The world needs more VPN client tools. It sounds like Cisco and Ascend are venturing into this world. No doubt others are too. I use "PPTP" from Microsoft currently for NT systems and "ssh" and the commercial "F-Secure" product from DataFellows (www.datafellows.com) for Unix. I really like ssh. I found PPTP to be ok, but it's rather complex and required me to hack code to get my firewall to pass the GRE encapsulated traffic. Obscure point: VPN technology that does not use TCP or UDP protocols may not work with off-the-shelf firewalls or routers. If the VPN protocol (like the new L2TP protocol) uses UDP, it's reasonably easy to convince a firewall or router to pass it. Don't ask why. It has to do with recognizing protocol headers and the fact that TCP and UDP headers have similar structure.
What's a VPN? A Virtual Private Network. A misnomer really, or more of an anacranism. In the old days if you strung two T1 lines between two sites you had a Private network, or "PN". Now days if you run a 'tunnel' or encapsulated link between two sites it forms a 'virtual' T1 or Virtual Private Network.
Lots of people seem to be convinced that this is the next wave of "remote access". To me it looks like a giant extension cord from my house to the office. To my ISP it looks like more traffic. To Microsoft it looks like a way to sell more NT servers. To the VC's it's just another gamble. I wonder what the corporate IS guys think...
As the corporate firewall becomes a VPN server, more and more Internet traffic will be via encrypted, authenticated tunnels. Perhaps some day all Internet traffic will via virtual circuits which are brought up and down on demand. Like phone calls, only authenticated and encrypted. Sounds like ATM, huh? Don't tell anyone I said that.
You might notice that a rash of these pages appeared out of the blue, many after the fact. I can blame that on several things. First, I'm lazy. Two, I wrote up some of them and forgot to put them up on the web (see #1). Three, I have disk problems on my Linux box. Four, people who write paragraphs with numbered sentences should go back and read Strunk & White.
Fell free to complain - that's the whole point.
On the two misguided occasions when we chose to fly across the country with our less-than-five-year-old child (more on the 5 year part in a second), we bought an extra ticket and used a car seat. The 'cabin attendants' where very impressed. I thought it was common sense. I've come to find out that people think carrying their children on their lap and risking their lives is "saving money". I actually heard a woman tonight talk about going on "one last free vacation" with her child on her lap before the child was "too old". I had to bite my tongue.
I'm a licensed pilot (general aviation) and commercial jets scare the $%#%$ out of me. You can not afford not to buy an extra seat for your child. If the plane hits "rough air" (what us pilots like to call "light chop") you will not be able to keep your arms around that 35 pound mass. I can show you the law of physics which make this so. No amount of caring or loving will change these equations. Buy the extra seat. Use a car seat. Or better yet, stay home until your youngest child has reached the age of five. That's my plan.
I was in a commercial plane the other day and had an unusual experience during the takeoff. The pilot pulled the nose up, realized he did not have enough air speed, put the nose back down, waited about 10 seconds and then "rotated" again. I thought I was going to wet my pants. No one else around me seemed the least be worried. Sometimes it's better to be ignorant. This episode would not have been that noteworthy expect that the plane was 3 hours late taking off because the crew had not had the required time off between flights. So this crew might have been, shall we say, fatigued. Guess what the #1 cause of airplane accidents is - fatigue combined with schedule pressure.
Why would anyone want to do this? Is it just me? I recently configured a nice little router from Compatible Systems. It was inexpensive, high quality and it did not have a C: drive. Why would I allow one of the 1,000,000 things which can go wrong on an NT box to jeopardize my routing? Routing needs to be like the phone system - always available. Also, good NT boxes are expensive - good routers are not. I'd pick a nice little router box over NT.
Last months edition was a little light. What can you expect for free? I'll try and be a little more verbose as the summer wanes and we move into the fall. Stay tuned. I may also invite a few guest speakers in.
Is it me or did June just fly by? I blinked and it was gone. Perhaps it's the new job or maybe it's too much fast living in cyberspace. Did you read about the woman who locked her children in a room and spend 22 hours a day on-line with AOL? Let's just skip over the obvious mental issues here and get to the really weird part. What could be so interesting on AOL? No doubt this woman would have been selling her children for cocaine if the calendar read 1981. I wonder if she'll sue AOL for not putting warning labels on their chat groups.