TTC Shelbyville – Technical Blog

Want to test your network for IPv6 readiness?   Go to http://areyou.v6ready.info/ .

Our Articles on IPv6

Also see the countdown clock.   With all of the devices we have, tablets, laptops, desktops, servers, routers, phones and other devices, there are only so many left (IPv4 addresses)…

Comment form ARIN’s president

Planning IPv6

ARIN’s PowerPoint

And to add to this post – ARIN’s President and CEO

Very nice post. I’d add that you need to begin planning to have your public servers (web, email, DNS) reachable via IPv6. Talk to your ISP about getting IPv6 over your existing IPv4 service, plan how to add IPv6 addresses to your external servers, and make sure you review your security configuration for handling IPv6 traffic.

For additional information, you can look to ARIN’s wiki for IPv6 information:http://www.getipv6.info

/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)

Everything you need to know about IPv6.

Here’s a way to test your Firewall (hardware) for IPv6 compatibility Link (see how to interpret your results)

Preparing for IPv6 is very important at this time.   Early implementation will be the key to successfully making this transition.

All you have to do according to the article is run the dig command (there is a dig program for Windows).

; <<>> DiG 9.5.0-P2 <<>> hk ns@203.119.2.18
;; global options:  printcmd

;; Got answer:;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 746
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:;hk. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:hk. 360000 IN CNAME hk.connectify.local.hk. 86400 IN A 203.119.2.28
;; Query time: 9 msec

;; SERVER: 192.168.2.1#53(192.168.2.1)

;; WHEN: Wed Jun 30 22:06:52 2010;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 73
;; Got answer:;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 75
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION
:;ns\@203.119.2.18. IN A
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:. 10800 IN SOA a.root-servers.net. nstld.verisign-grs.com. 2010063001 1800 900 604800 86400
;; Query time: 3240 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.2.1#53(192.168.2.1)
;; WHEN: Wed Jun 30 22:06:55 2010
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 108
Planning for IPv6

IPv6 Can You Confuse Me Anymore

Archos 7 – another Droid tablet  (9″ tablets are available)

Features

• 8 GB capacity for about 4000 songs, 80,000 photos, or seven full-length movies (expandable to 32 GB)
• Seven hours of video or 42 hours of audio on a single charge
• Seven-inch TFT LCD touchscreen with 800×480 pixel resolution, 16m colors
• Supports H.264/MPEG-4/Real video codecs in AVI, MP4, MKV, MOV, and FLV file formats; MP3, WMA, WAV, APE, OGG, FLAC
• One-year limited warranty

Technical Details

• Storage:: 8 GB Flash as well as expandable through a microSDHC Slot
• Capacity:: Up to 7 movies, 80,000 photos or 4,000 songs
• Display:: High-resolution touchscreen, 800×480 pixels, 7-inch TFT LCD, 16 million colors with a virtual keyboard
• Video Playback:: H.264 up to 720p resolution – 30 fps / 2.5 Mbps.; MPEG-4 up to 720p resolution – 30 fps / 6 Mbps.; Realvideo up to 720p resolution – 30 fps / 2.5 Mbps. With the aforementioned codecs, the device can play video files with the following extensions: .avi, .mp4, .mkv, .mov, and .flv M-JPEG (Motion JPEG Video) in QVGA resolution
• Audio Playback:: MP3, WMA (non protected), WAV3, APE, OGG, FLAC, AAC3
• Photo Viewer:: JPEG, BMP, GIF
• Interfaces:: USB 2.0 Slave (Mass Storage Class [MSC]); USB 2.0 Host (Mass Storage Class [MSC] – connects a mass storage device or keyboard and mouse [adapter micro B/A sold separately]); Micro SDHC card
• Communication Protocols:: Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n)
• Other Features:: Two built-in speakers; built-in leg stand; built-in Microphone; composite video output (cable sold separately)
• Power source:: Internal—Lithium Polymer battery; External—Power adapter/charger
• Battery Life:: Music playback time—up to 42 hours; Video playback time—up to 7 hours
• Compatibility:: Microsoft® Windows® XP, Vista, 7 or higher, Mac OS or Linux in mass storage mode
• Computer Interface:: USB 2.0 interface

The Archos 9 PC Tablet is also available.

Archos

The Dell Streak will be a 5″ Android Tablet.   As technology changes, there will be an assortment of Laptops, Netbooks, Tablets and phones.

• 5 inch Screen -WVGA (800×480) b
• 1GHz Snapdragon ARM-based mobile processor
• 5 MP Camera
• Front Facing Camera – Video Chat
• Replaceable battery
• A 3.5mm headphone jack
• Integrated 3G + Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + Bluetooth 2.1
• UMTS / GPRS / EDGE class 12 GSM radio with link speeds of HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
• Micro SD slot expandable up to 32GB.
• over 40,000 apps

• Microsoft Exchange connectivity- through TouchDown
• Google Voice support
• Integrated Google Maps with voice-activated search.
• Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

Want to Edit YouTube Videos?  PC Magazine has a good article on how to do just that.

Hands-On with YouTube Video Editing – How To Buy Video Editing Software Roundup | PCMag.com.

What exactly is a honeypot?   A honeypot is a non critical computer that has software on it that allows the monitoring of users who are on your network or if the honeypot has a public ip address, it can be used to monitor outside users.   This in turn allows you to view the ip address of the ‘curious’ and possibly malicious user of your network.   By obtaining the ip address, you can in turn block the ip address at your ISP level or on your firewall.

With no installation required and free to use ____ allows you to place a honeypot on your computer.   By simply running the program and selecting the configuration you want, you can monitor users who try to ‘break’ into your computer.   If you select a webserver, you can create a folder on your computer and place a ‘fake’ database with names and html in the folder.   This decoy server allows you to see ‘who’ is trying to circumvent your network.  

Internally this allows you to track back users who may be navigating on your network.   With most network policies, users should not navigate or attempt to navigate internally.

You will have to open your firewall (software on the host computer).  The configuration below shows port 80 open (webserver) and port 7 (ICMP or ping).

When configuring a webserver, you will have to create the folder wwwroot in your c: drive.  You will also have to create index.htm, a simple webpage.  If you aren’t web savvy, simply open an office document, type in the information you want and save as an htm document (index.htm) in the c:\wwwroot folder.

When you return to the main screen, click on monitoring and your honeypot will minimize to the system tray.  You can monitor live by opening the program.

To test the computer’s honeypot, go to another machine and type the ip address of the honeypot host into a webbrowser.  Below you will see the computer’s ip address has been logged.   The green is the honeypot’s ip address and the red is the malicious host.

This honeypot software is free and from Sourceforge (direct link to download).

Developer’s website.

I often look for free quiz sites that challenge adults with reading, spelling and math.  This quiz site appears to be for kids but is designed for children and adults.  Excellent site that offers mini challenges and comprehensive exams.  Quiz Tree is an excellent site to review and enhance your skills.

Grown-ups Activities

Nitroreader is an alternative to Adobe reader.    This reader allows you to create (from Microsoft, jpgs and other files), annotate, place notes, sign, secure, strike,   and and place sticky notes to your pdfs.   Nitroreader is one of the best free readers on the web.

So you are hanging on to Windows XP.  Well the problem now is it is reaching its end of life support from Microsoft (July 2010).  Windows XP was truly a turning point for home users.  After 3 service packs and a ton of updates, Windows XP is being put away as an operating system that has reached its retirement.   With no security updates, will you continue to use it to bank and shop?  So is it not supported…well SP2 is no longer supported.  What does this truly mean?  The end is coming.

Basically, it means that Microsoft will no longer update your operating system with enhancements, or more importantly, security-related fixes. –  Paul’s Home Computing Blog

Information

Here’s an excellent post from Paul over at Paul’s Home Computing blog on Understanding Web Site Certificates.

An example of what he is talking about -

You can find more great articles on his new blog.

PRTG  Traffic Grapher allows you to monitor any device that has SNMP capabilities.  Free (10 sensors) for users or businesses to download, PRTG is easy to understand and monitors bandwidth and up-time of critical devices.  

An example below is PRTG before the arrival of internet users and after internet users.  PRTG has dozens of other features.

Flash Player 10.1 is available at the following on adobe’s download site. Older versions of flash should be uninstalled.

Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1 supports hardware accelerated decoding of H.264 video on Windows.    This add-on allows Windows systems that have supported hardware and drivers installed, thus providing enhanced video playback.

The experience is painless and flash does appear to be faster.   Is it more secure?  Security fixes have been applied but with any software, there will always be updates because there are always exploits with any software over time.

So will HTML 5 take off?  Of course, you can’t stop technology.   The internet will be a hybrid mix of flash and HTML5 …and don’t worry, some other code will come out to replace both.   There are always going to be changes…

Flash Beta for Android, Linux, Mac

We started using Immunet when only 6000 users were using it.  Unaware that Version 2.0 was out, I caught Bill Mullin’s blog and saw his excellent review.  Now with more options including and update option and a purchase option, Immunet remains free and is an excellent program that works with your antivirus.

Rick originally gave us a link for version 1 earlier in the year and noticed in May Immunet hit the 200,000+ mark.  (our May review).  Now after reviewing Bill’s article, and having great success with Immunet, it is time to upgrade to version 2.

DiskMax is one of the best utilities I’ve used in a long time.  It’s ability to clean your computer at different levels is an excellent way to keep your computer running efficiently and like new.   With its ability to scan other users accounts, this feature allows the cleanup without logging in as another user.   (UPDATE – How to enable the new DiskMax Deep Scan)

DiskMax offers the following features:

1. Automatically cleans the recycle bin
2. Cleans Temporary Internet Files include the major browsers, cookies, history, windows explorer’s thumbnail cache any error logs.
3. Clears out Windows cache to include debugging information, internet logs, help center log (caches) any dll caches and temporary files.
4. Cleans up Service Pack information in Windows Vista
5. Removes registry entries MRUs.
6. Clears out Windows event logs.
7. Removes all files of type log, old, prv, chk, swp, bak, gid, wbk, tmp and dmp.
8. Defrags your hard drive.

1. .

Other features include Microsoft Offices Installation Cache -

Many users never use the sample media in Windows – DiskMax helps to remove these files -

DiskMax also gets rid of the old Windows Update Files -

So how much on my laptop after the initial scan?  An additional 600 mb of files -

The software also clears Form Data and optimizes Firefox and Chrome Databases.

Event Viewer logs ( Remember use on non critical computers)

DiskMax is an excellent program that uses very little resources and gives you control of what you are cleaning.

To help protect consumers from this increasingly-common crime, Microsoft has joined forces with the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance (NCFTA), to develop the Internet Fraud Alert. More

Network-attached devices, paper documents, and your physical plant should be included in vulnerability scans, researchers warn-Looking For Vulns In All The Right Places? Experts Say You Might Be Missing A Few

Splashup an online editing tool for photos offers an excellent way for you to edit your photos.  With social networking and online capabilities, SplashUp is an excellent resource to work with your pictures.

iPhone Sales Forecast to Hit 100 Million by 2011.

Many people will ask me if a specific website is safe.   Norton Safe Web allows user to query a website to check to see if it is safe.   So if you see a website on a social site, email or on the web, you can copy and paste the web address and paste it on Norton Safe Web.