Ottawa Valley SAGE

Title: September Meeting (Note that this is the LAST Thursday in the month)
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Link out: Click here
Description: As we had a very small turnout for the last meeting, I’ll bring along some photos of the new firewall appliance I assembled with components from pc engines. I’m quite impressed so far.

Hopefully we can stand another of my “doc” talks as well. If I’m successful, I’ll provide the whole thing as an epub file.
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2011-09-29
End Time: 21:30

Title: August Meeting
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Link out: Click here
Description: Time for the monthly meeting. Topics:
- Firewall appliances (DIY and commercial)
- Diagramming tools
- Documentation tools
- other “stuff”, ask questions, bring topics
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2011-08-18
End Time: 21:30

I recently decided to upgrade the unmanaged 24 port gig switch I have been using to a managed switch – make that 2 managed switches. I saw a deal on ebay for a couple of Dell 2724 switches that can be placed in managed mode. The price was quite good and I wanted to be able to create a couple of VLANs, but I didn’t want the howl of the fans from the Cisco switch I have.

The two switches arrived several days ago and while working on the apparently never ending basement excavation, I figured I’d check them out. Both powered on and acted as expected in the default unmanaged mode and *shudder*, they only have a web interface when switched to managed mode. So much for a serial console or a ssh or even a tenet session. converting them to managed mode required pushing a recessed pin on the front panel and waiting a few minutes while the switches reconfigure and reboot.

They came up with the default configuration and after adding a 192.168.2.0/24 virtual interface to my main desktop, I could access them and make configuration settings. The first thing I did was give them a static address on my internal LAN and re-point the web interface. First config step complete and happy. I looked at the switch information page and obtained the firmware version and went to check it out. There is a newer version of the firmware and the boot code. As they are not “production” yet, I decided to perform the upgrade which requires a tftp server and the images from Dell. The doenload is free and apparently fixes a number of items. Upgrade apparently went successfully. Of course, in order to use the new version, they require a reset. After reboot, no matter what I tried, no joy. Back to Google for some assistance. This seems to be a common problem.

After trying a number of things (cookies, restart browser, restart computer, etc.), the actual fix is to clear the browser cache. I have no idea why, but the frames/JavaScript/whatever seem to get a little confused. Clearing the cache fixed the problem (which I should have tried earlier). Both work, have some useful functionality and meet my needs at this time. While they are billed as managed switches, they are not enterprise grade by any stretch of the imagination. Real enterprise gera has the ability to configure from a CLI, save and restore the configs and do not require a paper clip to change modes. All said, I’m happy with them, but wish they had some “better” features. I have other Dell, HP, Cisco, etc. gear and I’ve been spoiled by the enterprise functionality. Time to learn how the other half¹ lives I guess.

The real test comes when I pull the old 24 port unmanaged switch and replace it with one of these, hopefully later tonight or tomorrow. The second test will be when I VLAN it and add some other machines on a different network. That may be a week or two out, as I’m not exactly full of free time right now. After that, I’ll see how far along I am with my multiple internet connections and DMZ servers.

¹ As in Small Business, Home Office, Consumer Market

It was a smallish crowd (four) who met for the July meeting on what may have been the hottest day of this summer. The initial discussion list was waived in favour of talking about tablets and smart phones. The tablet we were discussing was an acer refurb tablet running Android and attempting to:

1. Connect to a public WiFi access point
2. Tether it to a recently purchased Android phone. Via WiFi hotspot and USB.

Connecting to the wireless network seemed to work, but free wireless was not found. Rather than continue on, the real objective was to use the 3G service on the phone for places where WiFi is unavailable.  Initial attempts appeared to succeed, but actual connectivity was not present. I offered my phone (iPhone) as a hotspot and everything worked flawlessly. I used both the local WiFi and 3G as services and it worked on both. Bruce had his Android phone and we tried with that and it worked properly as a hotspot and USB tethered. It seems the phone has a firmware bug.

After playing with the tablet and phones for a bit, we got to discussing “Apps” for the tablet and smartphones. Surprisingly enough, the same apps appear to be available for both Android and iOS. A couple that we talked about were Traffic Ottawa which allows you to view the intersection cameras all over the city and Future Gas Prices which tells you what the price should be tomorrow. I downloaded it and it said that gas would be 128.1/l and it was this morning, so it appears to work. I did notice that the afternoon price was 127.5 and now it’s still showing 128.1, so that may be an average price. Either way, if it can stop me from filling up at a higher price by either showing the price to be higher if I wait or do it now, it’s well worth it.

The discussion turned to using smart phones and tablets as part of the daily toolkit and I have to admit that my tablet and phone get used a lot, almost as much as the laptop. I’m a believer in reducing the number of devices I carry at any opportunity.

There was also a question on syncing outlook to google calendar if you use outlook but don’t use exchange. A quick search turned up a Google App for that which appears to do the job. I tried it and it works properly with my work computer:

Google Calendar Sync

Title: July Meeting
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Link out: Click here
Description: Given the venue, nothing terribly formal.
- PXE -> gPXE -> iPXE
- Generators and UPS units
- Cobbler
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2011-07-21
End Time: 21:30