An interesting perspective on trusted computing:

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2007/09/25/who-chooses-whom-you-trust/trackback/

According to this video, Windows reserves 20% of your bandwidth for Windows Updates. This is how to reclaim that bandwidth by modifying the local computer policy.

This might be something worth looking at implementing via a group policy on your Windows corporate domain.

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2007/09/19/windows-bandwidth-thief/trackback/

An old computer these days is no longer a completely useless system. In fact, even though I might upgrade my main computer every couple of years, I usually take ten to fifteen years before I completely remove it from my home network and send it to that great LAN in the sky!

Here are ten twelve uses that I have discovered for that more “experienced” computer system!

And once you have read through the article and decided which exciting project you want to do, make sure you let us know by voting in the poll!

Read the rest of the story…

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2007/09/17/put-that-old-computer-to-good-use/trackback/

This is a great starter video for your next PowerPoint training session:

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2007/09/11/powerpoint-mistakes/trackback/

If you have ever done a trace route on where information goes when it travels over the Internet to your computer, it is actually pretty staggering to see how far it goes. It is pretty funny sometimes to see an e-mail travels half way around the world and back just to get to your neighbor!

I got thinking about this and an idea came to mind that could change how we look at file sharing.

How It’s Done Now

Let’s say, for example, I want to share a 600 Mb ISO file with my neighbor. There are several different ways of doing this but let’s say that the easiest way to do this would be to transfer the file via a peer to peer program.

This would cost both of us about 600 MB of bandwidth that we would have to pay each of our Internet provider’s for.

WiFi Transfer

Now, my neighbor gets smart when he realizes that both of us have WiFi networks available to our systems. So we connect our two WiFi networks and decide to transfer the file over our WiFi networks.

We’ve now transfered the file between the two of us and it didn’t use any of our Internet bandwidth. In fact, we were able to transfer that file much faster because we were not limited by the upload speed of our Internet connections (Upload speeds are usually less that download speeds.).

WiFi Hops

Now, let’s say that I want to get a file from a second neighbor. But, he is unfortunately outside the range of my WiFi signal. But, my first neighbor, who is located between us, is in range of both of our WiFi signals. He connect to both of our WiFi networks and acts like a relay connection between our two networks.

So, we have now transfered a file using WiFi between two systems that are outside of each other’s WiFi signal range.

Spreading the Quilt

Theoretically, the more people we connect together with this WiFi quilt, the more access we have to information and data.

Each one of these systems would have access to information on each of the other systems, allowing for data to be shared freely without the need or restrictions of their Internet connections.

Stitching Together the Quilt

Just like a quilt is made up of separate pieces of cloth, each metro WiFi network will be limited to the range of its WiFi area. This is where we use the Internet to make data available to each of the metro areas.

Whenever a system needs to go outside of its metro area to access information via the Internet, it can maintain a cache of the information so that it now becomes available to the rest of the metro area.

Concerns and Issues

This idea is not without its problems. For example, I do not think I would give just anyone unfettered access to my home computer or network. Rather, I would probably want to segment my network so that only a certain computer works on the shared.

Another problem is coverage. In order for this idea to work well, there needs to be a relatively large percentage of area covered to see a benefit. But, this might be one of those things where you do not see a lot of benefit at the beginning of the project but, as time goes on, it becomes more and more feasible and useful

The other issue is with this project is just how do people find the information that they want and how does the system go about determining which is the best route to access the information?

Discussion

Even though there are some definite challenges with this idea, I still think that it would be a really interesting thing to try and set up. It could even include some contributions from things like the OpenWRT project, DIY WISP, and cantennas.

But, I’ve talked enough.  Time for you to add your two cents.  What do you think of this type of an idea?

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2007/09/10/the-wifi-quilt-project/trackback/

I saw this today and I just had to share it:

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2007/09/07/simpsons-star-wars-hilarious/trackback/

It is always important to know what is going on in your network. And, from time to time, you should perform a simple audit of your network just to determine what is exactly happening.

This is something that I do on a regular basis using an inexpensive network auditor that I built.  (Actually, all I did was install a custom Linux distribution designed for security.)

What You Need

Here are all the tools that you need

• An old laptop (if you want it to be portable) or desktop
• BackTrack Linux Distribution

It’s pretty easy to find a computer that will work and BackTrack is available for free as an ISO.  This is something that probably everyone could do with what they have available.

Build The Analyzer

The steps involved to build the analyzer are pretty simple.

1. Download the ISO.
2. Burn the ISO to CD.
3. Boot the computer from the CD.
4. Log into the BackTrack system with username root and password toor.
5. Create partitions on the hard drive (Be aware that this will destroy the hard drive so make sure that the drive has no needed data.) using fdisk.
6. Write the file system using mke2fs.
7. Mount the devices using mount.
8. Run the GUI installer (K → System → Backtrack Installer).
9. Click Install.
10. Wait for the installation to complete (There is a long pause at about 80% so please be patient.).
11. Remove the CD and reboot to the new system.

If you are looking for a more complete step by step document, there is one available.

Explore

There is a lot to discover in BackTracks.  Dig through the system and see what you can find, both on the system and in your network.

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2007/09/07/build-an-inexpensive-network-security-auditor/trackback/

I can’t tell you how sick I am of people asking me the same question over and over. And, typically, this is a question that I probably shouldn’t really be having to deal with in the first place. Do some of these questions sound familiar to you?

“How do I make a template in Word?”

“Where are my rows in Excel and why does it skip row numbers?”

“Can I change all of the PowerPoint slides at once?”

To be honest, I am not paid to answer these questions. These are basic function questions that have nothing to do with how the systems work or providing the people with the tools that are necessary to do their jobs. It is not a part of IT’s mandate to train or tech people on how to use the tools for their job.

But, we work in a small company and this is not uncommon to see. In fact, in all of my IT jobs, this exact thing happens. So, how to you prevent yourself from becoming overwhelmed by the avalanche of non-technical questions?

The solution that I have discovered which any shop can implement is application champions. What is an application champion? An application champion is someone whom is considered to be more highly skilled at using a specific computer application or program than the average user. They are not a member of the IT department but are skilled in the normal use of a specific application. They need not be technical in the IT sense.

There are three steps that you need to take when setting up your company to use application champions:

1. Identify Application Champions. In the company that I now work for, I sent out an e-mail to everyone in each office with a list of all the regular applications that are used. I then asked them to nominate a person for each application as being an advanced user of this application. Make sure that you spell out clearly that they can not nominate members of the IT department. Make sure that you do not use the same person for all of the champion positions so that if one person leaves the company, then you will not lose all of your extra talent!
2. Enable Application Champions. Get buy in from your new champions and then get them trained! Make sure that they are able to answer most of the questions that they will be inundated with and provide them with the resources that they need to take on this responsibility.
3. Use Application Champions. Make a big production about introducing the application champions once they are ready to be put to use. Send out a list of all the application champions and the applications that they are “certified” to help with. Encourage users to work with these people and help each other out.

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2007/09/06/reduce-your-it-workload/trackback/

We are presently working on a project to convert all of our servers to virtual servers. There seems to be a number of players in this arena and I wanted to just present them for all to see.

Each of these come with an open source/freeware version that can be used indefinitely for as long as you want.

VMWare

Obviously, the big boy in the field. These guys have recently gone public with their stock and have made a big splash. They have several different products but their server virtualization product is what interests me. Here is what their website has to say:

Begin enjoying the benefits of server virtualization with the free VMware Server. VMware Server installs on any existing server hardware and partitions a physical server into multiple virtual machines by abstracting processor, memory, storage and networking resources, giving you greater hardware utilization and flexibility. Streamline software development and testing and simplify server provisioning as you utilize the ability to “build once, deploy many times.”

• Provision a new server in minutes without investing in new hardware
• Simplify IT testing of patches, new applications and operating systems
• The benefits of server virtualization can be realized by a company of any size

• Website: http://www.vmware.com
• Download: http://www.vmware.com/download/

XenSource

• Packaged Xen Virtualization
• Blazing Fast Performance for Windows and Linux Guests
• XenCenter Single Server Management
• Seamless Upgrade Path to XenServer™ and XenEnterprise™
• Free

XenExpress v4 is a free, production-ready virtualization platform that enables everyone to quickly get started with Xen virtualization. Easily installed and seamlessly upgradeable, XenExpress is your on-ramp to Xen and the XenSource v4 product family.

XenExpress v4 offers all of the base performance, tools, and easy to use features of XenEnterprise v4 and is built to run on the broadest range of standard server hardware. It supports dual socket servers with up to 4GB of RAM and can host up to four virtual machines on each system.

XenExpress v4 can be quickly upgraded to the richer capabilities of XenServer or XenEnterprise by the simple addition of a license key, with no need to reinstall software or convert guests.

• Website: http://www.xensource.com
• Download: http://www.xensource.com/Pages/XenExpress.aspx

Virtual Iron

Virtual Iron provides enterprise-class software for server virtualization & virtual infrastructure management. The product offers comparable capabilities and performance to established proprietary offerings – for just a fraction of the cost.

By taking full advantage of industry standards and open source economics, Virtual Iron dramatically reduces the cost and complexity of virtualization and for the first time, makes production-ready capabilities available to the mainstream market.

A Comprehensive Virtualization Solution

Virtual Iron enables server partitioning for single and multi-server configuration, no downtime virtual server migration (LiveMigrate™), advanced management capabilities for rapid provisioning, high availability and disaster recovery (LiveRecovery™) and capacity management (LiveCapacity™). With these advanced capabilities, users can:

• Virtualize enterprise-class workloads running on unmodified Windows and Linux operating systems.
• Improve the utilization of current systems and reduce power, space and cooling issues through server consolidation.
• Quickly set up development, test and production environments.
• Recover from failures quickly, reliably and cost-efficiently.
• Match resource capacity to workload demands automatically.
• Reduce human labor and errors via policy-based automation.

• Website: http://www.virtualiron.com/
• Download: http://www.virtualiron.com/products/download_single_server.cfm

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2007/09/05/virtual-server-options/trackback/

A little perspective is a good thing.

Trackback link - http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com/2007/09/04/stop-the-world-i-wanna-get-off/trackback/