Tag Archives: network

Posted on
by

imagesYou know, that site where people accept each other in their “connections” without ever talking. Where peoples worth is valued on how many connections they have and not on the contents of their profiles. Where the profile feed (or whatever that thing with updates is called) is so full of irrelevant stuff that it’s beyond useless. Where you are constantly talked into upgrading to a pricey monthly fee for no useful extras and where product pages are skewered so badly that I’ve decided to rather not list any more or my products on it than have Linkedin “promote” them.

Groups

The groups I joined, some with several thousand members, are quiet. The few discussions that do pop-up occasionally are about self promoting “I’ve launched this site/product/idea, what do you think?” or are about support/tech related things that belong on a forum for the product/item.

And since everyone does that, I thought; “well that could be useful.” So I’ve put some stuff out there. My recent OmniCard plugin for example. This was last week, so far I got 3 pageviews from Linkedin and Linkedin even imported the wrong url into the post which I couldn’t correct afterwards. So the only reaction on my “discussion” was me, correcting the link. I got a few profile views. But again, nobody clicked my link.

Skills & Reviews

I did get some good reviews from people I’ve worked with or for. But only after Linkedin prompted me to ask for them.
I did get some of my skills endorsed. But only after Linkedin asked others to do so.

Where is the initiative here.

And the other way around, nobody really asked me for a review. But neither do I feel inclined to write any. There is no incentive.
I endorsed a bunch of skills, sometimes I remove a few of them because I know the person doesn’t know shit about that. But I’m sure many just click “endorse” to get rid of the question.

My Profile

I like to think that my profile is fairly complete and more importantly, true. But what’s the point if no one reads it and nobody acts on it. You may as well go to my real profile immediately and skip the Linkedin “experience.” Inmail is not free. But contacting me via my own site is… So why bother with Linkedin.

Luckily I’m in the somewhat “privileged” position that I do not need Linkedin to get me work so the lack of visibility and initiative isn’t a big deal for me. But imagine I would expect to find work, a proper day-job on there. I’d be pretty disappointed.

Product & Business pages

Maybe I’m missing something here other than an intuitive setup. I’ve made a business page on Linkedin a while ago. It looks like crap. It’s bland, boring and doesn’t invite people to contact me. I can’t really see a way to improve that.

Product pages are worse. Take the AdRotate page or Omnicard page for example. The logo… I uploaded a carefully made logo in high resolution. Look what Linkedin did to it. Pixelated and unreadable. And again, it’s a boring bland page which doesn’t invite the viewer to use the product.

Conclusion

With the growing number of people looking for work and the image that Linkedin has where “professionals” find work on there everybody now uses Linkedin. This made Linkedin into the new Facebook. Filled with uselessness and garbage.

And I’m guilty, too. This post goes on the Linkedin feed adding to the fluff. And I have a bunch of people in my connections I never talk to and so on.

A few exceptions aside of course. But overall, Linkedin has been fairly useless for me.

Note: This article is based on my experience with Linkedin and what I hear around me from other people. This article does not necessarily reflect the experience of others.

Posted on
by

Over the past year we’ve had our share with internet slowness, phone outages and whatnot. Our internet providers help desk never was able to find it and had solutions like upgrading our package to get a different signal, new modem, blaming Apple, replace cables… All the default stuff.

On my own I have replaced both Airport Extremes, bought new switches, new server hardware, endless reconfiguring and resetting of devices.

In the past month or so the speeds were so bad we *actually* made a fuss and demanded that some expert come take a look at it. So they send over a technician. After a 5 minute streak of mumbling and following cables he concluded that my Airport Extreme was the culprit. Explained me how it was not the Internet providers fault and left.

Obviously that didn’t solve the problem for us. So I called support again and got through to their tier 2 support who said they would run some tests. If I could monitor when it was slow, note the time and ping the site we were trying to reach and write that down too. That sounded constructive. We set a date to talk over the results of that a week later.

So we did. Meanwhile the issue had been bumped to tier 3 support because “something was fluctuating the signal” which was cause for some alarm apparently. 2 days ago the Tier 3 guy called, asked me for the results. He also shared his results. Seeing spikes in our signal every so much seconds. If I could confirm this with a endless ping from my end to various points on my network and the internet. We did and indeed saw the spikes on my end too.

If I could go into my modem and restart it, he told me the address 192.168.1.1 or something. To which I replied that I had changed it to 10.0.0.1 to coincide with my network and avoid conflicts with VPN connections to clients.

ohhhh, but that’s a problem!

uh oh…

“Why?” I asked.
His reply; “Well, our VOIP system runs on that segment.”
“But how does that conflict? Does the router run on linux?” I ask.
“Yes, at the core it’s a basic linux OS.” He says.

And that’s it then. As some of you may know. Linux/Unix systems always have trouble separating interfaces which run on the same/similar IP address ranges and what’s worse in the same size subnet. Thus, creates a addressing conflict. Causing phone outages in that network (not just our phone apparently) and every time an address conflict popped up, which was every minute or so, there would be a spike in our Internet signal.

So as a test we reset the modem to factory defaults. And *poof* no more spikes and a much more stable signal. Sooo I was kindly advised to reconfigure my network to something that doesn’t conflict with their stuff. Which I did and things seem better so far.

Now hope it actually works faster… But for now it seems resolved :) yay!

Posted on
by

Over the past few days I’ve had appalling performance on my wifi network using the new 5GHz airport.

Having to deal with numerous networking issues over the past week I kinda assumed/wrote it off as yet again my ISP screwing with me. But various tests consistently showed good connections to the interweb.

Hmm…

So I’ve done some research. My mum didn’t complain. And said to have fast internet. But her iMac doesn’t use the Wifi pipe to upstairs. Every computer upstairs was having trouble.

Alright, so it’s something with the wifi… Some Googling later turned up that *many* people have trouble using Apples Airport Extreme using separate SSID’s for their Wifi (an SSID is the wifi network name). Pretty much everyone I found on forums and blogs reported to have “fixed” their slow throughput by removing the separate name for the 5GHz network. Which is an option in the Airport settings.

Some more testing on my own taught me that various options aren’t even shown in Apples latest and greatest Airport Utility 6. I kinda knew this, but if the lack of such settings prevents my network from working… *sigh*.

Turbocharging your Wifi

This is what seems to work for me. You should know that every combination of settings is very dependant on your situation. What works for me does not necessarily work for you. The only constant here being that Airport Utility 6 is not going to help you. Downgrade to Airport Utility 5.6 (download). This “older” version is far far far superior to the new version which simply lacks options, features and assumes that you’re an idiot. Which you’re not.

So here is what I have changed:

Make sure you use the right Radio Mode

Since most devices and stuff in my house is fairly recent I have *no* need to support 11b or 11g networking. Thus I won’t transmit it either. The Airport Extreme supports pretty much every combination. But if you have modern devices. You might just want to use 11n and banish everything else. I use the blue highlighted setting.

aex4

Disable the separate SSID name for your 5GHz network and set your multicast rate

Under the tab “Wireless” click “Wireless Network Options” and disable the “5GHz Network Name”. As  a sort of quality assurance you might want to raise the “Multicast Rate”.

aex 1

Disabling the separate name basically merges your 5GHz network into your 2.4GHz one. Leaving the computer/device to decide which to use. And you’re kinda feeling in the dark, hoping it picks the fastest. But that’s alright. Most devices are made to use the best connection and switch when required.

The multicast rate is a bit more vague, but from what I’ve seen, read and learned it basically sets a acceptable speed limitation. Such as – If the device can not meet a bare minimum speed. It’s not getting on the network. The default setting is low. Which pretty much lets anything connect regardless of signal quality. I prefer speed. So I’ve set it a tad bit higher, to medium. This forces the computer to find a better signal.

This is especially useful if you use multiple Airports. So that the iPhone does connect to the one which has a stronger signal and not the one downstairs at the other side of the house when you’re standing next to one.

(Don’t) Use Wide Channels

Wide channels is a mechanic in wifi where a signal may utilize multiple frequencies in order to boost throughput. Basically it opens multiple lanes just for you on the highway. In my experience this doesn’t work. At least not when combining a brand new model Airport and an older one which doesn’t have this option (and thus doesn’t support it?). Obviously I don’t know what this option does between 2 newer models since I only have one. But I’ve disabled it and it’s fast now.

You can disable this option in the tab “Wireless” under “Wireless Network Options” same as the above 2 settings. Untick the box “Use wide channels”.

Channel selection

I have always learned that Wifi needs a pre-set channel. Especially when on the 2.4GHz band this is useful because the Wifi station might pick a crowded channel on automatic selection. To avoid this I’ve *always* used manual channels. I also did this for the 5GHz channel. Even though I am the only one using it in this neighborhood.

Turns out that doesn’t work very well.

However, my method still is true for 2.4GHz. Luckily the airport allows a split setting for this. So I have set a manual channel for 2.4GHz and the 5GHz band is on automatic.

aex 2 aex 3

 

And lastly, Security

If you use multiple base stations like I do (I have 3). Make sure that they are on par with security. Obviously using WEP these days is stupid. Also using Mac Authentication is pretty dumb. So if you use that. Disable it.

Why?

  1. WEP has been cracked years ago and is therefor useless.
  2. MAC Authentication – Everyone, even a 12 year old, can copy and spoof your MAC Address in seconds.
  3. MAC Authentication slows down your network. Which is undesirable.

These days using WPA2 (to my knowledge at least) is the way to go. Older base stations also support WPA or WPA/WPA2 (a mix of the two). The latest of Airport Extremes have WPA2 Personal (WPA2) and WPA Enterprise (Using a Radius server). Home users should use WPA2 Personal and make sure every other base station uses that same setting. Not the WPA/WPA2 setting. But WPA2 or WPA2 Personal. This makes sure there can be no communication issue between the 2 stations and thus they work faster.

In closing

As mentioned before, these settings seem to work for me. For now. It took me a few days to figure out and get it right. As usual with Wifi of any kind. Every situation is specific and no manual can tell you “do this and it works”. That manual does not have your concrete walls or interference and only assumes perfect conditions.

If you have other ideas, tips or solutions. Let me know below.

Posted on
by

And i’m the first one! In this street anyway. So I should have unhindered greatness starting today.

That’s right, I’ve bought a new Airport Extreme today, to replace my 1st generation (6 year old) Airport Extreme. When trying to configure the thing I was pleasantly surprised by the dual band Wifi option that does not require NAT to be enabled. So I quickly reconfigured the Wifi to use 5GHz as a default and keep a “2nd” network on 2.4GHz for the older stuff.

That means both my airports now talk to each other (Wifi extension) via 5GHz with, presumably, speeds up to 540mbps. A good bump up from the previous 2.4GHz 300mbps. Our iPhones and the nexus tablet do not use the 5GHz band. But my iPad 2 does. And so does the Mac mini in the living room. So now we can stream movies and stuff even faster without taking up the bandwidth. Double yay!

As you can see in the pictures below, which I made with an app “Wifi Explorer” (available in the app store) The 2.4GHz band is a bit cluttered. Those poor people on channel 1 can’t have much fun with their Wifi. But look at the 5GHz band… It’s all mine!

2.4ghz 5ghz

Posted on
by

Earlier this month I’ve built and deployed a new server using ClearOS to replace Mac OS Server. So far this has been a most enjoyable experience so much so that I often forget the server is there. That’s how good it does it’s job. It didn’t bother me once and just does what it’s supposed to do. Great!

Over the first few days obviously I logged in repeatedly to check on things, tweak the settings a bit and discover the “odd” and strangely exciting Linux bits and bobs about the system. Not that there was much to discover really since the web configuration works really well for the most part. Some menus are a bit non-logical or, to my mind, silly to navigate. But overall it works really well.

And that also makes for little words. It works, it works well. And there isn’t much more to be said. But that’s a bit short…

I like how ClearOS is set up. It’s fairly easy to do. Additionally they introduced a marketplace where you can get free and paid modules for the OS like adding new services or daemons to the system. This makes for a modular system that can be tailored to your specific needs. Unlike Mac OS Server where you’re kinda forced into a default package and constantly have to be reminded about the Mail, iCal, and whatever other services you don’t use. None of that in ClearOS. Don’t use a module? Don’t install it. Simple as that.

The dashboard is clearly designed by someone who likes to do things the easy way. Which is good, because it makes it easy to use and still offers all the required options. Daemons offer more than an on/off switch and can be configured quite a bit, depending on the service of course.

And it’s stable and fast, so far, not a single hick-up that I experienced. Which to me is paramount.

A glance at the past

To give you some insight – The “old” network had one Mac OS Server, doing everything in terms of network and web services. So it handled DHCP/DNS/VPN/Httpd/MySQL/Filesharing and Open Directory. Back then the server ran Mac OS 10.6 Server and it worked relatively well.

Then Mac OS 10.7 Server came around and I’ve upgraded some software preventing me from running Mac OS 10.6 but the experience was less than stellar. The OS was plagued by bugs, incompleteness and just poor software. Quite undesirable for a server.
Somewhere in this period I’ve added another server for Minecraft handling AFP (Filesharing) and it shared Open Directory with the other server (in a Primary/Replica setup). This created a bit of a divide in services. The original server would handle networking and media streaming and the new one Minecraft and related services.

Even later Mac OS 10.8 came along which fixed many of 10.7′s shortcomings but introduced much more. The lack of DHCP for one. A broken DNS server. Horrible VPN performance. Oversimplified management that allowed for nothing. And overall just a poor experience and worse performance. So after a while I was just fed up with it and bought a PC to run a Linux server on it.

So what does the network look like now?

ClearOS solved almost all the shortcomings I found with Mac OS Server. So currently there are 3 servers. Along with several devices like switches and wifi accesspoints.

1. ClearOS 6 – DHCP/DNS (with an actual domain)/httpd/MySQL/VPN
2. Mac OS 10.6 Server – Minecraft server, MySQL (For Minecraft), AFP shares
3. Mac OS 10.8 Server – Open Directory, SMB/AFP shares, Media Server

As you can see all the essentials are on the ClearOS server. Insuring greater stability. And all the fun and less important stuff is on Mac OS Server. If one of them breaks now it’s annoying, but it doesn’t take down the entire network.

So far the ClearOS machine has performed quite well. It seems very capable of doing what it needs doing. Users of my network commented that looking up websites and local machines works much faster and actually gets them where they need to go.
And overall networking speeds for streaming media seem to have improved a bit. Possibly by taking away the burden of network services from the media server.

I sincerely hope ClearOS will at some point will support a few more “community” tools like BitTorrent (Transmission!) and Plex Media Server. Also I would like to have native support for AFP and Bonjour (Netatalk/Avahi) since aside from one PC we only use Macs and Samba has some limitations we do not wish to encounter.

Once these things are addressed I can phase out the Mac OS 10.8 server then, too. Obviously with some work I can replace the Minecraft machine already, but Mac OS 10.6 server runs just fine and I like having a desktop for it. It makes running the machine that much easier.

Conclusions? If any…

Apple seems to have abandoned real servers in favor of cheap toys. This is supported by Apple discontinuing the xServe and storage arrays a while back. Having no dedicated hardware to run a server on. Why bother making a real server OS. It’s a pity.

With quite some (semi-)Professionals now left in the dark with Mac OS Server I believe that they too will give up on using Mac OS Server, if not already. And will start looking for alternatives. ClearOS and similar organizations now have a better opportunity than ever to step into the gap and offer their products. And so far they do a great job. However, I don’t think ClearOS is a replacement for Mac OS Server if you’re using iCal and Address book services. Even though there is a groupware package called Zarafa, that’s more aimed at replacing Exchange servers.

But, if you need a stable, fast and pretty server OS for your network. You should definitely look at deploying one or more ClearOS systems. They have a free unsupported community version and a professional version for a annual fee starting at only $80 USD. This includes all kinds of support and services. For companies that’s a bargain!