Diary of a Network Geek

No, that’s not candy.

Though, I have to admit, sometimes the industry treats them like candy!
No, I’m talking about technical certifications, which are, I think, the bane of the IT industry now.  Folks over at TechRepublic are talking about tech certs and their relative value.  Personally, I don’t think they are that valuable any more.  Oh, back in the day, I think they were and, to a degree, they solve certain problems for hiring managers, but, I don’t think they matter as much any more.  Of course, maybe that has something to do with where I am in the industry and job market, too.  I am, frighteningly enough, a seasoned professional.  So, my work history and experience count for a lot more than the handful of certifications I have.  (For the record, I’ve been Novell certified since 1994 and Linux certified since 2003.)
As far as I’m concerned, the only thing my certs are good for any more are getting past a Human Resources person acting as a firewall to the hiring manager.  Usually, if I’ve done all my homework like I should before even applying for a job, once I get to the hiring manager, I’m pretty much in.  And, honestly, they don’t normally care about my certs.  They care about my ability to execute.

So, what do you think?  Are professional certifications like this worth the paper they’re printed on any more?

But, slow is fast.

I’m not sure where I heard that first, but boy is it true.
I’ve never served in the military, but I used to hang out with a lot of guys who did and, frankly, were pretty intense about it, when I was younger.  And, yes, I do love me some action movies with big guns blazing, so there’s no telling where I picked up that little bit of military wisdom.  I tend to associate it with BUD/S training, which is better known to the general public as the SEAL program.  In essence, the idea is this; the faster you try to rush something along, the more mistakes you make and the longer it takes to actually achieve your goal.  But, it also has some other connotations.  The one that I forgot to take to heart this past week was to not let circumstances rush me into doing a sloppy job.

This past week I was supposed to get a new server installed and configured for a sister company.  It’s a startup, really, so there’s not an existing network, which means I’m basically setting everything up from scratch.  Now, in some ways, this makes things easier.  I don’t have to worry about conflicts as much, for instance.  I mean, however I configure the first equipment will determine the entire network configuration.  Whatever naming conventions I set will be carried forward.  I’m working with a blank slate.
But, that blank slate has its disadvantages, too.  As an example, there is NO infrastructure in place at all.  So, not only do I have to setup the server, but also the switches, the firewall, and even the rack and UPS that will hold it all!  Luckily, I didn’t have to run the actual cable, but, pretty much everything else will be something I install myself.  Not that it’s all bad to do it myself, either, because I don’t have to worry about someone else doing it the wrong way or undoing something I’ve already done.  But, it does all take time.

Again, I’ve done this before.  Not only have I been a “department of one”, as it were, but I’ve setup networks from scratch for years.  I’ve been doing this since 1992, so, for the past 18 years, I’ve networked all kinds of crazy things together.  And, some of that was back in the old days before Windows clients and GUI interfaces made it all work together right out of the box!  Still, I forget things sometimes.
I forget that I should get help racking servers, for instance.  Getting the weight up into the rack isn’t so difficult, but doing that and getting those damn little pins into the recessed slots on the rails at the same time can prove challenging.  I should know that.  But, this week, giving into the pressures from end-users at a startup, I tried to rush things.  What ended up happening was me losing my grip on a server and twisting a rail all out of shape.  Luckily, I never throw out spares and I had another set of rails that I could use as a replacement.  And, the second time around, I was smart enough to get help to rack that server.  And the APC SMART-UPS 5000VA UPS that weighs in at about 130 pounds and has sharp edges.  With that help, nothing else got out of hand and I didn’t have to replace any more rails.
Of course, when I went to set everything up, it turned out to have the wrong power adapters to plug my servers into.  Why?  Because I was in a hurry and didn’t double-check the specs and trusted that someone else would do their job right.  So, now, @Dellcares on Twitter, who heard my rage at having the wrong UPS, is helping me get things straight.

Did I get the server installed?  Well, yes, I plugged directly into the wall long enough to setup and configure the server to meet my deadline for next week, but, I struggled with one of my most basic character defects first; sometimes, I just need to ask for help.
Of course, I also lost sight of one of the most basic principles of IT, which seems so counter-intuitive in such a fast-paced industry:
Fast is slow; Slow is fast!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Forewarned, forearmed; being prepared is half the victory."
   --Miguel de Cervantes

A pretty bold statement, isn’t it?

Well, I’m not going to tell you how to build the “ultimate home network”, but, rather, suggest some things that you may want to consider to build your own, personal, “ultimate” home network.  Everyone needs something different from a home or small office network.  Some of us have side jobs that require a fair amount of data transfer or storage, like, for instance photographers.  For some of us in the IT business, having a home “test” network is almost assumed, though, perhaps not as much as it used to be in the boom days of the Internet.
I’ve been thinking about it this past week because my old BorderManager firewall finally has died.  I’m using a backup firewall at the moment, which is “good enough”, but I’ll be taking this crash as an opportunity to start rebuilding my home network from the ground up, using mainly free, open source software, starting with a Linux firewall.  In fact, I have three that I’ll be looking at and, yes, writing reviews of, in the coming weeks.  This will be an on going series of posts, too, as I evaluate software and, piece by piece, integrate it into my working, live network.  My needs will probably be different than yours, but all home networks will have some similar items and considerations.
So, what should go into your own personal, “ultimate” home network?  It depends on what you do, but here are some ideas.

The Actual Network.
Obviously, the first thing is setting up the actual, physical network.  And, in this case, by physical, I’m including wifi routers and the like.  Back in the old days, having a home network meant running cable.  That’s not as true as it used to be, but don’t just go wireless without considering at least some wired connections.  If you’re concerned about security, for instance, especially, regarding financial transactions, nothing is as secure as a wired connection.  Keep in mind, though, that at some point you still connect to an outside source to get to your bank.  Also, since most laptops have built-in wifi and have gotten so inexpensive, if you don’t already have one, consider getting a laptop.  For most people, laptops can inexpensively do everything we need to do and have the advantage of portability, so if you need to leave, say in case of a hurricane, you can take at least part of your home network with you.
There are a wide range of network switches and routers out there to choose from, but I suggest sticking with a name brand that is relatively well known and established. It’s no guarantee that you won’t have problems, but it’s a good start. I personally like Linksys and DLink brands, but there are many others that will work well, too.

Security.
Don’t forget that you need to have at least some security on that home network.  At a bare minimum, you need a firewall and some kind of antivirus.  If you’re connecting to broadband internet, either cable or DSL, most often the router they give you from the service you use has a firewall on it.  If you’re using wifi, the wifi router almost certainly has a firewall on it.  Use them!  Most importantly, actually set them up and change the default password to something else that you’ll remember but that strangers won’t guess.  If you’re not sure if you have a firewall on your network equipment, then at least use the built-in Windows firewall, but use something!
If you don’t want to spend big money on either McAfee or Norton for antivirus, good news!  You don’t have to spend anything!  Yes, that’s right, you can download AVGFree and run it for nothing at all.  So, now, what excuse do you have to not be running some kind of antivirus again?
And, please, for your own sake, use passwords.  Use hard to guess passwords, not your kids names or your birthday or even your license plate number.  In fact, try not to use dictionary words at all, or, if you do, substitute other characters for letters, like $ for S or @ for A, to make it more difficult to guess.  Also, use numbers with the letters, for the same reason.

Networked Storage.
Just having storage isn’t enough, really.  On a home network now, you may have a laptop, or two, a desktop, a DVR or any number of different networked devices that share data.  They all need to store it somewhere.  And, even if they store the data locally, they need to be backed up somewhere.  The answer is network based storage.  There are a lot of options out there, and Rick Vanover at TechRepublic has a good article on several.  I know one solution that’s popular with photographers is the Data Robotics Drobo series of devices.  I don’t have any direct experience with these, so I have no opinion on them specifically, but these days, decent network attached storage is so cheap, it would be foolish to ignore that as an option.

Virtual Server Environment.
Now, obviously, this isn’t for everyone.  Back in the day, I used to run a small, two server Novell network in my house just to keep everything fresh in my mind.  Novell isn’t always the most popular networking environment, even for hard-core network geeks like me, so I always wanted to make sure I knew how to do some of the more “interesting” and challenging things in that environment and ran a test network at home for that reason.
Now, you can do all that through virtualization.  In fact, that may be the newest buzzword that’s already worn thin on me!  But, buzzword or not, setting up a virtual test network is something that’s been talked to death in the industry, but I’ve only seen one article recently on setting up a home virtual test network.  You can read more about it in an article by Brad Bird over at TechRepublic, but, again, for those of us who work in a lot of different environments, it’s not a bad idea to make a series of virtual machines to experiment on.  There are still some hardware costs involved, of course, but there is the advantage of being able to roll back to an earlier state if something gets too screwed up.  Try that on your old-fashioned home network!

Even Fancier Stuff!
Of course, there’s almost no limit to what you can do on a home network these days.  Many inexpensive printers come with network interfaces built in, some even have wifi networking built in.  Of course, I’ve mentioned things like Windows Home Server and Linux servers here before, too.  It is, after all, what I do.  Though, with the low prices on network attached storage, I’m not sure I’d recommend that option for the average user.
And, this post hasn’t even touched on integrating any audio visual equipment into your network, or a home security system, or some of the fancier bells and whistles that are out there.  The sky, literally, is the limit.

So, the thing is, everyone will have a different idea of what the “ultimate” home network is, but these are some things to consider, and a few you don’t want to forget.

What?  Doesn’t every one run servers at home?

Okay, so maybe not everyone does, but some of us hard-core geeks do.  And, some of those hard-core geeks are Lifehackers, too.  Thanks to that group of obsessed efficiency geeks, I can bring you a link to the Lifehacker Best Home Server software packages.  I can’t say that I’ve really worked with any of these, so I can’t chime in on which is best, but certainly the Lifehackers have done their research and left their comments.  If you’ve been thinking about setting up server for the family, this would be a good place to start.

And, if you want to add a DIY firewall, try hitting this article on TechRepublic about setting up a free pfSense firewall.  It’s Linux based, but I can’t vouch for it.  The author seemed to think a lot of it, though, so I’d be interested in what anyone thinks of it.  If you try it, give me a shout and we can talk about doing a guest post/review.

Okay, maybe it’s more than a little random…

Here’s the thing, see, I spend a lot of time doing all kinds of weird stuff at the office.  I mean, I almost never have the same kind of day twice.  Really, the most consistent thing I do is go to lunch at more or less the same time every day.  Seriously.
But, along the way, I end up with some strange things in my browser.  All work related, of course, but, still an odd collection.  Here are a few things I found hanging around this week:

First, an article from TechRepublic about monitoring your network with a utility built into most, if not all, Linux distros called “ntop”.  Basically, it runs in the command shell and shows you were the network traffic your Linux machine can see is going.  Obviously, this is most useful if you use Linux for a firewall or gateway machine, since that would let you monitor pretty much all internet traffic.  Also?  Once you start it on that machine, you can get to it remotely via a browser to check the stats.  All for free.  Pretty cool.

Next, there’s another article on TechRepublic about resolving all those mysterious IP addresses into a physical location.  So, when you see that “special someone” trying to crack your home router, you can trace back to pretty close to where ever they are.  And, yes, for those of you who were readers back when I went through my divorce, that’s how I found out my ex-wife and her latest victim were following my blog.

But, if that wasn’t enough, here’s a third article from TechRepublic about a peer network monitoring tool that looks good.  One thing I liked about this was that it didn’t seem to need much special to run it, but it still had what looked like good notification tools.  If anyone has any opinions on it, or any of the other tools I’ve listed, please, feel free to add them into the comments.

And, last, but certainly not least, is a page of free web development tools from Microsoft.  Honestly, I have no idea how good these things are, but, hey, they’re free and they come from Microsoft, so, I figure they’re worth downloading.  I’ll probably never use them myself, but there’s no reason I shouldn’t share them with my readers.

So, yeah, these are all things that have been flying around in my browser at work for the past week or so.  Sometimes it’s great to be a generalist, because I never know what challenge I’ll be asked to meet next, but sometimes, it’s just exhausting!

Anyway, happy Wednesday and enjoy the links!

Is it even possible?

Well, frankly, I don’t know that there really is such a thing as computer security at all any more in these days of ubiquitous network access. I mean, it used to be that you could install a simple anti-virus program and sit behind a firewall and be fairly safe, but not any more. Now, with botnets and phishing scams and junk e-mail, well, frankly, you just can’t get away from it any more. In fact, now, the “hackers” are becoming so dumbed down that they’re using Do-It-Yourself “kits” that build some of the attacks for them! Just the other day, I read an article on ZDNet about something floating around the shadowier corners of the Internet that the nasties are calling a “DIY Phishing Kit“. So, now, it’s not bad enough that these scum-sucking bottom-feeders are out there trying to rip me off from the safety of their own home, or country, but now they’re making it even easier for no-talent, mouth-breathing, inbred miscreants to scam people out of their hard-earned cash! (Of course, long-time readers will know that I’ve made things harder for at least one phisher.) Man, that pisses me off!

There are so many people out there both creating these hazards to our digital lives and fighting them, that someone has suggested a uniform naming convention for all the security vendors to use when they refer to this “malware“. That’s all well and good, but all I really care about is keeping my systems secure. And, I’m sure you all worry about that, too. The problem is, in this tight economy, not many of us have much money to fight against these invisible baddies, not even me. Don’t let the advertising fool you, what I take in from the ads on this site aren’t even enough to pay for it, much less anything else. So, what’s a poor computer geek to do? Use free software, naturally.

PC Magazine has an article reviewing their “Top Five” picks for free security software. Personally, I can recommend AVG and Spybot Search and Destroy, even though they say Spybot is out of date. Also, I’ll add in Lavasoft’s AdAware, which is also free and quite good. I generally use both Spybot and AdAware to get rid of spyware. What one misses, the other catches. And, AVG has been around for quite a long time. They’re amazingly good, especially for free software.
Naturally, there are no guaranties when you use free software, but, then again, most of the paid software has outs in their EULA (end user license agreement), too, so why pay all that money? Keep in mind, these are free for personal use only. So, home businesses should technically use the paid software. We’ve all got to do our part to fight against these dirty spammers, scammers and thieves. The best place to start is a clean system. If you don’t have an antivirus program installed, get one. Fast.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"My obligation is to do the right thing. The rest is in God's hands."
   --Martin Luther King

I think I may not ever buy a new PC again.

Notice, I didn’t write that I’d never buy another computer, but, rather not another PC. Hear me out. With prices the way they are, laptops are so cheap that I could easily find one in whatever price range that I might set for myself, within reason. I mean, MicroCenter always has laptops in their sale fliers. Not to mention every one else who sells them. And, what’s more, in recent years, laptops have come configured to replace similarly priced PCs from the year previous. Now, I know you’d think that a super-powered IT geek like me would be working on the latest, greatest hardware at work and at home, but, I’m sorry to tell you that it’s just not so. Everyone else gets new equipment before I do. I end up working on last year’s model, at best! And, upgrades? Forget about it! The last time I did an upgrade of any value, I might as well have just gotten a new PC anyway. Besides, now I have a LinkStation Live 500Mb Network Attached Storage device to use as a backup before upgrading, so I shouldn’t have to worry about losing data. In fact, I should be able to use this little toy to backup my servers, my workstations, my router configurations and even my one Linux laptop.

So, to recap, the only things I really upgrade on a machine are memory and diskspace. Laptops, which are adequately configured most of the time anyway, are priced well enough to be affordable and can easily take my normal, preferred upgrades. Laptops take up less space and are, obviously, more portable in case of emergency, but still can handle all my peripherals, thanks to USB. And, furthermore, I can still get laptops that have docking stations, if I want to have them hooked up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse most of the time.

Pretty much, I can’t see a reason to buy a regular PC ever again. If I need something special, like a server or a firewall, I can get a specially configured machine, or build one myself specifically for that purpose.
So, what do you all think, is the desktop dead?

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"You may give out, but never give up."
   --Mary Crowley

This is old news.

So, lately, there’s been a bit of buzz about Windows Home Server. The press has gone on at length about how this was such a brilliant idea who’s “time has finally come” and patted Microsoft on the back for thinking of it.
Well, this is really old news. As I was going through some old magazines recently, before throwing them out, I saw a short article on the Memora Servio Personal Server. A Linux-based home server that did everything from share files to filter e-mail to act as a firewall for home users. The device was auto-configuring and sat between your home network and your broadband connection and even could be ordered with wireless built in. The magazine was from 2001.

Sadly, the company doesn’t seem to be around any more, though you can see the old Memora About page, thanks to Archive.org. Again, this company was doing this six years ago and, from what I can tell, only seemed to have closed up shop in the past year or two. I wonder how well this product sold? What’s more, I wonder if anyone has the distro around, with the configuration programs on it? I know, I’d love to get my hands on that!

So, some of my readers are geeks, too. Ever heard of this product? Or, maybe, something like it?

(And, if you haven’t looked at my pictures yet, scroll down to untill you see them, then vote on the sidebar!)

They’ve been waiting for me.
I can tell that the folks at my company have been waiting for a guy like me to show up. Today, I had three different persona PCs from three different employees in my cube. Mind, I mean three machines that they brought from home to have me look at for them, not machines from the office. Mostly, they just needed to be defragged and have their anti-virus files updated, but, c’mon, three? Obviously, these people have just been waiting for a “real” computer person to show up so that they can get me to do basic maintenance for them. Actually, come to think of it, I need to update my anti-virus signatures myself!
But, that doesn’t mean I have any less work that’s work related, either. Just this morning I was setting up a PC for yet another person from New Orleans. Which is a good thing, I guess, when you consider some of the alternatives. Of course, it would have been nice if they hadn’t promised that same cube to two different people without telling anyone. I was about to try and move his e-mail from the Windows 2000 machine he had in the office to his G4 Powerbook, but then we decided to take a “wait-and-see” stance instead. With all the miscommunication flying back and forth, we thought that was better. The chaos from Katrina has everyone sort of “runnin’ and gunnin'”, if you take my meaning, and that makes things extra challenging sometimes.
So, with all this craziness going on at the office, I find myself asking, “Should I be doing all this for people?” I mean, it’s not really my job, but the folks asking me to do this for them are the top-level managers. Should I be telling them “no”? I’d really rather not do that, since everyone seems to like me and the work I do for them. Granted, I’m not sure that most of them have any idea what I actually do on a day-to-day basis, but still, they seem pleased, so I’d rather not rock the boat.
Oh, and in recent updates, I did finally manage to get the satellite phone working, but now, since it took so long, we’re trying to return one. Not sure if we can do that at this point, but we’re trying. And, I’ve been messing around with all kinds of Windows 2000, NT and XP issues on the network. Getting all the folks from both offices working has been a bit of a challenge. In fact, if not for the DMZ port on my firewall, I’m not sure I could have had the two domains working together, since they’re named the same. I’m sure that would have caused problems if they’d seen each other on the network.
And, I really should be looking more closely at the version of Linux I want to run on that mythical server that I should be getting spec on. I’m leaning toward either Red Hat or SuSE, possibly even SuSE with all the Novell Open Enterprise Server stuff on it. I have to admit, if I were to get good install media, that could be really cool. All the stability and flexibility of Linux with the way cool administration tools from Novell. Those tools are, after all, what they’re known for developing. It’s the best “value added” product for Linux that I’ve seen so far.
Well, I guess I have some time before we’re really ready to do all that, so, while I wait, I’ll probably just read Sams Teach Yourself UNIX System Administration in 24 Hours, so that my skills are sharp when the time comes. But, now, I’m tired, so I think I’ll just go to bed.

That’s Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 for the acronym impaired.
Well, I’m evaluating flavors of Linux to replace our antique Windows NT server, in my copious spare time, at work. Of course, my first choice was to go to Novell’s site and download the free demo of SLES 9. It took the better part of a day and night to download the ISOs and burn them, but, again, I did that in the background.
First of all, the install was quite simple and found even the junky, old hardware that I scrounged together for a test machine. Though, I have to admit that I found it rather annoying that I only used three of the six CDs I burned to do the install. And, I only used the third of those because I was installing a SAMBA server to minimize my client-side changes. (Yes, I know to block all SAMBA traffic out to the ‘net. Thanks for worrying about me though.) If I get the time, I’ll go back and try to figure out what was on those last three disks. I figure it was documenation and source-code, mainly, but that’s only a slightly educated guess.
Now, I’ve never actually used SUSE before, so it was a little new to me. Bascially, it’s standard Linux and X-Windows, but what’s installed by default and the assorted management programs are a little different than what I’ve gotten used to on RedHat. But, once I got the hang of YaST, it wasn’t a problem. In fact, reconfiguring the server via YaST was how I got the SAMBA server installed, configured and running. I should point out that I did this all without the benefit of reading any documenation and it still only took me about five minutes. Very easy to use, even for a relativel newbie.
Mostly, it’s what I’ve come to expect from the modern distributions of Linux. It was easy to install, simple to configure, and pretty to look at while doing both. Oh, and on the old PII with 512Meg of RAM, it ran really well. Nice and smooth. I was able to connect to the SAMBA server, map a drive and copy a file without any issues or having to set it up as a PDC or BDC (that’s Primary Domain Controller and Backup Domain Controller, again for the acronym impaired). I haven’t done any security testing against it, but it’s tucked safely behind our new firewall, so I’m not too worried.
The one thing I noticed that I really liked was the fact that you had to enter a password to reboot the machine. In RedHat, at least the RedHat AS 2.1 I used, anyone who had physical access to the server could simply click the reboot button and it would. With SLES 9, after clicking that button, I was prompted for a password. Only after I supplied the root password did the machine actually reboot. Nice feature, that.

So, over all, nothing spectacular, but a good, solid offering from the newest Novell group, SUSE.