Sitting here downloading garbage forever. Need some sort of security, then Respondus, then dreamweaver, and on and on and on it goes.
Blerg. Wish I had something to blog about, but I am too caught up upgrading. Really, though, this blog title was enough to carry me for the week, I think.
*** Update ***
BTW- I went with the linksys router. Is there anyway to get a window opened on my computer to see any and all router activity?
Tax Analyst
You’re BORED? What about me? Staring at your post and I cannot think of a single clever thing to say. Hey, I’m just trying to kill the last 7 minutes of this workday. I usually leave at 2:00 on Summer Monday’s, but one colleague has the day off and the other had car trouble so he had to leave early to deal with it.
OK…only 4 more minutes to go…that’s better…
Thanks, John.
Oh…Good luck with the thing-a-majigger you’re trying to deal with. If I knew anything about that stuff I would have been glad to help you out.
Napoleon
What do you know, the Republican FBI and IRS here in the Cleveland area had over 100 agents raid something like 7 or 8 locations, including the County administration building and the house of the head of the county Democratic party and several Democratic politicians, today (including a high up county elected official down the street from me – and here I thought Bush being in down the street tomorrow would be the big deal this week). So what do you think the fact I live in a swing state 99 days before a Presidential election plays into this?
Octavian
You should have gone with ubuntu.
dmsilev
Don’t know about your Linksys specifically, but most routers have a small webserver built in, with a bunch of pages giving router status and the like. The URL to use will be something along the lines of http://192.168.0.1, and the exact URL should be in the manual or quickstart guide or whatever.
So if you want to keep an eye on what the router is doing, just keep a browser tab open to the relevant page, and refresh it every once in a while.
-dms
Ted
Well well well, what have we here: [from the Knoxville News-Sentinel]
A wonder this guy didn’t try to target Obama. It said he is a big fan of the Confederacy and the “Old South”.
srv
Set your browser to 192.168.1.1. I don’t think there is an activity histogram. Something like Tomato will give you that.
srv
Set your browser to 192.168.1.1. I don’t think there is an activity histogram. Something like Tomato will give you that.
dan robinson
It depends on the router.
Most of them have logging facilities that can email logs for you.
Martin
Vista and Linksys? Were you afraid that an Obama presidency would give you nothing to rant about?
dan robinson
By the way, John, you got pissed off when you perceived that people were dissing Tony Snow when he passed.
Does it go against the rules of your blog to suggest that the doctors who operate on Novak’s brain tumor use copper-jacketed scalpels?
Just wondering.
Napoleon
The sad thing is there is someone else out there just like him thinking about it.
Ted
I think you meant 192.168.0.1, right?
teak111
192.168.1.1
Login. Admin
pw admin
Ed Marshall
I think if you need to ask how to get a raw router dump, you aren’t going to be able to do make heads or tails of what it’s telling you.
What specifically are you trying to find out if it’s doing?
Ed Marshall
I think if you need to ask how to get a raw router dump, you aren’t going to be able to do make heads or tails of what it’s telling you.
What specifically are you trying to find out if it’s doing?
devilham
If you go into the linksys settings by typing in 192.168.1.1 into your web browser, log in, then go to the Administration tab, then the Log menu item, enable logging. That will track both incoming and outgoing traffic. I know you can also get 3rd party packet capturing software, but you might have to pay for it.
Ted
One of the things I have a habit of doing when watching footage of presidents, etc in rope-line crowds is watching and counting up their immediate Secret Service detail. I’ve never seen anything like what they have on Obama except for a sitting president. Usually 4 to 6 guys, and I’ve noticed, for whatever this means to you, that usually half or a majority of them are black, which is unusual. The detail on Hillary never looked nearly that racially mixed, though I haven’t paid attention to McCain’s.
calipygian
Conservapedia on Barack Obama:
Ted
That must be a Linksys thing then. I wasn’t aware it used that subnet for its address on the LAN side.
Napoleon
I have noticed how many black agents he has, and I have wondered if it was a very intentional effort to intentionally put him into a “blacker” crowd. I feel sick that I have become that cynical about the people that run this country.
jxn
192.168.0.1 is usually the IP address of the modem
Ted
I’m sorry, but even if you were AA’d into Harvard Law, they don’t just grant you the graduation status of magna cum laude because you’re a minority. Last I heard you had to earn that all the way.
calipygian
One of those guys you think may be a security guy is a tall, very physically imposing African American gentleman Reggie Love, Obama’s personal assistant, who is never more than a step or two from Obama. I thought he was security, too.
Adam
Generally Linksys routers go with 192.168.1.1 for their web interface.
D-Link and Netgear models normally go with 192.168.0.1 for theirs.
I’m not sure how common it is but some routers can also use 10.1.1.1
These are just the defaults though, which can be changed, and are set at the factory. They are normally used by the routers to set up the default gateway.
devilham
Ted, yeah, it’s a Linksys thing, my work uses only linksys’s for our companies field work, and I’ve configured a ton of them, well 75, but still, that’s a fair amount :)
srv
Oh, I have a hardware firewall/multiport first, then the linksys. But the WRT54G2 docs say 1.1…
crack
I did lol at that blog title.
192.168.x.1 is generally the gateway address of the subnet. It’s usually used as the internal IP of the router. Your gateway address can be checked by running ipconfig from the command prompt. I set mine up as 2, lots default to 1 (i think linksys defaults to 1, dlink defaults to 0).
rreay
jxn Says:
Unless it’s not. You know, like Linksys does.
John, the closest thing my Linksys has to activity monitoring is what devilham said above. It’s probably not what you’re looking for.
Ted
Maybe I’m way off base, but I read it as an effort to ensure that should anything happen, the SS can’t possibly be accused of deploying agents for him who had any hangups about taking the proverbial bullet (and, rarely, the real one). A sort of preemptive ass-covering.
Krista
I made the mistake of reading some right-wing blog comments about what’s-his-nose in Knoxville. They figure that (get this) he was actually a liberal, and that his note was dissing liberals, because he was trying to discredit conservatives. Evidently the fact that he was on food stamps bears this out, because in their happy little fantasy world, only liberals are on food stamps.
I can’t even begin to fathom that mindset that decides that everything admirable is conservative and everything shameful is liberal, and if a conservative does something shameful, why…it’s simple! They’re not a true conservative after all! It must be so very comforting to have such a convenient, black-and-white viewpoint on the world.
Dennis - SGMM
In order to find out your router’s address (mine’s a Linksys and it uses 192.168.2.1) you have to use the Run cmd and then ipconfig/all. Vista doesn’t show the Run command by default so here’s what you do:
1. From the Start menu click Search
2. Type Run
3. Double-click the Run shortcut
Once you have the Run command window start with step 2 below
1. From the Start menu select Run
2. Type cmd in the Run window field
3. Type ipconfig /all
The “Default Gateway is your router’s address. Open your browser and type in http://192.168.xxx.xxx (the x’s being your router’s actual address) and you’ll be able to log into your router. Mine will actually send me email every time there’s an incident. I didn’t enable that feature.
Don’t make yourself aware of all router activity. The router usually logs it so you’ll be able to look at the log if something unusual happens. Otherwise, you’ll get way more information than you need. Robo port scans alone are so ubiquitous that you’ll be buried under them in less than ten minutes.
Ted
Could be. I usually watch for the ear-piece, but a big black guy in a suit among the other guys might look like one of them.
John O
As a 25+ year Windows user, I’m sure glad I got a Mac. The learning curve was short, all the data files display fine even without the “Office for Mac” software, and I have a Time Capsule, which functions not only as a wireless router but a 500GB automatic back-up drive.
And when I’m having problems, as I did switching ISP/TV providers last month, I ask ol’ Mac to find me some compatible devices, and it does, then just walks me through connecting it. I’m about a 4 out of 10 in computer literacy.
I’ll never buy another PC, unless something really weird happens with Apple. Good luck, John. I assume you have reasons for what you did, and I’m more sure they’re good ones.
skippy
speaking of blog titles, i wrote a post today about obama’s prayer note on the wailing wall getting stolen and leaked to the press, titled “hello, god, it’s me, barack.”
Napoleon
I can buy that also. I flip back and forth in my mind over why it may be (of course it could be random draw).
Ted
My DSL modem is a four years old, and very basic. No switch, no firewall – just a modem. You can connect one machine to it directly, and the machine will get your assigned real internet IP as your machine IP. Since that would be stupid, the modem runs into a D-Link switch/router/firewall.
David
Why do you want to see ALL the router activity? That’s like trying to drink from a firehose. Do you have a clear idea of what you’re looking for?
Since you have a Linksys and you seem to want to play techie I would start by putting DD-WRT on it instead of the lame firmware it came with….
HeartlandLiberal
As others have pointed out, you should be able to use your browser to point at the IP number of the router. In fact, you need to do this in order change the default admin password, which I hope you have done. If not, and the router is sitting exposed on its outward facing side to the Internet on a public IP number, then the router is vulnerable to attack and hijacking. The 192.168.n.n IP numbers represent the inward facing, private IP range assigned the router as your gateway number. This number does not route out past your router onto the Interent, but is part of three ranges of numbers reserved as ‘private’, non-routable IP numbers. This allows networks behind a router use such techiques as NAT (address translation), assign private IP numbers to computers behind the router, and thus not require a public IP number of these machines. These has two main benefits. First, rapidly shrinking pool of four octet IP numbers. Two, better security for the machines sitting on private IPs behind the router. The router’s public facing IP takes the brunt of scans looking for vulnerabilities.
What model number LinkSys did you buy? That would help answer the question, one could then find documentation online that would help, otherwise its just generic suggestions.
HyperIon
Krista wrote:
comforting for them, scary for us.
isn’t this just proof of the existence of folks who are bitter and cling to guns and religion? seems like a perfect description of the shooter.
dan robinson
The cable modem is usually at 192.169.100.1. You can peek at the modem settings if you wish.
Jim Schimpf
Is this Link Logger what you want ? It’s a live window that shows connections in real time. Not free (USD $39.95) and is for XP.
Besides the Browser interface Linksys routers also have an SNMP Interface.
BH-Buck
My Westell uses 192.168.1.1 but, I can also type in “dslrouter” (without the quotes)
It’s all pretty much configurable under DNS.
Dreggas
BWAHAHAHAHA
Conservatively Liberal
WARNING! WRT54G ROUTERS COME IN SEVERAL VERSIONS!!! Before loading DD-WRT, make sure that your router can run it!
The WRT54G series is a great router (with v4.0 the best IMO), and some models can be modded to no end. Just make sure you do not get any Linksys pci/pcmcia/usb NICs or the router models that use the Marvel chipsets. They are an absolute POS.
Wikipedia has great links and info relating to the WRT54G and mods.
John Cole
what I can not figure out is why it is taking so long to install programs on the new system. I have 4 gigs of top of the line memory, a blazing video card, a top of the line sound driver, a terabyte raid array, and it seems to take forever when updating drivers and installing software compared to the Apple at work or the old computer.
John Cole
On the other hand, the Harmon Kardon soundsticks I just bought sound fing amazing.
The Moar You Know
And this could well be a problem. 32-bit Windows can’t address a full four gigs of memory, but it will try, via something known as “PAE” (Physical Address Extension) – and this can slow your machine down quite a bit.
phobos
Vista is a perfect example of something halfway usable being fucked up by insular marketing clowns obsessed with eyecandy.
They probably spent millions on color consultants alone.
Dennis - SGMM
Each and every iteration of Windows from 3.0 has required drivers and programs to write more files to more places. Many programs also ask (Or don’t ask and just do it) if you want to look for updates. Moral: once you have the system working the way you want it to do yourself a favor and make a restorable image of it (Acronis makes some good software for the purpose)on a nice USB hard drive.
Me? I stopped the arms race with Win2K (Windows 2000). This after years spent running everything from DEC Alphas to Power Macs, Linux to BeOS attempting to achieve bigger, better, faster, more. In the end, I found that taking a typing class improved my output more than any hardware/software combination.
Jon H
Anybody else hear McCain telling the kids to wear sunscreen, and think of Yul Brynner?
Tom65
Is this the part where I do my Mac superiority dance?
LiberalTarian
Funny how conservatives have been (literally) calling for liberal blood for years. When someone finally answers their call, they aren’t that interested in being the one on the other end of the line. “A liberal went out and killed liberals to make conservatives look bad.”
Right. And he read Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Bill O’Reilly to REALLY make it look good.
Funny, wot?
Ed Marshall
And this could well be a problem. 32-bit Windows can’t address a full four gigs of memory
He’s running vista so it’s not a problem with bit length.
Unfortunately he’s running vista and that’s sort of it’s own answer on why everything runs like shit.
Ed Marshall
What’s the processor, John?
John Cole
Intel Core(TM)2 Duo E6550 @2.33 GHZ
Ed Marshall
Are you overclocking it?
Ed Marshall
Well, I don’t want to void your warranty or anything but check your bios and tell me how your memory is set up.
John Cole
I am not overclocking. This does everything I need for work as is.
Ed Marshall
Your bios (depending on your motherboard) may have naturally overclocked it. Not knowing what your bios is you may have the ability to set the memory to sync and that could possibly be the bottleneck.
It could be a bunch of other things to :\
slippy hussein toad
If you were saying this sentence about George W. Bush or John McCain, you could finish it with “huge wads of family-fortune cash and influence” and it would be very true.
Also
All 32-bit Windows OS’s have a problem addressing all 4 GB of memory because drivers were reserved addresses in the 3GB and above range. Bit length is the only problem worth worrying about with memory addreses, and with 32-bit operating systems there will only ever be 4 GB total available, minus whatever you agree to block off for your own purposes. Windows’ architecture took those previously ridiculously-high addresses and blocked them off for drivers.
64-bit Vista probably addreses memory in the upper terabyte (leaving 15 TB for regular operations) or something silly like that. Don’t know. Haven’t researched it yet.
Vista itself runs very well on hardware that is designed for it. Hardware vendors had 5 years with beta builds and in my humble opinion dropped the fucking ball. Get an OEM system with all-compatible hardware, load it up with 3 GB (don’t bother with 64-bit quite yet), and it runs very well.
Defrag the drive periodically. Let superfetch do its job. Yes, you will always have almost no free memory. After you’ve used the computer for awhile superfetch has your usage patterns down and theoretically it should actually run faster.
I’ve run every Windows since 3.11 except for ME, and I think Vista is actually a few steps ahead of everything else. It’s smarter, got better architecture, and does things I actually want it to do.
But I think I’m in the minority yet. Not to worry. Most people said the same thing about XP for the first couple of years after its introduction.
AnneLaurie
I can’t even begin to fathom that mindset that decides that everything admirable is conservative and everything shameful is liberal, and if a conservative does something shameful, why…it’s simple! They’re not a true conservative after all!
“Conservatism can never fail — it can only *be* failed!”
And they call us *progressives* cultists?
According to a teevee news report, Mr. Addtempted-Suicide-by-Cop also blamed liberals for letting his ex-wife get a divorce by citing fear for her own physical safety. Stupid lie-bruls, letting a silly woman think she has some kind of nebulous “right” not to be abused in her own home!
Ed Marshall
Most people said the same thing about XP for the first couple of years after its introduction.
Yeah, how many Service Pack’s later :P
I’m not going to pretend to be a 64-bit guru. I’m working on a CCNA and I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. I had just gotten to the point where I could subnet in my head with good ol ipv4 and I get ipv6 sprung on me.
I thought about it after I typed that and realized that maybe there were some legacy drivers involved but like you said: Vista has been kicking around for years and all that hardware he has is supposedly vista-safe with it’s own drivers. There *might* be something going on at the application layer with certain programs but everything he talked about was fairly new and you would notice if old things bogged down in the crap and new software flew through like it should.
phobos
This is something entirely different. Advances in hardware up until now have mainly been driven by the gaming market. Microsoft tried to piggy-back on this by blackmailing that particular segment by tying DirectX 10 to Vista exclusively.
As it turned out, there was wasn’t a whole lot of “there” there when it came to DX10. Much hacking ensued, many rejoiced…and then went back to XP for general performance reasons.
olo
@ slippy hussein toad … who Said: Most people said the same thing about XP for the first couple of years after its introduction.
We said that becuz WinXP sucked until Service Pack 2 made it function well.
The same fate awaits Vista. The recent release of SP1 helps, but Vista is still missing much and is heavily bloated as well. M$ won’t do much about the bloat, but they will get it running well in time to discontinue/replace it.
BYW, after getting used to using the Win gui for networking in WNT, W2k, WinXP W2k3, etc., Suddenly in Vista, M$ moves everything around creating unnecessary confusion & angst. What a bunch of putzes.
The way into most routers is with a browser. List of popular routers with their default usernames & passwords can be found at many websites. Just google “default router password”
For total access to PAST & CURRENT network activity, a professional hardware or software solution is necessary. Most Syslog management software works pretty well.
Software router/firewall packages like Sygate or Wingate deliver outstanding performance re user logging & access control. If you have an older unbusy PC laying around, install a second NIC (network interface card and use it as a high end router.
NonWonderDog
Dennis – SGMM:
You are insane. The Start Search box is the run command. It does everything the run box does, and it additionally allows you to open all indexed files and directories by name (rather than by path) instead of just those in the %windir% directory. Just type “cmd” [Enter] in the search box, and it’s exactly as if you’d typed “cmd” [Enter] in the run box. Exactly.
And if you’ve got some weird aversion to the Start Search box, you can still get to the run box with [Windows] + [r]. It’s even a quarter-second faster than opening the Start Search box with [Windows].
The Vista detractors really confuse me sometimes. Start Search is an improvement, people! It’s a genuinely useful new feature! It’s not something you have to take great pains to avoid!
(Other windows key shortcuts: [Windows] + [Space bar] bring the sidebar to the top, [Windows] + [Tab] opens document flip, and [Windows] + [f] opens the full search menu. I still don’t understand why people brag about disabling or prising off the key.)
As to the 4 gig of RAM, 32-bit Vista does actually use PAE by default, but only if you enable data execution prevention in your BIOS. But even with PAE enabled, it will never allow programs or drivers to use memory outside of the normal 3 GB addressable space. This is because one specific very well known hardware manufacturer is too incompetent to write 32-bit drivers compatible with PAE memory addresses. Vista will supposedly use the extra memory for superfetch, but I’m not sure that that’s ever been confirmed.
PAE will never slow your computer, though. It will either work fine, or it will cause a blue screen when a Creative Labs driver loads. There’s really not any room for middle ground here.
With 64-bit Vista, there’s obviously no need for PAE. You shouldn’t use 64-bit Vista unless you need to, though–64-bit means a lot more than expanded memory addresses, and lots of consumer-level stuff doesn’t have (and will never have) 64-bit drivers.
NonWonderDog
Oh, and if you ever need to run a program with elevated permissions from the Start Search box, push [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[Return] instead of just [Return].
Vista takes a while to relearn, but I still think it’s worth it.
Martin
Well, the Mac takes a very different tack here – just drag the app to your Apps folder and it’s installed. By not running everything through installshield and just doing a regular OS copy operation, it’s pretty damn fast, but it’s in no way comparable to what Windows is doing with registering apps and such, which is slow no matter what hardware you are using.
Mr. Tactful
What I see:
Nerd nerd nerd, router nerd?
Nerd! Nerd dork.01.0811.nrd
Interesting part
Nerd, nerd nerd nerd nerd. Nerd nerd nerd nerd flow bit nerd data.dwb.
…Reads Hannity, Weiner-Savage…
Nerd nerd nerd gb ramrod nerd. 32 bytes of nerd=ultranerd, nerd nerd does not compute. Nerd?
…Right wing blog said bad=LIEberal, foodstamps=LIEberal, need more guns in church, UUs not Christian…
Nerd nerd nerd XP nerd > Vista nerd.
Dennis - SGMM
Comes from working in computing since COBOL, FORTRAN, and Pascal. Yes, I’m old. I’m so old that I only boot into Mandriva to get around MTP so that I can load my MP3 player.
Ass.
harlana pepper
Fixed:
harlana pepper Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
What is WRONG with THESE PEOPLE???
Mickey Kaus even has the audacity to mention Larry Craig in the same breath. And this:
The mainstream media is fairly quiet but the most ominous silence right now is from the progressive blogosphere
Obsessed much?
I can offer a few explanations for the above:
1. This country is in a recesssion and people are suffering terribly from lack of affordable health care and unemployment. Some have lost their homes as a result of the rapacious greed that is the hallmark of the of the republican party who were so obsessed with using sex (apparently because they are deviants) to bring a man down in 1998. BUT THIS IS NOT 1998, when times were relatively good as a result of a Democratic administration! This is 2008 and we have been fucked up, down and sideways by the bush administration, *including trapping us in a trumped-up, ‘unwinnable’ war that has already cost us hundreds of billions of dollars and killed likely millions of innocent people by now.* E.g., WE unlike YOU, Mr. Mickey, HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT THAN WHERE JOHN EDWARDS PUTS HIS PENIS. GOT THAT?
2. Edwards is NOT a presidential candidate.
3. We are not interested in persecuting a decent man and his wife, who is battling breast cancer. Where is the moral outrage on the right about this? Are they not the ones who are the first to puff out their guts when someone makes so much as a PEEP about anything to do with a republican politician’s spouse or family member? Only to maintain and ‘ominous silence’ when one of their own is caught boinking prostitutes or getting strange men to suck them off in nasty public restrooms.
4. FUCK.YOU, you homely bastard. Find something useful to do. I’ll leave it to commenters to provide suggestions.