Network Stumbler

I find NetStumbler from www.netstumbler.com. This is an amazing tool for trobleshooting problems in WLAN. It can be used to find locations with poor coverage by reading the S/N ratio and whether other networks nearby might cause interference to your own WLAN. On wireless bridge application, it can help to align the directional antenna in order to get the maximum signal strength.

客機上發短訊

在希臘空難事件後 ，一男子聲稱收到機上一名乘客的手機短訊，指就快凍死。最後該名男子被控以散播虛假資料及引起公眾騷亂罪名。

其實這宗大話很容易被識破，流動電話網絡採用的板面天線向地面傾側，主要集中覆蓋地面。客機在逾萬呎高空飛行，根本沒可能接收到流動電話網絡訊號。

Virtual Server via NAT

My wirless broadband router, model Planet BLW-04EM can support Virtual Server. That is to say, the WAN interface can pass Internet traffic to an internal host 192.168.1.x as if the services residing in 192.168.1.X are on the Internet. I have started IIS and access the WAN real IP address can redirect to my default web page through the internal network. That is to say, the Virtual Server is up and working satisfcatorily. However, if I try to access http:// followed by the WAN IP address from other hosts on the Internet, nothing can be seen. I believe my ISP has barred inbound traffic to port 80 of client IP addresses. Just wonder what good it is to ban port 80 inbound traffic ....

Running Windows and Linux on PSP

Great news to PSP lovers. By using Bochs x86 emulator, Windows and Linux can be ported to PSP. The Bochs packages now include FreeDOS, Linux, DLX Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Windows.

I don't quite understand how these things work !

tcping

Tcping is an alternative to icmp ping as nowadays most network administrators have banned inbound icmp traffic to their Internet hosts for security reason. Tcping does not use icmp, rather it uses tcp sync, ack and nop (no operation) to complete the two way connection sequences. It could be used to determine the round trip time to a host and also testing whether a host is live or not.

Tcping requires a port number in addition to the destination IP address when initiating the command.

Tcping in Linux can be found everywhere on the Internet. It is difficult to find Windows-based tcping. Fortunately, I've got one.

Reborn card

Game centers, Internet cafes and universities all have reborn cards installed in PCs.

Reborn-card will wipe out any installed programs by users at bootup and return to the Day 1 installed configuration. Good for preventing viruses and malicious codes and to ensure all the default configurations are not changed in any way.

For universities, people think that there might be a need to set aside a special partition to store user data where the data will remain intact upon bootup. Hey....man, I rather think that with the emergence of USB memory finger at extremely low cost, it is redundant to consider such a common partition.

USB DECT VoIP Phone

Linksys Model CIT200 is really a fantastic VoIP DECT phone. The phone itself is running skype VoIP and the base unit is connected back to a PC via USB for hooking up to the Internet. The colour display defintely attracts a great deal of attention.

It seems that PSTN DECT phones are being phased out now.

This phone is not available in Hong Kong yet. We may have to wait for several months for this product to come to our place.

Affordable 10GB Network Storage Service

I've got an offer of 10GB network ftp storage from Visicom Media at US$5.95 per month. The login process and file transfer are enhanced with encryption for security reason.

I think not only personal users need the backup storage, cooporate users also need the backup service to protect against the danger of fire in offices. Thought it is affordable to me, I very much hope HK ISP can provide this kind of service. After all, sending 100 MB of encrypted data to an US storage server consume considerable time due to limitation in international bandwidth of my ISP.

Wooo.. finally, the day has come for service providers to roll-out affordable network storage service. Many people have dream about this for a long time.

new gTLDs

The following seven additional gTLDs have been approved by ICANN in November 2000 and are now open for registration:

.aero - for the air transport industry
.biz - for business use, an alternative to .com
.coop - for cooperatives
.info - for informational sites, but unrestricted
.name - for individuals
.museum - of course for museum
.pro - for professionals

The ".name" and ".pro" domains sound not attractive to me. I would prefer to have my personal domain names ending with ".com" or ".idv.hk" or just ".hk".

cygwin

cygwin

Top 10 Most Wanted Offenders

Dshield.org has published the most wanted 10 offenders which are engaged in cracking activities.



The IP address 60.18.168.25 is logged in 1632859 lines of firewall logs/reports submitted by different parties and it is estimated that up to 223286 hosts have been targetted for attack. This IP address 60.18.168.25 is originating from mainland China. Fighting back initiative has been launched by Dshield to ask the corresponding ISP or service provider to take appropriate actions.

chroot environment for name daemon

In Fedora Core series, the DNS daemon "named" is run in a chroot environment. The default directory path is changed to "/var/named/chroot/var/named" instead of "/var/named".

The idea behind chroot is to tighten security. The service is also run by a non-root user. In a chroot jail, the process is unable to access any files outside the jail. This process prevents malicious code to start in the even of buffer overflow.

Congratulations to Redhat Fedora Core team for successfully improving security of DNS service.

IIS bundled with SMTP functionality

Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) is the web sever for Windows platform. However, it is a surprise to know that by default, there is a SMTP server working side by side when IIS is installed. The redundant SMTP server might give rise to security attacks. For those network administrators that are aware of this issue, they have stopped the SMTP from auto-start in the network administration tools.

The reality is that still Many IIS stations which act as web servers still have the useless SMTP daemon not yet removed.

Goodbye to Longhorn

Wooo.. at last, Microsoft finally decided to drop the official name "Longhorn" for the next release of Windows. The new name is "Vista". Frankly, Longhorn is an uninspiring name. Vista is a perfect name indicating the new OS will have a distant view or prospect. However, Vista has been registered by a software company. It is interesting to see how Microsoft could settle the legal issue of stealing other people's registered names.

Take a look at the poorly designed Longhorn logo and compare it with new Windows Vista logo. Vista logo is simple, cystal clear and elegant in design.



Haha.....Microsoft has taken a wise move to abandon Longhorn as the official brand name.

Firefox pdf2html plugin

I find the Firefox pdf2html plugin from rabotat.org. This is one of the most useful plugins I have found for use in Firefox. With this plugin installed, whenever I click to access a pdf file, there are three options offered, (i) save the pdf file, (ii) view the pdf file in a new window or (3) view the html file in a new window.

The reason I want to use this plugin is to copy and paste contents from pdf files to plain text for transfer to other file formats.

New functions in PRTG

PRTG gets new functions now to monitor bandwidth usage by different services such as HTTP, FTP and SMTP. This requires the aid of a packet sniffer to monitor the traffic carried over different port numbers. With this spendid idea, PRTG has more functions than traditional MRTG.

WEEEman

WEEE is the short name of waste electrical electronic equipment.

Presumably, many people in London have seen WEEEman sculpture placed near London Bridge. The WEEE man is built from the amount of electrical and electronic waste the average British person creates in their lifetime. On average, a British citizen produces 3.3 tonnes of WEEE in his/her lifetime. Most countries are running out of landfill to bury WEEE.

One problem identified is that people change their mobile phones frequently in pursuit of updated versions or trendier styling. An average person change his/her mobile phone just 11 months but the phone can have a usable lifetime of 7 years.

Time to considerate the impact to our environment when you want to buy new electrical or electronic products.

Queen of Rock N Roll

Quite some time ago, I mentioned in my blog that I picked "Ronnie James Dio" as the King of Rock N Roll. Now it's time for me to tell who is my Queen of Rock N Roll. Joan Jett is my idol for a long time. I love her voice, the way she plays her guitar and the rock beats in every song she sings. Indeed, she has been my Queen of Rock N Roll for a long time.

These are the great rock songs I chant in this month :

"Long live rock and roll - Ronnie James Dio

For those about to rock, we salute you - AC DC

I love Rock N Roll - Joan Jett and the Blackheart

I haste myself for loving you - Joan Jett and the Blackheart

Highway Star - Deep Purple"

Delete NTFS Partition

Somebody asked me how to delete Win2k or Windows XP NTFS partition. The fact is DOS FDISK command seems not able to detect NTFS partition. I recall that there is a tool "delpart.exe" which could be found in NT Resource Kit. Just wonder why Microsoft does not give Win2k and XP users this useful tool which has been available for quite a long time ???

Support for IPv6

I am a keen supporter for IPv6. Sadly, from time to time, I still hear people saying that there is no need to go for IPv6. These people include telecommunications experts in the ITU.

In the past decade, we all witness how the Internet change the way we do business and the way we live. Internet has bceome an important part of our human civilization. What we need now is a robust, reliable and efficient information foundation. Think it this way, the foundation of a building (brick and steel) determines how high a building can be built. The information foundation (networks) will determine how far our future civilization can reach. If we do not build a good information foundation now, our next generation will defintely suffer.

I notice this slogan from Green Peace in promoting environmental protection:

"只顧現在，那有將來。"

The slogan could equally be used to promote the implementation of IPv6.