System iNetwork

January 2005

January 31, 2005 8:23 AM

Quick Cure for Friend and Neighbor Annoyances

Are you the neighborhood network guru, constantly pressed into service to solve DSL, WiFi, virus and spyware problems? Do distant relatives call you late at night, asking for you to just "tune up" their computers over the phone? Have you longed for a T-shirt that says "No, I will not fix your computer"? The next time you're faced with a needy user asking you to provide a shortcut to Reading the Friendly Manual, you can direct them to one of O'Reilly's two new tomes: Internet Annoyances and Home Networking Annoyances.

The subtitles for these books are "How to Fix the Most ANNOYING Things", about Going Online and About Your Home Network, respectively. Instead of fishing through your friend's, relative's, or neighbor's computer mess to solve their problem, teach them to fish using exerpts from one of these volumes. Better yet, point them to http://www.ora.com and show them how easily they can buy the books online!

Internet Annoyances, by Preston Gralla, covers email annoyances, such as spam, as well as frequently asked questions about the email clients Outlook 2003, Outlook Express 6, Eudora 6, and Gmail. It also discusses internet connection problems, home networking basics, wireless and remote access, and web hosting adventures. A general browser section covers everything users need to know about blocking pop-up ads, preventing spyware, and efficiently surfing the web. A special AOL chapter discusses the foibles of that peculiar enviroment. Other chapters talk about instant messaging, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and even cyber citizenship. This book covers 99.999% of all annoying user questions, leaving you free to answer the .001% of actually hard queries.

Kathy Ivens' Home Networking Annoyances provides the same 99.999% completeness for networking questions, ranging from Ethernet and connector problesm to phone, power, and wireless networks. It goes into great detail on Windows user management and network troubleshooting, covering even such esoteric concepts (for home users) as mapped drives, network printing, and network design. Extensive chapters on security give step-by-step instructions for choosing and deploying firewalls, blocking viruses and spyware, and keeping out network snoops. The chapter on backups gives you an out when the worst happens and a user's computer is completely erased. Just point to that section and say "What, you didn't do this?"

Both books are written in a lively, accesible style that any non-expert reader can readily navigate. For more information on either book, including a sample chapter, visit:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/internetannoy/toc.pdf

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/homenetannoy/toc.pdf

Oh, and for that "No, I will not fix your computer" T-Shirt, go to ThinkGeek.com:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/388b/

Posted by mbeckman on January 31, 2005 at 8:23 AM

D-Link DSA-3200: WiFi Hotspot-in-a-Box

If you�re building a community wireless project, or setting up guest wireless access for your enterprise, you face several difficult problems that make rollout a little more complicated than just plugging in a cheap WiFi access point. The first problem is user authentication: assigning user IDs and passwords, and keeping track of usage. The second is keeping network usage fair, by preventing bandwidth hogs and one or two malicious users from spoiling the party for everyone else.

While it�s always been possible to cobble together the pieces you need to pull this off � one or more APs, a managed Ethernet switch, and a Linux box running security and rate-limiting software � now you can get the whole package in a single box for under $600. The D-Link DSA-3200 Wireless G Public/Private Hot Spot Gateway combines an 802.11g access point with an authentication server supporting 250 user accounts in an internal non-volatile database. The unit also sports URL redirection, bandwidth control, network policy enforcement, timed sessions, traffic monitoring, and denial-of-service attack prevention.

The URL redirection feature captures users in their browsers, displaying a customized, branded Web page unique to your hotspot network no matter what URL a user initially surfs to. This page provides user log-in fields, as well as any pricing, policy, or usage disclaimers you wish to post. No user can fully access the WiFi network without passing through this page.

Bandwidth control and network policy enforcement let you prevent one or two users from hogging all the bandwidth, by organizing users into one of several usage groups. You can, for example, configure a limited free user group at low speeds useful for email and light browsing, reserving higher speed access for paying users. Network policy enforcement lets you limit how certain protocols are used, such as outgoing SMTP mail, to prevent network abuse by spammers and other evildoers.

Timed sessions help you provide fair access when more users compete to get online than you have resources to support; once someone�s limited session time has expired, another user gets a chance to go online. Traffic monitoring and DoS attack detection and prevention let you monitor the network to make sure it�s healthy and detected problem users, such as those with viruses that might otherwise shut down the network.

The DSA-3200 is perfect for a single-AP hotspot, providing a working radius of 300 feet or so in open space. If your hotspot network expands, you can extend the network with generic APs, making the DSA-3200 the hub of your WiFi network.

The box provides dual diversity antennas, three Ethernet ports � LAN, WAN, and DMZ � and supports SNMP, SSH, and HTTPS (SSL/TLS) management protocols. Authentication can use a built-in RADIUS server, or an external RADIUS authentication service.

Find out more about the DSA-3200 online at:
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=402

Posted by mbeckman on January 31, 2005 at 8:02 AM | Comments (1)