new information.
Since Northpoint doesn't send the router until the line is active, I had been checking line status every day so that I could get the router in and configured ASAP. On the day it went active, they had sent the router out overnight before I even asked. Again, very smooth on their end.
So they schedule their tech to come out, and I call Internet Connect again to inform them of this, since they have no idea what is going on. I ask for my block of IPs, which I had requested when I signed the contract. They had no idea what I was talking about.
So when the tech arrives (from Northpoint), the router gets installed, and it has to be configured for NAT. Simple enough. I've configured routers before, I can change it.
I get the block, configure it, and nothing. Hours on the phone with tech support. Nothing. Then it is discovered that the block of IPs is set to router to California. I'm in Virginia. All the while, the tech support people think I am either nuts or inept. But when that route was fixed... Suprise, suprise, it all worked. Guess it must have been my fault after all, huh guys?:)
If you are ready to deal with this sort of hassle, by all means get DSL. It is great when it finally works. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
I like the idea of certain log files that cannot be erased, so...
Upon installation of SDSL, I will be moving my webhosting services to my home. I have been playing with the idea of hooking up an old dot-matrix printer to print out certain log files, or lines from log files with keywords in them.
Am I hopelessly out of date with this idea? I have seen some mention of systems like this, and I think it will be a good complement to other security. The idea is that if I get a penetration, I will at least have an idea about *when* the initial intrusion was, and be able to work with that.
Anyone else with a similar system care to comment?
Okay, I think I understood the nutrient patch article earlier today. But B1 patches? Does it help them avoid refueling, or just replenish the supply of bombs?
While the X10 camera might save you some wiring, what do you plan on doing with the image? Legal issues aside, are you just planning on having it pointing out and feeding the signal to a TV? Or will there be a VCR in the loop?
I have worked with a bit of X10 equipment, but not the camera. For what it does, it looks like a good deal. What you hook up to it makes all the difference, though, and that might be more of a cost consideration.
I've got to admit, I haven't seen the movie. But I have seen everything else they have ever done, and I am glad they have been nominated. I don't know if they are computer geeks, but they are definitely geeks. Smart, probably not the most popular kids in school, strange sense of humor. They are way, way up there on my list of people I want to drink with sometime.
I finally saw Orgazmo last week... I need to track that down on DVD. If you haven't seen it, be sure to check it out.
And I thought I was the only one still stuck at 26400. I'm in bandwidth hell - 26400 at home, and my server colocated on a T3.
So the off topic question - what do people that rely heavily on the internet for income do in a situation like this? I know I'm not the only one that likes to live in the middle of nowhere, yet still be connected. Aside from a leased line or a satellite, I think I'm going to be stuck at this horrible speed for some time to come.
As far as graphics are concerned - I still use lynx frequently, and most of the pages I load are not graphics intensive.
One more offtopic bit - I've been reading usenet with tin on my server through supernews, because even the article headers take a prohibitive amount of time to transfer at this speed. Any better solutions out there?
Well, as any of us geeks know, this isn't really news. I'm sure we passed the billion mark a long, long time ago. Inktomi just wants the publicity, and some news service will probably pick this up, most likely CNN.
One thing of interest, though. If you look under the "Web server market share", Red Hat and mod_perl are apparently web servers now.
Re:The importance (or lack thereof) of uptime
on
Linux Kernel 2.2.14
·
· Score: 3
Uptime is just that: a measure of how much time has elapsed since the last reboot of the system. It does not measure any of the following things:
-Superiority of an operating system
-Ability to administer a computer
-Programing skill
-"Eliteness/coolness"
Let us take this point by point:
Superiority - You are correct. I've had Windows NT and even 95 boxes up for months at a time.
Administration ability - depends on the circumstances. I have a colocated web server that I have been working on quite heavily since I installed it, and I haven't been within 30 miles of it since it was turned on 50 days ago. Uptime is currently at 50 days.
Programming skill - has nothing to do with uptime
Eliteness/coolness - while not quite the same thing, I am very close to closing a business deal with someone that I have been trying to get to sign on with me for months. In the end, it was the uptime that mattered. Or, more specifically, the fact that the machine didn't flinch during a live load test (real content, real users, no simulations) with this person present. The uptime is like a victory -- you can point to it frequently, and then show someone your logs to prove that your machine can do what you say.
I'll skip the political and legal ramifications of this. They have already been talked to death. But, for the sake of argument, let us assume that this system is put into place, and that the satellite only sends out speed data, relying on the vehicle to check on and limit itself to the legal speed.
Can you imagine what would happen if someone hacked that satellite? Some April 1, somebody decides it would be really funny to set the speed limit on a residential road to 100, and the speed limit on a major highway to 10. That could really screw up your commute.
Or perhaps a work of industrial/economic espionage. Slow all traffic into a city, or perhaps just people going to a major event. Terrorism uses of technology like this are also quite limitless.
Then again, with some creative programming, I could cut my commute down to 5 minutes and make everyone else late...
I was stuck at work during the rollover, and the only real problem we had was a fax server thinking that it was in the year 1899. And the countdown screensaver we've had for more than two years finally crashed.
I use a number of Tulip cards, but I've had a hell of a time getting the things to stick on 100 instead of 10. Maybe it is just my 10/100 switch, but the Windows machine on my network is the only one that will consistently hold 100.
Has this problem been solved? I haven't checked in over a month, but last time I did I pulled down the latest driver, read the FAQs, recompiled, etc... I still can't get anything but 10 reliably, and when I do get 100, I get so many lost packets that anything more than a telnet or SSH session will die on me.
Interestingly enough, my laptop with a 10/100 3Com card comes up 100 every time. Although RH 6.1's netconfig dumps core each time I use it, it still brings the card up just fine.
Learning Perl by O'Reilly. Or you could make the mistake I did, and buy Programming Perl instead. Of course, the O'Reilly books are so clear, it helped me quite a bit.
I don't really have any programming background, just batch files and shell scripts. The best thing I have found to do is find a piece of code, play with it, and look up what you don't understand.
Guess I have to add yet another O'Reilly book to the collection...
I, for one, am waiting for the Doggy Genome Project to be completed. Gone will be the days when you don't know if you will end up with a biter, a scratcher, a leg-humper... I look forward to being able to open up GNU/CADD (computer aided doggy design) on my Linux box and designing the perfect pooch.
I want a great dane sized dog with huge floppy ears, the brains of Lassie, the speed of Santa's Little Helper, and stripes like a zebra. Or maybe polka dots.
Oh, and he needs to be potty trained. Who wants to walk a dog when you could be reloading/.?
First of all, thanks for all of the wonderful presents that you gave me last year. They were all appreciated, but I had a few problems:
1 - Every geek likes more RAM, but you brought me a SIMM instead of a DIMM. It wasn't much use to me, so I traded it for a six-pack and a pizza. Please don't bring me any memory this year.
2 - The CD full of screen savers was nice, but I don't run Windows 95. Maybe you should skip software this year, also.
3 - The copy of Windows 98 was broken. When I installed it, it kept crashing. I called Microsoft and they said this was perfectly normal. Steer clear of this company if you don't mind.
4 - I love video games as much as the next geek, but I had difficulty installing 'Postman III: Stamp This!' under Linux. See #2.
5 - The 56k modem didn't work. It said 'Winmodem' on the box, but I still feel like I lost.
6 - Do you have any idea how many promotional mouse pads I already have? I've taken to stuffing them into the walls to sound-proof my house.
Maybe this year you should pretend I am a normal person, and bring me some socks, or a membership in the beer of the month club, or a book (not computer related!), or a shoe polisher, or just a George Forman grill.
On a related note, the last time I looked into these, I noticed that most of them would only work in limited video modes - VGA, SVGA, XVGA, etc. A big limitation for someone that likes very high refresh rates and varying resolutions. Do the current offerings still have problems like this? I've been improvising, but it becomes more difficult as time passes and machines accumulate.
For what is is worth, my brother and I used to cheat at Duck Hunt by taping the game, then hooking up another monitor and playing the tape back until we found where we had shot. Using freeze frame, you could then play the game on the original monitor and hit everytime.
It has been a long time, but I seem to remember that when you shot, the screen would go black and the ducks would show up as white blocks. Anyone with a Nintendo, a VCR, and too much time on their hands could easily verify this...
The most wanted paintings look like some sort of landscape generator gone bad. Water in background. Mountains behind water (same angle on many of them). And the blaringly obvious 'large object on left coming in at 45 degree angle to ground'. And what painting would be complete without 'tree near right'.
Being forced to use Compaq servers at work (Novell and NT), I am glad that they are going to be upping the support a little bit. Back in 1998, I tried everything I could to get Linux to boot up on a few of our servers, but I could get no kernel to recognize the RAID arrays. Multiple posts to newsgroups and extensive web searches turned up absolutely nothing.
Some time later, I received an e-mail with a URL that had some information from Compaq on their support of Linux. It was still in the preliminary stages, everything was unsupported, but it was a start. I haven't checked back recently, but I'm glad to see they have finally seen the potential market.
In the interim, I have been forbidden from using Linux on any machine connected to the corporate network... Politics, politics. We are a big Sun shop (on the Unix side), and any mention of a free operating system seems to bring down the wrath of God at work. Although I have been running Linux on my desktop for months, and my laptop for the past month, any thought of actually putting it on a server has been lost for the time being.
I hope that this will add a bit of legitimacy to what I have been trying to do at work.
As an aside - I am stuck using Netscape for mail at work, and it identifies itself as running on Linux whenever I send out a message. I have checked everything I could think of, but I have not found out how to change this to make it look like I am sending from an NT box. I did a hex edit on the binary, and I am assuming that it uses a uname call to get the OS. Anyone have any ways to change this, short of running sendmail and an elaborate perl script to send via IMAP?
We are probably better off if I don't get any points for that... Just imagine: not only would we have people trying to get first post, but karma-seekers would also be posting First Correction!!! messages...
But to get back on topic, I'm glad this was here today. Although I use RedHat at home and at work, I've been debating what to put on the web server that I am in the process of building. I've still got that idea in my head that the BSD IP stack is better. After reading this, I am going to just go with my gut and put Linux on my web server, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. Without titanium, none of this stuff would work! Gee, thanks Mr. McLure!
Nice link. I was shocked to find something of mine in there. Glad I stopped using that alias a long, long, long time ago.
I'll start this off by saying that everything works fairly well, now. 768 SDSL, FlowPoint Router, block of IPs.
:)
It took quite a while to get to this point, though. After a lot of reading, I decided to go with Internet Connect. I heard about problems during installations, but mostly with ADSL, and it seemed that once things were up and running, they stayed up and running (so it has been).
A few weeks after signing my contract, I received an e-mail asking me to verify the details. They had everything right except the phone number, which was a work number at a completely different location, that I told them was for daytime contact only. I should have known then this wasn't going to be fun...
After this, I found out that my contact at the company had left when they moved their office location. More confusion, I finally got a new point of contact, but he was not technical. Not at all. I reverted to using the regular tech support/installation status people when I needed to find out what was going on.
When I was finally given an install date, I took the day off work, stayed home, and did not find out until the following week that there was a problem with the line. Or so they said.
Another install date, another day off work, same thing.
I tried to work my way up the tech support ladder, but to no avail. I got a different answer from everyone, and they were all wrong.
Enter Northpoint. They are a sort of go-between, doing the onsite install piece, and setting up the installation with the local telco (Bell Atlantic). I gave them a call, talked to a few people, and found out that Bell Atlantic hadn't done anything yet.
During the next few weeks, I talked to Northpoint a number of times, and everyone there was extremely helpful. The few times I tried calling Internet Connect, I got the same wrong answers to my questions, and no new information.
Since Northpoint doesn't send the router until the line is active, I had been checking line status every day so that I could get the router in and configured ASAP. On the day it went active, they had sent the router out overnight before I even asked. Again, very smooth on their end.
So they schedule their tech to come out, and I call Internet Connect again to inform them of this, since they have no idea what is going on. I ask for my block of IPs, which I had requested when I signed the contract. They had no idea what I was talking about.
So when the tech arrives (from Northpoint), the router gets installed, and it has to be configured for NAT. Simple enough. I've configured routers before, I can change it.
I get the block, configure it, and nothing. Hours on the phone with tech support. Nothing. Then it is discovered that the block of IPs is set to router to California. I'm in Virginia. All the while, the tech support people think I am either nuts or inept. But when that route was fixed... Suprise, suprise, it all worked. Guess it must have been my fault after all, huh guys?
If you are ready to deal with this sort of hassle, by all means get DSL. It is great when it finally works. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
I like the idea of certain log files that cannot be erased, so...
Upon installation of SDSL, I will be moving my webhosting services to my home. I have been playing with the idea of hooking up an old dot-matrix printer to print out certain log files, or lines from log files with keywords in them.
Am I hopelessly out of date with this idea? I have seen some mention of systems like this, and I think it will be a good complement to other security. The idea is that if I get a penetration, I will at least have an idea about *when* the initial intrusion was, and be able to work with that.
Anyone else with a similar system care to comment?
Dude?
What have you been smoking?
Can I have some?
Okay, I think I understood the nutrient patch article earlier today. But B1 patches? Does it help them avoid refueling, or just replenish the supply of bombs?
While the X10 camera might save you some wiring, what do you plan on doing with the image? Legal issues aside, are you just planning on having it pointing out and feeding the signal to a TV? Or will there be a VCR in the loop?
I have worked with a bit of X10 equipment, but not the camera. For what it does, it looks like a good deal. What you hook up to it makes all the difference, though, and that might be more of a cost consideration.
I've got to admit, I haven't seen the movie. But I have seen everything else they have ever done, and I am glad they have been nominated. I don't know if they are computer geeks, but they are definitely geeks. Smart, probably not the most popular kids in school, strange sense of humor. They are way, way up there on my list of people I want to drink with sometime.
I finally saw Orgazmo last week... I need to track that down on DVD. If you haven't seen it, be sure to check it out.
And I thought I was the only one still stuck at 26400. I'm in bandwidth hell - 26400 at home, and my server colocated on a T3.
So the off topic question - what do people that rely heavily on the internet for income do in a situation like this? I know I'm not the only one that likes to live in the middle of nowhere, yet still be connected. Aside from a leased line or a satellite, I think I'm going to be stuck at this horrible speed for some time to come.
As far as graphics are concerned - I still use lynx frequently, and most of the pages I load are not graphics intensive.
One more offtopic bit - I've been reading usenet with tin on my server through supernews, because even the article headers take a prohibitive amount of time to transfer at this speed. Any better solutions out there?
Well, as any of us geeks know, this isn't really news. I'm sure we passed the billion mark a long, long time ago. Inktomi just wants the publicity, and some news service will probably pick this up, most likely CNN.
One thing of interest, though. If you look under the "Web server market share", Red Hat and mod_perl are apparently web servers now.
-Superiority of an operating system
-Ability to administer a computer
-Programing skill
-"Eliteness/coolness"
Let us take this point by point:
Superiority - You are correct. I've had Windows NT and even 95 boxes up for months at a time.
Administration ability - depends on the circumstances. I have a colocated web server that I have been working on quite heavily since I installed it, and I haven't been within 30 miles of it since it was turned on 50 days ago. Uptime is currently at 50 days.
Programming skill - has nothing to do with uptime
Eliteness/coolness - while not quite the same thing, I am very close to closing a business deal with someone that I have been trying to get to sign on with me for months. In the end, it was the uptime that mattered. Or, more specifically, the fact that the machine didn't flinch during a live load test (real content, real users, no simulations) with this person present. The uptime is like a victory -- you can point to it frequently, and then show someone your logs to prove that your machine can do what you say.
Uptime == bragging rights in some circumstances.
I'll skip the political and legal ramifications of this. They have already been talked to death. But, for the sake of argument, let us assume that this system is put into place, and that the satellite only sends out speed data, relying on the vehicle to check on and limit itself to the legal speed.
Can you imagine what would happen if someone hacked that satellite? Some April 1, somebody decides it would be really funny to set the speed limit on a residential road to 100, and the speed limit on a major highway to 10. That could really screw up your commute.
Or perhaps a work of industrial/economic espionage. Slow all traffic into a city, or perhaps just people going to a major event. Terrorism uses of technology like this are also quite limitless.
Then again, with some creative programming, I could cut my commute down to 5 minutes and make everyone else late...
Last login: Wed Dec 31 1969 19:00:00 -0500
Unfortunately, you can't fool uptime:
12:32pm up 46 days, 21:03, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
I was stuck at work during the rollover, and the only real problem we had was a fax server thinking that it was in the year 1899. And the countdown screensaver we've had for more than two years finally crashed.
And now, thanks to Mr. Lau, the mirror on my site is back up here .
The mirroring script had some problems, and I've removed the mirror instead of leaving it wrong/incomplete. Sorry for the confusion.
I've had bad luck with the original and the mirror that was posted, so here is a working mirror.
I use a number of Tulip cards, but I've had a hell of a time getting the things to stick on 100 instead of 10. Maybe it is just my 10/100 switch, but the Windows machine on my network is the only one that will consistently hold 100.
Has this problem been solved? I haven't checked in over a month, but last time I did I pulled down the latest driver, read the FAQs, recompiled, etc... I still can't get anything but 10 reliably, and when I do get 100, I get so many lost packets that anything more than a telnet or SSH session will die on me.
Interestingly enough, my laptop with a 10/100 3Com card comes up 100 every time. Although RH 6.1's netconfig dumps core each time I use it, it still brings the card up just fine.
Learning Perl by O'Reilly. Or you could make the mistake I did, and buy Programming Perl instead. Of course, the O'Reilly books are so clear, it helped me quite a bit.
I don't really have any programming background, just batch files and shell scripts. The best thing I have found to do is find a piece of code, play with it, and look up what you don't understand.
Guess I have to add yet another O'Reilly book to the collection...
I, for one, am waiting for the Doggy Genome Project to be completed. Gone will be the days when you don't know if you will end up with a biter, a scratcher, a leg-humper... I look forward to being able to open up GNU/CADD (computer aided doggy design) on my Linux box and designing the perfect pooch.
/.?
I want a great dane sized dog with huge floppy ears, the brains of Lassie, the speed of Santa's Little Helper, and stripes like a zebra. Or maybe polka dots.
Oh, and he needs to be potty trained. Who wants to walk a dog when you could be reloading
Dear Santa,
First of all, thanks for all of the wonderful presents that you gave me last year. They were all appreciated, but I had a few problems:
1 - Every geek likes more RAM, but you brought me a SIMM instead of a DIMM. It wasn't much use to me, so I traded it for a six-pack and a pizza. Please don't bring me any memory this year.
2 - The CD full of screen savers was nice, but I don't run Windows 95. Maybe you should skip software this year, also.
3 - The copy of Windows 98 was broken. When I installed it, it kept crashing. I called Microsoft and they said this was perfectly normal. Steer clear of this company if you don't mind.
4 - I love video games as much as the next geek, but I had difficulty installing 'Postman III: Stamp This!' under Linux. See #2.
5 - The 56k modem didn't work. It said 'Winmodem' on the box, but I still feel like I lost.
6 - Do you have any idea how many promotional mouse pads I already have? I've taken to stuffing them into the walls to sound-proof my house.
Maybe this year you should pretend I am a normal person, and bring me some socks, or a membership in the beer of the month club, or a book (not computer related!), or a shoe polisher, or just a George Forman grill.
Merry Christmas, and a Happy Y2K.
On a related note, the last time I looked into these, I noticed that most of them would only work in limited video modes - VGA, SVGA, XVGA, etc. A big limitation for someone that likes very high refresh rates and varying resolutions. Do the current offerings still have problems like this? I've been improvising, but it becomes more difficult as time passes and machines accumulate.
For what is is worth, my brother and I used to cheat at Duck Hunt by taping the game, then hooking up another monitor and playing the tape back until we found where we had shot. Using freeze frame, you could then play the game on the original monitor and hit everytime.
It has been a long time, but I seem to remember that when you shot, the screen would go black and the ducks would show up as white blocks. Anyone with a Nintendo, a VCR, and too much time on their hands could easily verify this...
The most wanted paintings look like some sort of landscape generator gone bad. Water in background. Mountains behind water (same angle on many of them). And the blaringly obvious 'large object on left coming in at 45 degree angle to ground'. And what painting would be complete without 'tree near right'.
Insert assorted mammals, and you have a winner!
Being forced to use Compaq servers at work (Novell and NT), I am glad that they are going to be upping the support a little bit. Back in 1998, I tried everything I could to get Linux to boot up on a few of our servers, but I could get no kernel to recognize the RAID arrays. Multiple posts to newsgroups and extensive web searches turned up absolutely nothing.
Some time later, I received an e-mail with a URL that had some information from Compaq on their support of Linux. It was still in the preliminary stages, everything was unsupported, but it was a start. I haven't checked back recently, but I'm glad to see they have finally seen the potential market.
In the interim, I have been forbidden from using Linux on any machine connected to the corporate network... Politics, politics. We are a big Sun shop (on the Unix side), and any mention of a free operating system seems to bring down the wrath of God at work. Although I have been running Linux on my desktop for months, and my laptop for the past month, any thought of actually putting it on a server has been lost for the time being.
I hope that this will add a bit of legitimacy to what I have been trying to do at work.
As an aside - I am stuck using Netscape for mail at work, and it identifies itself as running on Linux whenever I send out a message. I have checked everything I could think of, but I have not found out how to change this to make it look like I am sending from an NT box. I did a hex edit on the binary, and I am assuming that it uses a uname call to get the OS. Anyone have any ways to change this, short of running sendmail and an elaborate perl script to send via IMAP?
But to get back on topic, I'm glad this was here today. Although I use RedHat at home and at work, I've been debating what to put on the web server that I am in the process of building. I've still got that idea in my head that the BSD IP stack is better. After reading this, I am going to just go with my gut and put Linux on my web server, too.