Karim's Blog

ISP Security Sucks

karimkhowaja — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:40:11 +0000

We have recently shifted to our new office place with a bigger space and multi-floured area… Though we had a plan to move our current internet infrastructure to our new office place but we also made plans from long before to have a turbo dedicated fiber connection with CIR (Committed Information Rate) Bandwidth, for that i purchased a CISCO 877 BGP Supportable router with Advanced IP Services IOS. It was the test of my luck, as i really had no idea about these routers and their IOS before having them working at my place, this made me more enthusiastic to study more and more about how it works and what steps i need to follow to get it working. I contacted a couple of vendors to get he quotes and estimated delivery time, from them i chose the most feasible one with the minimal rates and the most realistic delivery time. Once i got the router that was suggested by the best ISP of Pakistan (so called) Cybernet. To save my company from paying the royalty to Cybernet by purchasing router from them, i seek their help to get one from market, but my tension increased day by day as i didn’t got positive reply from Cybernet and once i bought the router they told me that the IOS version it has is slightly changed from the one required. I got the IOS changed as per their requirements, but when after a month they came for deployment they diagnosed that the IOS is again wrong, they took the router and kept it with them for a couple of days trying all the IOS (Corrupted Images) they had failing in successful up-gradation. I got my router back with the comments from one of the Cybernet representative that they had no luck in getting through the IOS, finally i paid extra bucks to our vendor to get another IOS on it.

After doing all this, i was ready to get it deployed. They took a couple of hours to configure it as there was some issues from their NOC. After deployment they asked me to test it out but hell that CIR was working as a lame shared bandwidth. It provided me 20 – 30 KB downloading speed while i had 256 KB (2 Mbps) CIR bandwidth… Holly Cow…. Each time i have contacted them regarding this issue they have asked me to increase the number of bandwidth and get proper bandwidth. We connect our VPN to our US office through this link, can VPN tunnel be a multi-connection? We use our VPN connection to get our updated repos and to perform different check-in and check-out operations, but as it can not be a multi-connection tunnel we get really sucking speed of 20 – 30 KB (around 256 Kbps). Is it what i am paying them $440 for 2 Mbps CIR and fiber rent of about $200??? Besides my account manager also left Cybernet and switched to Mobilink, so i remained without manager for more than a month and no buddy was there to listen to my complains and issues, poor me was shouting like anything to seek help to rectify my grief but it went without luck.

Recently i faced a fu**en issue in my network, my users were being assigned IPs from a 10.0.0.1 Server, but we don’t have any such server. My guess was if someone has started some server on his PC that is allocating us DHCP or it might be from some virtual machine that has DHCP server enabled. But it was a matter of great importance and critical, as it was effecting one after another user and disturbing network with each twinkle of eye. I started my investigating by distributing network into chunks and figuring out whats going around in that part. Soon i found the cause of the problem, the issue was the DHCP server of famous TV Channel ARY was assigning us IPs. How can ARY assign us IPs? This is the interesting part, the network of ARY was using services from Garry’s Net, and simultaneously it was using services from Cybernet also. ARY was some how mixed with our network due to the problem from NOC of Cybernet, and all their local shares were accessible by us. As being a responsible citizen, and a responsible IT Manger, i contacted Cybernet and informed them about the blunder that was happening, and similarly i also informed Garry’s net about what issues i was facing. Can you imagine the good new? The good news was i was able to access the internet from the ISA server at ARY TV network and i was getting Gerry’s net IP address, isn’t it amazing? I being the customer of Cybernet utilizing services of Gerry’s net using the same fiber link provided by Cybernet and being able to access other’s network. I informed Cybernet to rectify the issue, till that time i disconnected the link so that i could protect my network from external access.

For the whole night i was on phone talking to the support and getting my issue resolved, at the end of the day they had linked two networks of ARY that was creating problem. Finally Cybernet send me an email telling me that they did xyz settings on my router to solve the issue, but no buddy took an authenticated responsibility on email but only provided verbal apology and accepted their fault…

For the above mentioned reasons i have made parallel moves to Mobilink, it would be deployed at my side in few days. Lets see if it fulfills the SLA and provides me the committed required amount of CIR bandwidth along with an 98 – 99% uptime…

Flat Screen Monitor With Built-In PC

karimkhowaja — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:09:19 +0000

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Viewsonic Introduces Flat Screen Monitor With Built-In PC

Now here’s a product which I think is quite innovative: How about a desktop pc that is entirely built into the pc’s flatscreen monitor?

Yes, it had to happen at some point in time right? Viewsonic has introduced what in my opinion will probably become the future of the traditional desktop pc as we know it today.

The Viewsonic VPC100 All-in-One PC is essentially a desktop pc with all of it’s essential parts – the processor, hard drive and all the usb ports designed to fit into what looks like a flatscreen pc monitor only. So, in a nutshell…pardon the punn, the entire desktop pc which used to consist of keybord, tower case, monitor and mouse, has now become the keybord, mouse and monitor. No more tower case.

Off course something like this had to happen at some point in time, with manufacturers always exploring new avenues to make their products more compact, more user friendly. Now, having said that, one would think that the manufacturers may have compromised somewhat on performance and specs to be able to fit. Surprisingly, compromise is not a word that comes to mind when hearing about the specs of this machine. While the pc may not be classifed as one of the most powerful machines on the market today, it does not really stand back when it comes to performance. I would think that for the eveyday software and applications that most of us use, this machine would be adequate. So, what are the specs you ask?

Well here they are: The pc features an 18.5″ Color TFT Active Matrix LCD screen, with an effective display area of 16.1″ horizontal x 9.1″ vertical, and 18.5″ diagonally.

Resolution is 1366×768, with a contrast Ratio of 1000:1 (typ), 5ms (typ) response time, and a 1.3 megapixel web cam. It also features 2×3 watt speakers. An Intel Atom N270 CPU processor does all the hard work behind the uhm…scenes. Processing speed: 1.6GHz Single Core, FSB 533MHz, BGA. Chipset is an Intel 945GSE + ICH7M. Now for the interesting part – the system has a 1GB DDR2 SDRAM, Windows XP Home operating system and a 2.5″, 160GB SATA hard drive.

In addtion, you can also look forward to 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2x PS/2, RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet LAN, Earphone and Microphone jacks, and 4-in-1 card reader (XD, SD, MMC, MS). Without having listed all of the features here, we think these are pretty impressive specs considering the size of the device. So how have they done it?

Actually, if you have ever opened up a computer towercase, you would probably have noticed something right away – a fairly large portion of unused space. I suppose we can compare it with an old 1965 model car. If you’ve ever checked under the hood, you would also notice the same phenomenon – a large amount of unused space inside the engine compartment. These days of course, there is hardly any space for a mouse to even move around in the engine compartments of newer model cars.

The pc is now available at selected outlets and sells for about $500, which is surpising when one considers that any new type of technology or application of that technology is usually costly – at least at first. Not so in this case, it seems.

More info and detailed specs can be found here

Virtualization (MUET Lecture)

karimkhowaja — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:36:55 +0000

I remember my last lecture at Mehran University of Engineering & Technology when i was invited as a Guest Lecturer (IEEE MUET Chapter) to enlighten some modern aspects of technology that is being used in today’s IT Companies / Software Houses, presented to Director of IT, Dean of Electronics & Telecom, Professors, Lecturers of Software & Computer Systems Department, third and final year students. Before going on the stage I was quite a bit confused due to the high profiled people sitting in front of me from whom i have learned as being their student in my university era. I was in the memory lane of my days when i along with my friends GOF (Group of Four) and other few guys were very fond of exploring new technologies and learning new stuff, we used to be pioneers of our department to adapt, learn and practice new technologies and to teach others about it.

While discussing our past with a friend of mine who is Lecturer in the university, i was pretty sure that the current youth would be more enthusiastic than we were, as at our time there were a lot of gaps that needed to be filled @ MUET, but now MUET being one of the topmost engineering universities in Pakistan has solidified its foundation by equipping itself with high class infrastructure, excellent learning environment, and fantastic faculty. But now the ball lies on the student’s court… I prepared myself to answer from basic questions to advanced level expertise questionnaire with a very logical, easily understandable explanation and supported myself with a fully easily understandable Power Point presentation.

I started my talk in a boring way… the reason is my confusion was still with me… it took me 3 – 5 mins to cope up with all ambiguities i had in my mind, then my talk became like an adventurous walk-through for all the listeners, who listened to me very carefully with all their senses present their and turned their learning mode on. I enjoyed it a lot, as i have always been fond of teaching, my lecture took about 2 hours with a break of little while. The good new is i was quite interactive with the students including the highly profiled professionals who attended this, but it was weird that quite a few students and some teachers asked questions regarding how and what and remaining students were only answering me instead of asking that made me recall an old saying “If there are no questions in the class that means there are two reasons, 1. everyone is quite clear about what tough, 2. everyone is quite unclear about everything”… I assumed the second reason was correct.

At the end of all, i showed a demo to sum up what i just said, how it works and how to customize according to our needs. Summing up with thanks to everyone i finished…

[The real story begins now...]

As soon as i took of my shoulder mic and received the award of appreciation from the Directory of IT, i was ganged by the students seeking my help here and there regarding thesis, their projects, some issues etc… It really made me happy as i aimed to help them out with each and every thing that i know. I solved a few issues of students right away and for others i asked them to email.

[Conclusion]

The teachers and top management of university were quite appreciating… But i really felt sorry for the students as they are just wasting their talents, being dumb, being non interactive, being non initiative, by closing their minds and just going with the wind… I would like those students to come up, struggle and its the meaning of life and come up with something new something different and above all at least take initiatives, it is not the faculty who is not teaching, it the students who have turned their learning mode off.

Always Remember : “A mind is very dangerous thing to waste…”