TIPS & TRICKS: Enterprise-Level Networking

I deal, mostly, with consumer level equipment for helping home and small-office users get connected. Most situations don't call for spending more money than consumer-level hardware costs to get together a suitable networking situation.

However, even home and small-office users, sometimes have very specific situations that require some higher quality equipment that provide specific functionality. Case in point, I once tried to help someone setup a wireless network in a 2500+ square foot home. I had recommended using Apple equipment, since they were mostly a Mac household and the Airport-branded equipment provided most of what they need. My lesson learned from this project was that the Airport Extreme can only accept one additional Airport Express as an extender to the wireless network. Most of the house had coverage after I put in the Airport Extreme and couple of Airport Express Base Stations. The one place that lacked good coverage was the pool house. Without getting into the specifics, I finally figured out a second Airport Express setup as an extender off another Airport Express that was already acting as an extender (i.e. Airport Extreme > Airport Express > Airport Express), really degrades the bandwidth down to even below optimum dial-up speeds.

Moral of the story, the right tools always gets the job done better. To that end, I recently got a recommendation from the This Week in Enterprise Tech podcast about this company that does some good work with equipment that might have helped in my project I just mentioned. It's called MikroTik (http://mikrotik.com/). Next time I need something more than consumer-level gear, I'll take a look at these guys.

TIPS & TRICKS: Improve the Security of a New Computer

Often, I field questions about how to protect a computer, especially when it's brand new. I've often given customized advice to people, depending on their current environment. But, I get the questions enough that I considered composing a document that outlines this information.

Fortunately, I have (and, so have you) paid for someone else to compose this document for us:

http://www.us-cert.gov/security-publications/ten-ways-improve-security-new-computer

This federal government site has a wealth of information, including this well-written document, on how to secure your computer from the bad guys. There's lots of ways to protect your new computer from getting compromised, but this document provides a great baseline for everyone to follow.

Besides the steps outlined in this document, I would also add that setting up a new machine is a perfect time to also setup a solid backup solution and consider encrypting the hard drive in your computer, especially if it's a notebook that gets lots of miles.

TIPS & TRICKS: Adding a Networked Printer on OS X Lion

Apple recommends adding a networked printer, which is visible via Bonjour. The default installation of Lion does not have very many printer drivers pre-installed. I went to the printer manufacturer's site and found that I should be able to get the driver through Software Updates on OS X, though this only works either on USB or on a printer available via Bonjour. What can you do if the printer is networked, but not available via Bonjour? 

I was trying to add a networked printer manually using LPD protocol and discovered that the driver for the printer was not available in "Select Printer Software" under "Print Using." Finally found that Apple has a bunch of drivers for various printer manufacturers available for download from the Apple Support site:

http://support.apple.com/downloads/#printer drivers

Installing drivers from here, should make them available in the Printer Software box. 

RANTS & RAVES: OS X Printing to Windows Print Server

Found a nice write-up of getting OS X printing to Windows Print Servers. This write-up includes advantages and disadvantages of 4 different methods:

1. LPD
2. Windows Print Sharing
3. Windows Print Services for Macintosh; and 
4. Direct IP printing.

The document also includes instructions, which are helpful if you're not familiar with a particular method. Here's a link to the document:

http://www.softwareshelf.com/news/printmanager/tips/MacOSX_Printing_via_the_Windows_Print_Server.pdf

If the document no longer exists, let me know as I've saved a copy of the PDF.

RANTS / TIPS: Vulnerable Home Routers

Home routers have been vulnerable in the past and will likely be vulnerable in the future, especially when most people don't know how to secure them right out of the box. This article:

http://www.notebooks.com/2010/07/15/how-to-secure-your-router-against-a-hack-compromising-many-popular-routers/

talks about how a vulnerability in many home routers makes them susceptible to a potential attack. The interesting thing about this particular method is that it can affect so many different routers, rather than target a particular make or model.

The gist:
1. Make sure your router has a very strong password. Remember this password is the one used to access the controls of the router and not necessarily your wifi password.
2. Make sure firmware on the router is the latest from the manufacturer.

Happy Computing.

TIPS & TRICKS: Vista and Multiple Simultaneous Network Connections

I've been observing Windows connection problems via wireless for quite some time now. I'm hoping this might be a fix for many of those problems. Basically, there are multiple connections to the same wireless network. This could, potentially, cause some confusion by the OS.

Vista has a wireless profile manager. However, there is yet another place where wireless connections are stored. This is the network location manager. This stores the previously used wireless networks even if a profile was not created. You should be able to find this under Network and Sharing Center > Customize > Manage or delete network locations. This will allow for the deletion (or merging) of duplicate network locations.

Note: I have not yet had a chance to test this with Windows 7. However, I suspect the behavior is similar.

Here's where I originally found this solution and the complete steps:

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article04-500

Happy Computing.

UPDATE: Found it in Windows 7. In Network and Sharing Center, under View your active networks, click on the icon (not the text). The next window will be the Network Properties, where you'll find Merge or delete network locations. The follow the same steps as previously noted.

RANTS: Network Outage in the Bay Area

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/09/BAP816VTE6.DTL&tsp=1

I'm uneasy about how easy it is to disrupt so many people with one act of "vandalism." If this infrastructure plays such a centralized role in how so many people and business do their work, shouldn't it be more heavily protected. I have already come across at least one report of the connectivity problem in the Bay Area affecting work down here in San Diego.

Also, could this constitute "terrorism"?

RANT/RAVE: OS X Network Locations

Earlier this evening I worked on a client's Apple MacBook Pro. The machine had many configurations setup by someone else, other than the user. One of these configuration steps included configuring the network locations. First, within a network location (Apple > System Preferences > Network > Location), there can be multiple active network ports. By default Apple includes 4 ports: Airport, Bluetooth, Ethernet, and FireWire. Each of these can be set to inactive simply by selecting the port and clicking the button with the picture of a gear below the list and choosing Make Service Inactive.

This was important because I found that there was 2 network locations set: Airport and Ethernet. The Airport network location had everything else disabled, including Ethernet, FireWire, and Bluetooth. The Ethernet network location had everything else disabled, including Airport, FireWire, and Bluetooth. Initially, I wondered why this was configured this way. It could be inconvenient to have to manually switch network locations just to switch between Ethernet and Airport.

Then I understood why a network port having a dedicated Network Location might be important. Unexpected behavior may result if a Network Location has multiple active network ports. Fortunately, my personal experience has resulted in very few issues, if at all. In fact, Apple OS X's default configuration is for a single location to have all the network ports active simultaneously.

Nevertheless, to avoid problems it might be good practice in specific situations. At the end of the day, there should be a good balance between usability and preventing problems. I would say that this practice of separating the network ports is only good practice is a few situations. For the general user, it's more useful to just keep one network location with all the network ports active, as Apple has done by default.

TIPS & TRICKS: Vista WiFi Connectivity Problems

Found this article

http://windowssecrets.com/comp/081211#story1

that has a simple write up on why so many Vista users are having trouble with wireless connectivity. From the description of the fix listed here,:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233/en-us

this problem extends to wired connections as well. Remember that editing the registry could irreparably harm your computer. Please be careful and ask a qualified professional (or at least someone who knows what they are doing) for help.

Hope this helps someone. Good luck and happy computing.

TIPS & TRICKS: "Acquiring Network Address"

NOTE: Modifying the registry, improperly, may cause your computer to crash, not boot, or otherwise malfunction. Take the following steps at your own risk. If you must do it, remember to backup, backup, and backup.

Symptoms:

* Constantly trying to acquire network address
* Never receiving an IP address
* Worked before
* Here's the clincher: Just uninstalled Norton Anti-Virus

Solution:

* Run 'regedit' and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Dhcp
* Edit the entry 'DependOnService'
* Remove the line that contains 'SYMTDI'
* Reboot

Analysis:

Norton AV wasn't completely removed. The service didn't get removed properly with the uninstall because it was still active. Therefore, after rebooting, the DHCP Client refused to start without the Norton AV service that no longer worked properly.

This has been verified for Windows XP Home Edition SP2, running Norton AV 2002.

These following steps may or may not help:

Reload TCP/IP in WinXP with this command: netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt
Reload Winsock services with this command: netsh winsock reset

TIPS & TRICKS: Losing connectivity? Have a Linksys box?

http://www.dondoucette.com/befsr41/

After having some trouble with my own Linksys box, I decided to do some research on why I was losing connectivity every so often. I came across this website. It talks about a different model than the one that I have. But, the internal problem could potentially effect all models, especially considering that the manufacturing process may be similar or identical across different models. At some point, I'd like to take mine apart and see if this is why I have intermittent loss of connectivity.