Re: OT: More Spam
On 22 Jan 2003, at 1:26am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Some, I haven't even told anyone about, so there's no way anyone can know that I can (or expect to) receive email at them. They have an MX record, which is all the spam robots need. The source ip also varies ... By how much? Are they all within the same netblock? ... I'm not sure how to determine if it's spoofed or not. You can't really spoof the source IP address of a TCP connection. (Well, you can, but the TCP handshake will never complete, making it rather useless.) You can hijack someone else's IP address or machine, which has much the same effect, as far as you're concerned. It leaves more evidence at the other end, but that likely doesn't help you much. It's highly likely that the domain name is spoofed. Almost certainly. Looks like I found an email address harvester. What I'm wondering, now, is how do you defend against this crap? It depends. Organizations who never (or rarely) communicate with anyone overseas often just block any mail exchanger with an IP address in Asia. There are systems out there that use heuristics to auto-detect harvesters and auto-block IP addresses or netblocks. Sounds like overkill for your situation. If you suspect you might want to communicate with anyone you blacklist, you could setup an auto-responder opt-in whitelist robot (just use caution with combining such with mailing list subscriptions and other robots -- mail loops and PO'd postmasters can result). (And from a legal or ethical perspective, would it be better to just remove the mx record altogether?) That is what I would do. However, be aware that if a domain does not have an MX record, but does have an A record, the RFCs say that a mail exchanger should try to connect to the IP address of the A record. Anyhow, I'm hoping someone on this list can offer some help in tracking this low-life down. All you can do to prosecute an attacker is to track the netblocks using WHOIS and attempt to contact the operator of the systems/networks from which the attacks originate. Anybody out there have experience tracking spammers? news:net.admin.net-abuse.email (NANAE) http://www.nanae.org http://www.spamfaq.net http://www.abuse.net (Network Abuse Clearinghouse) http://www.cauce.org (The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email) http://www.spamcop.net http://www.spamhaus.org -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Apache and LDAP questions
Hi all, I have recently set up a web server which auth's against my corporate LDAP server. Everything works great, the only caveat is that the LDAP server does not currently define groups. As a result, anyone within the company can authenticate to my web server. Not a huge problem, but I'd really like to restrict the access to just my group. I chose LDAP because I didn't want to maintain a password file, nor did I want to require users to need yet another pair of credentials. All this is currently maintained by the corp. LDAP people. I can, however, easily manage a list of user names within the group. Is there any way to use LDAP authentication provided the user name entered is also a member of group list maintained outside of LDAP ? Thanks, -- Seeya, Paul -- Key fingerprint = 1660 FECC 5D21 D286 F853 E808 BB07 9239 53F1 28EE It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing, but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Apache and LDAP questions
In a message dated: 22 Jan 2003 10:57:59 EST Kenneth E. Lussier said: Admittedly, I don't know much about LDAP, but what about this... Could you run your own LDAP server that replicates only selected entries from the Corp. LDAP server, and append attributes to the entries? Then you could do the authentication against your LDAP server and not theirs. I suppose I could, but that's a lot more work than I really want to encounter. I mean, I might have to get up out of my chair to plug a LAN cable into one of the many spare systems I have laying around ;) -- Seeya, Paul -- Key fingerprint = 1660 FECC 5D21 D286 F853 E808 BB07 9239 53F1 28EE It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing, but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: OT: More Spam
On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 09:05:19AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can't really spoof the source IP address of a TCP connection. (Well, you can, but the TCP handshake will never complete, making it rather useless.) Sure you can, if you can guess the initial sequence number for the TCP connection. That's why there's that one site with all those plots illustrating how predictable the sequence number is (somebody else probably has the URL more readily available than I). -- Bob Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] - We have to make a management decision. -- Jerry Mason, Morton Thiokol Inc., before launching the Challenger ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: gnhlug-discuss digest, Vol 1 #296 - 15 msgs
This is happening to the servers hosting GNHLUG. Same scenario - every 2 hours or so and all from john@... And he seems to come from open relays. I've had to firewall out some of the relays he's been using, but he's still chewing up megabytes/day in log files. I'll have to put another disk on that system soon. If this happens much longer, I'm going to have to get out the baseball bat. Subject: OT: More Spam From: Paul Iadonisi To: Greater New Hampshire LUG Date: 22 Jan 2003 01:26:32 -0500 So I have a bunch of domains, many of which I don't currently use. Some, I haven't even told anyone about, so there's no way anyone can know that I can (or expect to) receive email at them. Early Tuesday, I did my occasional check of my sendmail logs and found something I had missed. Since January 11 about every two hours, someone connects to my sendmail port and checks for about 30 random email address (presumably with the 'rcpt to:' smtp command). It's been getting slightly more frequent, now at about every hour and forty minutes. The 'mail from:' value is always [EMAIL PROTECTED] where domain.name varies at every attempt. The source ip also varies, but I'm not sure how to determine if it's spoofed or not. It's highly likely that the domain name is spoofed. Well, since I only host a few email accounts, none of john@'s guesses have had a hit, so no spam has actually been received. Rather than hunt down a bunch of IPs through arin.net and friends (though I did check one of them -- surprise, surprise, it's in China), I figured I'd set up sendmail virtual hosting to capture anything to my domain and direct it to a single valid email address so that I can have a little more to go on. Lo and behold, the spammer isn't spamming...at the moment at least. The attempt came in an hour and forty minutes after the last one like clockwork. And, as expected, there were no 'User unknown' messages in my maillog, but no email actually got delivered (yes, I did test it). Looks like I found an email address harvester. What I'm wondering, now, is how do you defend against this crap? As a temporary solution, since I don't currently use the domain for anything, I've set my mx record to 127.0.0.1, but I can't obviously do that with a domain that is in use. (And from a legal or ethical perspective, would it be better to just remove the mx record altogether?) I'm just so fed up. I'm beginning to think that Barry Shein of The World is right: however depressed we are about spam, we need to be more depressed. The spammers are winning. I've been looking at various spam defenses, argued about open relays, talked about to-rbl-or-not-to-rbl until I've been blue in the face. Spamassassin does about 11,000 checks. That's absurd! Anyhow, I'm hoping someone on this list can offer some help in tracking this low-life down. There's probably not to much time left as he's used domain names beginning with a through g and I expect that once he gets from h through z done, it might stop. Still, that probably gives me about two weeks, given the current frequency. Anybody out there have experience tracking spammers? - This mail sent through IMP: www.milessmithfarm.net ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Apache and LDAP questions
In a message dated: 22 Jan 2003 11:21:11 EST Kenneth E. Lussier said: On Wed, 2003-01-22 at 10:52, Derek Martin wrote: I can't say for certain, but I'm strongly inclined to doubt it. I can't recall having seen any sort of authentication scheme of any sort that allows you to mix credentials with some other sort of authentication. It's generally a one or the other deal... There are actually several mixed authentication schemes out there, but they are usually somewhat hacks. You could, for example, have a multi-tier authentication scheme where you first authenticate against a group file (using require group foo). If they pass that mechanism, then their credentials are passed on to the LDAP server for username/password authentication. Who knows... It might even work ;-) That's exactly what I'm looking for. Any pointers? -- Seeya, Paul -- Key fingerprint = 1660 FECC 5D21 D286 F853 E808 BB07 9239 53F1 28EE It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing, but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: OT: More Spam
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 9:15am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can't really spoof the source IP address of a TCP connection. (Well, you can, but the TCP handshake will never complete, making it rather useless.) Sure you can, if you can guess the initial sequence number for the TCP connection. Oh, yes, right. I keep assuming that broken software get fixed. You'd think I'd learn. :-( -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Apache and LDAP questions
On Wed, 2003-01-22 at 11:33, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's exactly what I'm looking for. Any pointers? Again, I'm not an expert on this, and I can neither confirm nor deny that any of my ideas will work (but the more I type them, the more people around me think that I am actually busy ;-) In your .htaccess file, try something like: AuthLDAPAuthoritative On AuthLDAPURL ldap://server/basedn?attr?scope?filter require group foo AuthType Basic C-Ya, Kenny -- Tact is just *not* saying true stuff -- Cordelia Chase Kenneth E. Lussier Sr. Systems Administrator Zuken, USA PGP KeyID CB254DD0 http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0xCB254DD0 ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Apache and LDAP questions
In a message dated: 22 Jan 2003 11:47:23 EST Kenneth E. Lussier said: In your .htaccess file, try something like: AuthLDAPAuthoritative On AuthLDAPURL ldap://server/basedn?attr?scope?filter require group foo AuthType Basic Yeah, the problem is I need a way of saying auth against LDAP, and if that comes back positive, auth against group. AuthLDAPAuthoritative is set to On by default, the problem is that it only allows other modules to be used for authentication if it *fails*, so you can have a multiple auth mechanisms as backups to LDAP, but I can't seem to find anything which allows supplemental authentication. -- Seeya, Paul -- Key fingerprint = 1660 FECC 5D21 D286 F853 E808 BB07 9239 53F1 28EE It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing, but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: OT: More Spam
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You can't really spoof the source IP address of a TCP connection. (Well, you can, but the TCP handshake will never complete, making it rather useless.) Well, I wouldn't call this useless, since you can accomplish certain (nefarious) tasks this way. --kevin -- Kevin D. Clark / Cetacean Networks / Portsmouth, N.H. (USA) cetaceannetworks.com!kclark (GnuPG ID: B280F24E) alumni.unh.edu!kdc ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Apache and LDAP questions
On Wed, 2003-01-22 at 11:49, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: AuthLDAPAuthoritative is set to On by default, the problem is that it only allows other modules to be used for authentication if it *fails*, so you can have a multiple auth mechanisms as backups to LDAP, but I can't seem to find anything which allows supplemental authentication. Use the Satisfy All directive. -- Tact is just *not* saying true stuff -- Cordelia Chase Kenneth E. Lussier Sr. Systems Administrator Zuken, USA PGP KeyID CB254DD0 http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0xCB254DD0 ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: OT: More Spam
If this happens much longer, I'm going to have to get out the baseball bat. Prediction: before January 2005 somebody will lose their life as a direct consequence of their involvement with SPAM. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: OT: More Spam
Bob Bell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: (somebody else probably has the URL more readily available than I). http://razor.bindview.com/publish/papers/tcpseq.html http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/newtcp/ Regards, --kevin -- Kevin D. Clark / Cetacean Networks / Portsmouth, N.H. (USA) cetaceannetworks.com!kclark (GnuPG ID: B280F24E) alumni.unh.edu!kdc ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Linux in Exeter Public Schools?
Folks, I'm Bill Cornell. This past year I've been off-and-on involved with the Rye school system's technical directions through SAU50. (SAU50 covers Portsmouth, Greenland, Rye, and Newcastle.) My focus has been on the computer network the school is trying to put in place. Keeping in mind that schools often raise money through bake sales, suppers and craft sales, I've had a pointed concern about getting the most value for the school systems money when it looks at computer networks. There have been several iterations of equipment donations to the Rye Public School System($$), but think the equipment piece is just the tip of the iceberg. As best as I can surmise these equipment donations have not been matched with ongoing administrative and maintenance support() or an organized program of software and hardware upgrades(). Now the town is struggling to find a way to make the program go without spending a huge amount of money. So, any tools, free hardware, free maintenance (...ha ha) or free software would be greatly appreciated. Is there some kind of loose knit gray market group out there who I can talk to? Your comrade in arms, Bill
Re: OT: More Spam
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 10:12am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: They have an MX record, which is all the spam robots need. Pardon my butting in, but what is an MX record? MX = Mail Exchanger. An MX record is a record in the DNS that designates the mail exchanger for a given domain name. Other mail exchangers then use the designated mail exchanger to send mail to the domain. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: OT: More Spam
On Wed, 2003-01-22 at 10:12, Erik Price wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 22 Jan 2003, at 1:26am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Some, I haven't even told anyone about, so there's no way anyone can know that I can (or expect to) receive email at them. They have an MX record, which is all the spam robots need. Pardon my butting in, but what is an MX record? MX = Mail Exchange. It is an entry in a domains DNS that tells servers where to send mail for that domain. C-Ya, Kenny -- Tact is just *not* saying true stuff -- Cordelia Chase Kenneth E. Lussier Sr. Systems Administrator Zuken, USA PGP KeyID CB254DD0 http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0xCB254DD0 ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: OT: More Spam
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 10:26am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However it is still possible to spoof the source, IF the attacker has control of some machine (i.e. a router) which lives in the path ... Well, this has turned into a semantic distinction. I generally consider spoofing to be a passive attack, i.e., one that does not require intercept or redirect anything. Anything that requires that sort of active attack I consider hijacking. After all, if you've taken over a router, and told that router to route packets for a given address to you instead, you've effectively *become* that address. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: OT: More Spam
Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: However it is still possible to spoof the source, IF the attacker has control of some machine (i.e. a router) which lives in the path the target host would use to send packets to the host which actually has the IP being used for spoofing (man, I hope that made sense). The attacker can listen for the replies to his packets on such a host, and generate the correct packets in response. [This would likely need to be automated to be fast enough to be of any use -- the router would essentially NAT the packets to the spoofing host.] Actually, you don't even need to take over a router. You don't even need to listen for replies either, assuming you sufficiently grok the target's TCP stack. Obviously, this attack is extremely difficult, making it extraordinarily unlikely that anyone will successfully launch it against you. But it /is/ possible... And indeed, this attack has been successfully used in the Real World. --kevin -- It's colder than a ticket taker's smile at the Ivar theater on a Saturday night. -- Tom Waits ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Apache and LDAP questions
Even basic HTTP authentication can do this. You have a passwd file and a group file. You can in your access setup do a require group blah where blah is the name of the group. I've done it before with mod_auth_pam to restrict certain interface pages to people in the admin group. Check this out for the details of using it with mod_auth: http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/core.html#require Derek Martin wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 09:22:50AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can, however, easily manage a list of user names within the group. Is there any way to use LDAP authentication provided the user name entered is also a member of group list maintained outside of LDAP ? I can't say for certain, but I'm strongly inclined to doubt it. I can't recall having seen any sort of authentication scheme of any sort that allows you to mix credentials with some other sort of authentication. It's generally a one or the other deal... - -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+Lr46HEnASN++rQIRAo68AJ9rQEyYd6inarUOh+/I65XoZDlunACgqGHQ Q77/XR3W8jXOoe9z74jfQbA= =f8bu -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: OT: More Spam
On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 09:05:19AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The source ip also varies ... By how much? Are they all within the same netblock? Nope. Quite a bit of variation. All the way from 12.x.x.x to 218.x.x.x. So far, 107 attempts from 59 unique address. ... I'm not sure how to determine if it's spoofed or not. You can't really spoof the source IP address of a TCP connection. (Well, you can, but the TCP handshake will never complete, making it rather useless.) You can hijack someone else's IP address or machine, which has much the same effect, as far as you're concerned. It leaves more evidence at the other end, but that likely doesn't help you much. I followed the rest of the discussion on this and I don't think this are being spoofed or hijacked given that they're all over the IP space. There *are* however a few sendmail messages that indicate the address may be forged, thought not that may (only three unique). What does that mean, anyhow, if it's not IP spoofing or hijacking? Organizations who never (or rarely) communicate with anyone overseas often just block any mail exchanger with an IP address in Asia. Which I am considering, but it kinda goes against my grain. Some day I hope for a way to identify these kinds of attacks at a network level and cause client on the other end to explode ;-). There are systems out there that use heuristics to auto-detect harvesters and auto-block IP addresses or netblocks. Sounds like overkill for your situation. Well, if it detonates the spammer's desktop, then it sounds perfect! If you suspect you might want to communicate with anyone you blacklist, you could setup an auto-responder opt-in whitelist robot (just use caution with combining such with mailing list subscriptions and other robots -- mail loops and PO'd postmasters can result). Awe, but that requires...work. I love solving problems, and even doing a little computer forensics, but I absolutely hate expending so much effort for so little gain as just when you implement one defense, the spammers get around it with another. The lawyer who spoke at the spam conference is right: make no mistake about it, the spammers are engaged in organized crime. (And from a legal or ethical perspective, would it be better to just remove the mx record altogether?) That is what I would do. However, be aware that if a domain does not have an MX record, but does have an A record, the RFCs say that a mail exchanger should try to connect to the IP address of the A record. Which is why I figured setting it to 127.0.0.1 would work better. For now, at least. But I don't have an A record for the actual domain, only two hosts within it. All you can do to prosecute an attacker is to track the netblocks using WHOIS and attempt to contact the operator of the systems/networks from which the attacks originate. Thanks for the input. I'll keep this list updated if I do happen to nab the intruder. -- -Paul Iadonisi Senior System Administrator Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist Ever see a penguin fly? -- Try Linux. GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
[gnhlug-announce] Quarterly Meeting Announcement - 29 Jan 2003, 19:30, Martha's Exchange
Details of the meeting: Who:Vince McHugh, Systems Support Manager NECS\Canon What: High End Linux Printing, using CUPS, Scanning and Imaging documents to a Linux desktop. When: 19:30, 29 January 2003 (Note, this is NEXT week) (Dinner @ 18:00ish - RSVP mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=RSVP ) Where: 2nd floor, Martha's Exchange, Nashua, NH Directions: http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/Marthas_directions Vince will expound up Enterprise printing, scanning, and imaging using Linux and the CUPS printing system Additionally, the Reluctant Co-Chairmen, Paul and Rob, will explain their new vision of GNHLUG and it's co-operation with Linux International to become the model Linux User's Group. Since this is a QUARTERLY meeting, there will be *NO* Nashua/MerriLUG/MEBDALUG/MELBA meeting tonight (22 Jan 2003) -- Seeya, Paul Key fingerprint = 1660 FECC 5D21 D286 F853 E808 BB07 9239 53F1 28EE Reluctant Co-Chairman, Greater New Hampshire Linux User's Group (GNHLUG) Reluctant Chairman, Nashua Chapter GNHLUG http://www.gnhlug.org Events: http://md.appropriatesolutions.com/gnhlug/lug_cal/month.php ___ gnhlug-announce mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-announce ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
remote copying
Good afternoon all, can someone tell me the best method to copy files from a auto mounting home directory, which comes from a Solaris box, to a linux box. I'm setting up a server on Dell Poweredge 4600 running Linux 7.3 which, when finished, will be where most if not all of our exports will come from. Right now we have cross mounting issues because virtually all of our Suns export a directory - some auto mounting and some through vfstab entries. I would like to do this copy and keep permissions if possible. I will start with my own home directory which comes from a host named g32s2s and copy it to our Dell Linux server and then change the auto mounting database to reflect those changes. Bob Robert Casey MIT Lincoln Laboratory 244 Wood Street Lexington, MA 02420-9108 781-981-3034 ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: remote copying
I would use rsync. -- Robert E. Anderson email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems Programmer phone: (603) 862-3489 UNH Research Computing Centerfax: (603) 862-1761 -- ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: remote copying
In a message dated: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 14:53:46 EST Robert Anderson said: I would use rsync. Not rEmacs? It has everything, including the kitchen sync ;) -- Seeya, Paul -- Key fingerprint = 1660 FECC 5D21 D286 F853 E808 BB07 9239 53F1 28EE It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing, but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right! ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: remote copying
Well you could run rsync from an emacs shell. But then again I'm sure we'll be getting a PERL solution soon. The other swiss army knife of Unix. (Although emacs could make the PERL look pretty too). ;) -- Robert E. Anderson email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems Programmer phone: (603) 862-3489 UNH Research Computing Centerfax: (603) 862-1761 -- ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: remote copying
Robert Casey wrote: I would like to do this copy and keep permissions if possible. rsync, tar, or cp -ax would seem logical. Does this have to be done at each boot or is it a one-time deal? -- Regards, | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | GNU/Linux: superior tools .| http://www.golgotha.net | for those who know how Randy| | to use them. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant)
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 4:32pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: P.S. Which opens up the discusson - what do you do if you want a permanent email address? Pay for it. You can register your own domain. That is a fairly safe way to do things. As long as you pay the bills, it is fairly unlikely you will ever lose the domain. Many registrars now even offer basic email forwarding services with your DNS registration. Alternatively, you can pay for an email address hosted by a third-party. I have an email address through iName.com (now Mail.com) that I pay some trivial yearly fee for. My theory is that a company that specializes in such services is unlikely to decide to alienate their entire customer base. Of course, if they simply go out of business, I still lose the address. Major services like Yahoo now offer email accounts as well. They are even more unlikely to change their domain name. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do | | not represent the views or policy of any other person or organization. | | All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: remote copying
This was on a tech site but I have never used it: Robin Hurd 16 Dec 2002, Rating 3.83 (out of 5) This tip will allow you to copy directory trees without worrying about ownerships, permissions, etc. (Note: This command is good for Unixes without a recursive copy command) The FIND command will list the files which are then piped into the CPIO command to copy them. Check the manual pages of CPIO for an explanation of the options. Code # cd # find . | cpio -pVmud I used this piped tar command to do all mine but you have to su to the user to keep permissions. You may be able to keep permissions with the right tar flags. Make sure the user is off ever machine before the auto mount switch. I do a du -sk . before and after as a close check ( the size given to the dir pointer throws it off a little ) the tar dies in broken pipe if there is a syntax error and the log is a way to see how far it goes ( and a record for you when somethings missing ) The date is not in the log but gives you an idea of how long it takes with your network. The new dir is owned by the user and I su'd to him in his old dir. Any machine where he has anything left running will keep using the old auto mount till killed and you umount his old home. I had the users do df -k . on all machines first ( .bashrc ) date ; tar cf - . | ( cd /vol0/home4/newuserdir ; tar xvf - ) /tmp/logfile.txt ; date I have a document I can clean up if you like, just email me off line. Peter Finlay Cadence Design Systems Lowell, MA 01851 [EMAIL PROTECTED] W 978.441.4366 -Original Message- From: Robert Casey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 2:44 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: remote copying Good afternoon all, can someone tell me the best method to copy files from a auto mounting home directory, which comes from a Solaris box, to a linux box. I'm setting up a server on Dell Poweredge 4600 running Linux 7.3 which, when finished, will be where most if not all of our exports will come from. Right now we have cross mounting issues because virtually all of our Suns export a directory - some auto mounting and some through vfstab entries. I would like to do this copy and keep permissions if possible. I will start with my own home directory which comes from a host named g32s2s and copy it to our Dell Linux server and then change the auto mounting database to reflect those changes. Bob Robert Casey MIT Lincoln Laboratory 244 Wood Street Lexington, MA 02420-9108 781-981-3034 ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: permanent email address
Hewitt Tech said: P.S. Which opens up the discusson - what do you do if you want a permanent email address? I'm signed up at bigfoot and will likely re-subsribe from that email/domain address. I got my address, [EMAIL PROTECTED] at http://www.register.com. $35 for 2 years. I redirect it to whatever my real email address is. I also get the tom.buskey.name domain which I can add to and edit at the above web site. They also have a www.tom.buskey.name which forwards to your real web site though they put their wrapper around it :-( I've been very happy with it. A friend of mine registered for a .name through someone else (I forgot the name, but they're one of the originals, Net Sol???) before I did. He didn't get it until after I got mine and has had some problems with it. -- --- Tom Buskey ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: permanent email address
P.S. Which opens up the discusson - what do you do if you want a permanent email address? I'm signed up at bigfoot and will likely re-subsribe from that email/domain address. I absolutely concur with what others have said about getting your own domain name. I've been lucky: my well.com address is older than my daughter, as it turns 15 in April; nevertheless, rumors of Salon, and, thus, the WELL doing poorly have me worried that some day The Demise may occur. In the meantime, my flyingtoasters.net domain is mine for the foreseeable future, and unlikely to change. What the others haven't mentioned is that if you ask real purdy, -and- have a broadband connection, -and- know someone with a static connection, you can sometimes talk them into some sort of dynamic DNS arrangement, and have your domain in your house. I've managed to set this up twice, now, through small-business-owning acquaintances who were willing to serve my DNS info. I know that there are also places such as dyndns.com who do it for a relatively minimal fee, though probably not as cheaply as some of the less expensive registrars. My overly verbose $.02 worth, -Ken ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: How many folks who use ATTBI realize they'll probably need to change their email addresses *again*!
I had not heard about the prices going up. I know the raised them recently if you did not have cable tv as well, but if they keep raising the price, I may investigate Earthlink or dial up till something else comes available in my area. Unfortunately ATT have a monopoly in my area as there is not DSL. Jeff There are also hints that they will be raising prices again. Considering that ATT just did this within the last couple of months, it's a bit amazing. Maybe they subscribe (no pun intended) to the What the market will bear school of marketing. Maybe they haven't heard that a lot of high tech folks aren't working just now and that their accounts may dry up a lot faster than anticipated. -Alex P.S. Actually it's been so cold lately maybe hell is freezing over... ;^) - Original Message - From: Jefferson Kirkland [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Hewitt Tech [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 4:38 PM Subject: Re: How many folks who use ATTBI realize they'll probably need to change their email addresses *again*! I had to call ATT after they turned off all of my email accounts, stating that my accounts were inactive due to a complete screw up on their end. I know, total shocker. It was at that time that they told me that I would be changing as of the first week in February, but I have not seen any notification go out. Ya think they would tell everyone, but obviously things will not change with the new ownership. Jeff At 04:32 PM 1/22/2003 -0500, Hewitt Tech wrote: I certainly was aware that Comcast had bought ATT broadband. For some reason I assumed that since ATT owned the ATTBI.COM domain name that customers wouldn't need to change their email addresses. But apparently that's not true. Has anyone heard anything different? Given that we had to switch addresses this past February as a result of the lost mediaone.net domain name it seems particularly nasty to need to do it again a year or so later... -Alex P.S. Which opens up the discusson - what do you do if you want a permanent email address? I'm signed up at bigfoot and will likely re-subsribe from that email/domain address. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: How many folks who use ATTBI realize they'll probably need to change their email addresses *again*!
I'm not positive they're going to raise rates. They say on their web page that they will be considering services and pricing whatever that means. -Alex - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Hewitt Tech [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 6:55 PM Subject: Re: How many folks who use ATTBI realize they'll probably need to change their email addresses *again*! I had not heard about the prices going up. I know the raised them recently if you did not have cable tv as well, but if they keep raising the price, I may investigate Earthlink or dial up till something else comes available in my area. Unfortunately ATT have a monopoly in my area as there is not DSL. Jeff There are also hints that they will be raising prices again. Considering that ATT just did this within the last couple of months, it's a bit amazing. Maybe they subscribe (no pun intended) to the What the market will bear school of marketing. Maybe they haven't heard that a lot of high tech folks aren't working just now and that their accounts may dry up a lot faster than anticipated. -Alex P.S. Actually it's been so cold lately maybe hell is freezing over... ;^) - Original Message - From: Jefferson Kirkland [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Hewitt Tech [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 4:38 PM Subject: Re: How many folks who use ATTBI realize they'll probably need to change their email addresses *again*! I had to call ATT after they turned off all of my email accounts, stating that my accounts were inactive due to a complete screw up on their end. I know, total shocker. It was at that time that they told me that I would be changing as of the first week in February, but I have not seen any notification go out. Ya think they would tell everyone, but obviously things will not change with the new ownership. Jeff At 04:32 PM 1/22/2003 -0500, Hewitt Tech wrote: I certainly was aware that Comcast had bought ATT broadband. For some reason I assumed that since ATT owned the ATTBI.COM domain name that customers wouldn't need to change their email addresses. But apparently that's not true. Has anyone heard anything different? Given that we had to switch addresses this past February as a result of the lost mediaone.net domain name it seems particularly nasty to need to do it again a year or so later... -Alex P.S. Which opens up the discusson - what do you do if you want a permanent email address? I'm signed up at bigfoot and will likely re-subsribe from that email/domain address. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant)
Actually, I do both. I have registered a couple of domain names and one is hosted. I also decided that the bigfoot service for $9.95/quarter was reasonable and I've already asked our online friends to use my bigfoot address. I was just curious about who was using what and for how much. As much as I like high speed access I'm not willing to pay increasingly large monthly fees for progressively poor service. I have also read in a couple of places that ATT was in the process of putting in bandwidth restrictions. As luck would have it I have friends/relatives who love their downloaded music and I can piggyback on their service occasionally to get patches/service packs etc.. -Alex - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Greater NH Linux User Group [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 4:49 PM Subject: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant) On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 4:32pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: P.S. Which opens up the discusson - what do you do if you want a permanent email address? Pay for it. You can register your own domain. That is a fairly safe way to do things. As long as you pay the bills, it is fairly unlikely you will ever lose the domain. Many registrars now even offer basic email forwarding services with your DNS registration. Alternatively, you can pay for an email address hosted by a third-party. I have an email address through iName.com (now Mail.com) that I pay some trivial yearly fee for. My theory is that a company that specializes in such services is unlikely to decide to alienate their entire customer base. Of course, if they simply go out of business, I still lose the address. Major services like Yahoo now offer email accounts as well. They are even more unlikely to change their domain name. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do | | not represent the views or policy of any other person or organization. | | All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: How many folks who use ATTBI realize they'll probably need to change their email addresses *again*!
I certainly was aware that Comcast had bought ATT broadband. For some reason I assumed that since ATT owned the ATTBI.COM domain name that customers wouldn't need to change their email addresses. But apparently that's not true. Has anyone heard anything different? Given that we had to switch addresses this past February as a result of the lost mediaone.net domain name it seems particularly nasty to need to do it again a year or so later... Yah, well ATT kept the mediaone.net domain for a LOT longer then I expected and I worked there :) They switch everybody on the inside over way before anybody else. They've been using cable.comcast.com for months now. The thing that really sucked was after all the crap of having people switch the guy that got the mediaone.net domain offered forwarding. P.S. Which opens up the discusson - what do you do if you want a permanent email address? I'm signed up at bigfoot and will likely re-subsribe from that email/domain address. Buy a domain, it's cheap enough, then find a service like easyDNS or ZoneEdit to do forwarding for free.. Or get a friend that can host domains to do it.. I host guster.net for a buddy and some friends use scootz.net for email. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: How many folks who use ATTBI realize they'll probably need to change their email addresses *again*!
There are also hints that they will be raising prices again. Considering that ATT just did this within the last couple of months, it's a bit amazing. Maybe they subscribe (no pun intended) to the What the market will bear school of marketing. Maybe they haven't heard that a lot of high tech folks aren't working just now and that their accounts may dry up a lot faster than anticipated. Yes, they will be raising prices again. The last price hike was odd, if you got super basic cable and a cable modem it worked out cheaper then just the cable modem alone. I think they realized people were pulling off filters after getting internet service installed and were just getting basic cable for free. Between that, their new TOS/AUP and changing the upstream from 386 to 255 without telling anybody made me glad I switched to DSL :) ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Fw: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant)
I meant to send this to the list, sorry you'll see it twice Travis ;^) -Alex - Original Message - From: Hewitt Tech [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Travis Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 10:04 PM Subject: Re: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant) I recall reading an article in the Globe that suggested at least a couple of reasons that DSL resellers went under. Specifically Harvard Net complained that they would sell DSL to a customer and put an order in with Verizon. Verizon would then wait two months and say Gee, we don't have the right equipment for that line and no can do. Needless to say, the Harvard Net people were left with egg all over their face and a very angry non-customer. The other issue was the problem of lot's of venture capital looking for a very short term payback. The phone company has amortized their gear literally for decades. Various studies have shown that Ma Bell and the power utilities consistently pay their employees much better than the rest of private industry. That's because as a monopoly their pricing is not closely related to their costs. In Canada, various provincial governments pump money into infrastructure including telecommunications in hopes of attracting employers. They've been somewhat successful but I'm not going to argue that their system is better/worse than the American system. The Canadians have universal health care for ~9 % of GDP while the American health care system at last estimate (about two years ago) was costing around 15% of GDP and rising. The American system has 47 million Americans with little or no health coverage. Taxes in Canada run around 50% when all is said and done. In America taxes have been running around 35-40% but I suspect that the American system is becoming unbalanced with a few fabulously wealthy people and lot's of poor or nearly poor people who are progressively doing worse. I think there needs to be some kind of balance and it needs to be achieved politically. When politics breaks down you get the former Soviet Union. Russia hasn't got an effective revenue collection system and so the place is run more or less with the government acting like the mafia. See? I solved the whole thing! ;^) -Alex P.S. One other problem with this discussion - we really don't have access to the books for the companies in the telecommunications business. We don't know specifically what their revenues are (although ATT is supposed to have 2.5 million cable-modem customers) and we don't know their true costs. So yes, we know it's expensive to put in commercial grade comm gear but at $50+/month per customer I'd expect them to be making pretty good money if they amortize the expenses over say a 5 year period of time. The on-going costs are replacing broken equipment (I still have my Lan City cable-modem after almost 3 years) and support personnel costs (no idea how many they have and how much they cost). - Original Message - From: Travis Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 9:36 PM Subject: RE: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant) On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 9:04pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... There's no correction here ... Then please explain to me why almost every single DSL company has gone out of business. Because they're still need Verizon to set up the line for them.. They were very smart to do the following: 1) Be slow 2) Screw up JUST enough 3) just to much They did those to get people to hopefully switch to Verizon DSL, or at least ditch who they were with. And almost every? Please.. Covad is around, as is speakeasy and Earthlink. There's smaller places like MV, DirecTV's DSL service got dumped to push their two way sat service. If I go to dslreports there's still a ton of companies listed... The reason they stuck around.. They either built up their service slow (MV), they already had a good chunk of money (Earthlink) or they were a good alternitive to Verizon (Covad/Speakeasy). I found Vitts to be overpriced for the service they offered, and they came out of nowhere and magically had a ton of VC money to throw around.. They had the look and feel of a HUGE company. Speakeasy was around at the same time but not many people heard of them.. Who's out of business and who's still around? ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant)
It continues to amaze me how short people's memories are. It was not long ago at all that an Internet feed of the speed you get from a cable ISP would cost you thousands of dollars per month. Not that I am in any way defending the ATT/Comcast monopoly; I just don't understand how anyone can see a 3000% price reduction in the space of five years and wonder why service suffers. Did cheap, reliable, fast Internet access get added to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness when I wasn't looking? :-) It really depends on where you are.. Up here in the north east with super shitty old phone lines on the poles that is true, but out west you could get 128 ISDN line for the same price as a normal phone line.. That's not to shabby for 1995ish. I think the problem is that people feel it's like the drug dealer who gives you the first hit for free. I'm sure I speak for most people that have high speed access None of us want to go back to dial up.. EVER ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Linux in Exeter Public Schools?
Dear all: Wow! Quite a response. Thanks guys. Currently, my plan is to find out the name of the Technology Coordinator at EHS and start from there. As things go on, I can forsee the need for a meeting, especially if the administration is receptive. If the TC is unreceptive, then I guess we should try to put together a clear, concise collection of the advantages of linux and let them decide. A nice, descripte (but concise) document, with screen shots, might do the trick here. If all goes well, that packet should only be necessary for the school board.. I shall be in touch, Casey Callendrello Sent via the Exeter WebMail system at mail.exeter.edu ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
High Speed Internet costs (was: Email hosting)
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 7:26pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What *does* it cost to deliver high speed? Do you really want an answer to that? For the small DSL CLEC case, you have: Local loop charges. CO facilities rental. CO equipment. Data link between CO and ISP NOC (T1, multiple T1s, or even T3 or other *REALLY* high-speed stuff). ISP backbone equipment. ISP servers (DNS, mail, etc.). ISP NOC facilities charges. Test equipment. Support/service/administrative overhead. Upstream feed. When we resold Vitts Networks (before the went under) back in 2001, their up-front cost to open a CO was between $200,000 and $300,000. Each. I'm not familiar enough with CATV infrastructure to speak accurately, but I imagine the situation is similar, if not quite as bad. For that matter, I think copper/fibre is passé. It should be possible to use wireless and it ought to be dirt cheap. Dirt cheap? Why? Because nobody owns the airwaves? First off, the government owns the airwaves, and charges high prices to purchase rights to them. Or, if you prefer, you can have everyone operate in an unlicensed band (like the 802.11b stuff), and deal with the inevitable chaos that will result once serious usage picks up. Next, you've got to hang your equipment off local towers. Rental fees for such things are typically thousands of dollars per month. For most wireless data network equipment available for deployment today, you need line-of-sight or close to it. That's a hard problem in hilly New England. So you need more towers. See above. Finally, you've got all the NOC/backbone costs you have for any ISP. Wireless only gets you so far, and then you have to jump back onto the existing landline networks. I will say that I think fixed-wireless has the best potential to provide reasonably reliable, generally available, high-speed Internet access. But dirt cheap? Not if you want ISP to stay in business. When Mediaone delivered cable-modem service in our area they thought they'd be doing well if they got a 3% penetration. Pets.com thought they could make money selling pet supplies online. They were both wrong. I know there has been a big improvement in the speed of connections over the last few years but we're not exactly using 110 baud modems anymore are we? No, we're not. But other than the local loop, everybody's using the same kind of equipment they were using five years ago. As for the local loop, DSL and cable both require significant new equipment to be placed in the CO, completely outside the traditional infrastructure. How much would it cost to build the entire PSTN from the ground up overnight? How about the various CATV networks? As for dialup, margins on that are already razor thin. The only reason dialup is so cheap is that it takes advantage of existing voice telephone infrastructure, which was built over decades, and limits you to an absolute ceiling of 64 kbps per circuit. ... some Canadians were relating the cost of DSL and cable-modem in their areas. They were paying about 1/3 of what we pay. I don't know anything about Internet in Canada, so I really can't say one way or the other. But you might ask them what their tax rate is. Verizon hasn't exactly pushed DSL and most of the companies that depended on them to provide the lines were driven out of business. They went out of business because their estimates were it would take ten years, minimum, for them to become profitable. When that finally sank in, the people funding the whole thing got scared and ran. Suddenly, all these companies had huge debts and no cash flow. Verizon sure as hell hasn't made it any easier (believe me, I've got a special place in my *** reserved for them), but let's not be so quick to blame everything on the big bad phone company. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do | | not represent the views or policy of any other person or organization. | | All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant)
Ah yes, but why, after a pile of telecommunications companies went bankrupt laying thousands of miles of buried fibre-optics cables are we still talking about dial-up connections? What *does* it cost to deliver high speed? For that matter, I think copper/fibre is passé. It should be possible to use wireless and it ought to be dirt cheap. When Mediaone delivered cable-modem service in our area they thought they'd be doing well if they got a 3% penetration. One of their techs told me that in fact they were achieving 17% and higher depending on the town they were operating in. I know there has been a big improvement in the speed of connections over the last few years but we're not exactly using 110 baud modems anymore are we? Should I expect to pay $100k for a shiny 2.8 gig P4 computer? Ah the good old days, not! I agree, they are totally screwing everybody.. ATT does one thing right with the telephone over cable.. They give you ALL the features (3 way calling/caller ID/call forwarding/etc) with the cost of the service.. Why? Because it's IN the switch.. It costs them NOTHING extra to enable those features.. So why does Verizon make you pay for it? It's like when they charge (and still do in some areas) for touch tone dialing.. It's crazy.. The lines are there, they should use them. Sure, there's the extra cost of the equipment on each end (routers, switches, fibre gizmos) but the real expense is running all the fiber and that's all done. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant)
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 8:42pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As of my last bill, my broadband connection now costs almost double what it did a year ago ($60.99 vs. $35/mo). That's absurd. There's no incentive to keep them low. It's that simple. If it's so simple, why don't you go start a DSL company and make yourself rich? Prices are going up because the market is correcting itself to represent the true cost of delivering the services. Frankly, I think $60/month is still low. All those carriers offering DSL at $50/month were pricing themselves right out of business. And that's exactly what happened. An associate of mine had their electric meter, an old mechanical model, seize up. The power company saw their usage as zero for several months, resulting in some very low power bills. Of course, the power company eventually realized what was going on, replaced the meter, and now they have to pay for their electricity again. They didn't go to the power company and say, Hey, you were giving it away for a couple months, why do I have to pay for it again? The same principle applies here. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do | | not represent the views or policy of any other person or organization. | | All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant)
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 9:04pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... There's no correction here ... Then please explain to me why almost every single DSL company has gone out of business. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do | | not represent the views or policy of any other person or organization. | | All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant)
I never said it was cheap ... [ then, later on in the same paragraph ] ... Cable Internet should be dirt cheap for them to provide ... Which is it? Cheap to get started from SCRATCH.. ATT already has a HUGE setup already in place reselling T's and having peers so they didn't even have to do any of that. ... but ATT didn't build up huge cash reserves by losing money. Indeed. So you expect that to change? You expect them to lose money on their new data services, just because they're such nice guys? Lose money on what? They already have big fat pipes in place, and running all that is where the real initial cost is.. They do after all own the lines it's not like they're going to charge themselves like they do for anybody else that enters the market... I'm nowhere near as familiar with CATV as I am with DSL technology, but I know that CATV is largely a one-way, broadcast technology. Even digital cable is. You can duplicate the feed in the downstream direction endlessly. You can add 10,000,000 more subscribers and all you need are more repeaters. Digital Cable is very much two way, that's how PPV works.. While it doesn't need the bandwidth (or the spectrum space) to work, it does need a very clean return to work. They needed to run all new line for digital cable to work, just as much as they did for internet service.. Also, don't forget the phone service. Providing two-way packet-switched unicast data services is a *completely different* scenario. And cable over internet is *completely different* then the way DSL works. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: High Speed Internet costs (was: Email hosting)
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 9:00pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The exsiting ISP, be it Vitts, MV, Joe Blow local ISP, they should already have ISP backbone equipment in place for their dialups. Just because a business is already in possession of something doesn't mean you can call it free. Even if they aren't in-debt to pay it off, it has maintenance and depreciation costs. We all know how fact computers depreciate... At the most they'll have to upgrade their pipe or get an aditional T ... At the most? 100 customers @ 56 kbps = 5600 kbps = 3.6 T1's 100 customers @ 768 kbps = 76800 kbps = 50 T1's Obviously, since consumer services can be oversubscribed, the math doesn't really work out like that, but you should see my point. We're talking an increase in capacity of more than 1000%! When we resold Vitts Networks (before the went under) back in 2001, their up-front cost to open a CO was between $200,000 and $300,000. Each. Yah, and Verizon was already rolling out Cos for their DSL service, and there's all the other ISPs out there. There is no reason for one ISP to eat the cost of an entire CO No offense, Travis, but you obviously have no idea how DSL works. :-) Dialup is a simple service. You run a modulated signal over the existing voice network. When it goes into the switch at the CO, you use a digital carrier to bring it to the ISP, and their equipment demodulates it there. You can push up to 56 kilobits through a single voice channel this way. Why 56 kbps? Because a voice line is an 8-bit sample taken 8000 times a second, and they rob some of the high bits for line control. It's been that way since the T-carrier was intended in the 1960s. DSL does not use the PSTN *at all*. At most, the digital signal is piggybacked over an existing local loop, but it is separated out from the voice signal at both ends. At the subscriber end, you use those little filter widgets they give you. They use a bigger, multi-line version at the CO to split the voice and digital signals. The digital signal is hooked into a completely new piece of equipment. No existing voice switch here. We call this a DSLAM (DSL Access Multiplexer). Basically, think of it as a really big Ethernet switch and router, but for DSL. Oh, and BTW, none of the various DSL technologies, standards, and vendors work with the other guy's stuff, so you need to buy new equipment for SDSL, HDSL, VDSL, ADSL, DSL.lite, DSLwhatever, and so on. Now you need to build a data network between each CO to carry the data traffic between the DSLAMs and your NAPs. This isn't like the PSTN, where you can just use all these nice, existing voice lines. You have to pay for this infrastructure. You can't share it, like you can the PSTN, because this isn't a government-enforced monopoly, like the PSTN. So, basically, to be a DSL CLEC, you have to build your own local network. You also have CO rental costs. A CO isn't some two-bit ISP's machine room, with a handful of PCs and $500 UPS from APC. The telcos do things *right* when it comes to infrastructure. Redundant power throughout the entire building; massive battery banks; generators; secured access; onsite staff; the list goes on and on. It isn't cheap. The average annualized fixed cost for a DSL circuit is something like $2000, IIRC. That's $167 per month, for those of you keeping score at home. Before bandwidth charges. Before profit. The way cable modems work is TOTALLY different the DSL ... I know that, but I imagine they still need equipment. [Cable] is shared bandwidth ... *Everything* on the Internet is shared bandwidth. It isn't like your 768 kbps DSL line is a 768 kbps CIR right to whatever web server you're talking to. DSL goes into a DSLAM at the CO, and then you're on the same packet-switched network that everyone else is. You might have 768 kbps to the DSLAM, but you sure as hell don't have a dedicated 768 slice of the T1 feeding it. You know that Verizon has been getting ready for DSL stuff for years and probably would have been rolled out sooner if the cable modems came out sooner. The only reason they didn't start rolling it out was because they didn't have to and they could still milk people for second phone lines for dial-up modems. That may be true. I suspect it is. But it doesn't make DSL cheaper to operate. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do | | not represent the views or policy of any other person or organization. | | All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant)
Providing two-way packet-switched unicast data services is a *completely different* scenario. It isn't. Or, it is... but the same head end does both, over the same coax. So it doesn't matter. Exactly! They needed to redo the cable plant to offer just one of the three services they do now (digital cable/telephone/internet) so the fact that they get to do all of them just by upgrading one thing works out to be a bonus for them.. Or at least makes it cost effective. Plus, like I said in an early post, in a lot of the towns they needed to be redone anyway to fix leakage because of some FCC regs so the plant would have been rebuilt regardless of the new services. That's why some smaller towns got rebuilt before larger ones next to it, because they had a more leaky cable plant put in by some mom and pop cable company back in the late 70s early 80s. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant)
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 9:36pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Then please explain to me why almost every single DSL company has gone out of business. Because they're still need Verizon to set up the line for them.. Look, Verizon may be a bunch of incompetent morons (they are), but the fact that it takes them a month to provision a line doesn't mean everyone goes out of business. It's take years for DSL to reach general availability; an additional month isn't going to make a difference. Especially when you consider the fact that, back when there were a hundred and one DSL companies, Verizon's install time for their DSL was basically indefinite. You simply couldn't get it installed. You couldn't get a static IP; you couldn't host services; they even made it difficult to send email! Believe me, Verizon DSL was no competition to the other guys. No, the reason everyone went under was that they were charing $50/month for a service that was costing them $150/month. And almost every? Please.. Covad is around, as is speakeasy and Earthlink. SpeakEasy and EarthLink are both reselling Covad. As does XO, and even ATT in places. Most any national provider is reselling Covad. They're about the only ones left. And Covad is/was in chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and their financial future is still uncertain. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do | | not represent the views or policy of any other person or organization. | | All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: High Speed Internet costs (was: Email hosting)
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, at 9:00pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The exsiting ISP, be it Vitts, MV, Joe Blow local ISP, they should already have ISP backbone equipment in place for their dialups. Just because a business is already in possession of something doesn't mean you can call it free. Even if they aren't in-debt to pay it off, it has maintenance and depreciation costs. We all know how fact computers depreciate... The pipe to the net should be supported by whoever they're getting it from (in MV's case, BBN/Genuity). If you spend it right you can make it stretch a LONG time.. MV had a 486 as their email server until I think 2 years ago, they just replaced it with a $3k system that they expect to last them at LEAST 10 years.. Even replacing the hard drive every year, that's not a lot of money at all. Even if you tripple that the cost is still very small. At the most they'll have to upgrade their pipe or get an aditional T ... At the most? 100 customers @ 56 kbps = 5600 kbps = 3.6 T1's 100 customers @ 768 kbps = 76800 kbps = 50 T1's Oh yes, because you always have 100% of your customers using 100% of your connection 100% of the time. Plus add on seemless caching like ATT does to cut down on that.. Plus, I have a 768k DSL line, I rarely get that except from HUGE sites like download.com. Http doesn't take a lot of bandwidth. Most people use email and IM stuff... Obviously, since consumer services can be oversubscribed, the math doesn't really work out like that, but you should see my point. We're talking an increase in capacity of more than 1000%! Yah, but it's not like you need to upgrade it to that overnight.. You build as you grow. And for people like ATT what does it cost them to add some T1s? I bet close to nothing, since they own them. You also have CO rental costs. A CO isn't some two-bit ISP's machine room, with a handful of PCs and $500 UPS from APC. The telcos do things *right* when it comes to infrastructure. Redundant power throughout the entire building; massive battery banks; generators; secured access; onsite staff; the list goes on and on. It isn't cheap. You've never seen some of the COs around here :) The average annualized fixed cost for a DSL circuit is something like $2000, IIRC. That's $167 per month, for those of you keeping score at home. Before bandwidth charges. Before profit. The way cable modems work is TOTALLY different the DSL ... I know that, but I imagine they still need equipment. [Cable] is shared bandwidth ... *Everything* on the Internet is shared bandwidth. It isn't like your 768 kbps DSL line is a 768 kbps CIR right to whatever web server you're talking to. DSL goes into a DSLAM at the CO, and then you're on the same packet-switched network that everyone else is. You might have 768 kbps to the DSLAM, but you sure as hell don't have a dedicated 768 slice of the T1 feeding it. I'm just saying that because of the old Web Hog ads that Bell South used to run. They were very inaccurate. You know that Verizon has been getting ready for DSL stuff for years and probably would have been rolled out sooner if the cable modems came out sooner. The only reason they didn't start rolling it out was because they didn't have to and they could still milk people for second phone lines for dial-up modems. That may be true. I suspect it is. But it doesn't make DSL cheaper to operate. Once the pipe is in place, and the equipment is on each end unless something breaks what is the extra cost besides electricity.. For an EXTREAMLY simple example, if I toss a cat5 cable to my neighbor and throw in some cards and a hub after the cost of running the cable and buying the cards and the hub what do I have to pay for now if that cable doesn't break? ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: Email hosting (was: ATTBI/Comcast rant)
Look, Verizon may be a bunch of incompetent morons (they are), but the fact that it takes them a month to provision a line doesn't mean everyone goes out of business. It's take years for DSL to reach general availability; an additional month isn't going to make a difference. That's why when I was getting my MV DSL line provisioned it got pushed back a week.. TWICE so it was two weeks late.. And at the -SAME- time I got -THREE- calls from Verizon saying that they could get me up and running in 2 days.. Give me a break. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: High Speed Internet costs (was: Email hosting)
I know that, but I imagine they still need equipment. But the point you seem to be missing is that the equipment is THE VERY SAME equipment which runs the already profitable cable business. I'm not missing it at all; I'm assuming that isn't true. Look, to deliver television -- even digital, pay-per-view with on-screen menus television -- you basically have to send the same signal down the pipe to everyone. The bandwidth required to report the fact that Subscriber #14785983 purchased 'Daisy Does Dallas' is practically insignificant. I'm not talking about *just* the cables feeding the last mile, here; I'm talking about their entire network. Are you telling me that they built their entire digital TV distribution network to handle symmetric two-way traffic before anyone suspected the Internet would hit it big? Why the hell would they do that? Don't give me any talk about grand visions of packet-switched networking; the cable companies didn't see that coming any more than the telcos did. -- Ben Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do | | not represent the views or policy of any other person or organization. | | All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
