NETWORK || Intra/Inter || Reading Materials || Internet Access & News || What Happens Here

Preferably, visit the Technical Event Book, otherwise known as the Time Line: a series of pages giving an episodic history of what I have read, or done, or failed to fix! It includes an ancillary history of events that have affected my life.

This page is basically historical, and shows the odd matter that affected the cell where I perform computer fixes, and which, of necessity, is in a constant state of flux.

And, O for Office, or C for The Cell, as it is in 2008:

a) b)    c) d)  e)

f)  g)   h)  i)

j)  k)  l)  m)

In the images above several items can be seen. Some of them are noted here: in the first photo (a) this is natural light. The window is open even if it is frigid. Takes the cold air to keep the place habitable. Why? Heat sources, that's what. The two monitors are attached to a Dell Precision 650, and sit on two beams attached to a bookcase. That's why they lean down to the right. The right hand window will contain the replacement air conditioner if and when it arrives.

The second image (b) shows three monitors. The left hand item is faulty, and is the first that needs replacement. I intend to buy an LCD. What a difference that will make in space gain. That particular monitor is attached to Rutland, the ML570 server. The middle monitor is attached to Oxford, the MSI motherboard white box. That's an AMD dual processor now with a card reader installed in a floppy slot, which enabled me to upload these photographs, taken on February 6th., 2008.

The third image (c) shows the physical relationship between the first two images. Not a great distance, maybe eight feet. The keyboards are all Dvorak. The wooden stuff above is holding some hundreds of books, mostly inaccessible.

The fourth image (d) shows Devon, the IBM x220 attached to the right hand monitor in image two. The keyboard cable lies in front of the black front of the computer. At the bottom of the picture can be seen the front of the ML350, down and to the right of the rusty, blue toolbox.

The fifth image (e) shows the ML350 more clearly, and the foot of the box that carries the ML570. That's a caster below the light green safety box. The cables leading off the ML570 can be seen.

In the sixth image (f) the rear of the ML570 is central. That monster weighs around 200lb., and it was picked up gingerly indeed to sit on its box. On the other side of the box is a shelf loaded with coffee table books. To the left and to the rear of the image are the two Dell Precision 650 workstations. One is to be seen with its triangular, silvery plate. Behind it can just about be seen, with a tiny glowing light, against the wall, Monmouth, the active Dell. I have not started up Leicester, the new Dell, because the memory upgrade only came yesterday (February 7th., 2008), and I haven't had time to do a proper job on it. One can see the beams that hold the books and, above the ML570, sits the Hewlett-Packard ScanJet IIc scanner, an oldie but goody. It is old, but it works and can handle legal and greater sized images.

In the seventh image (g) the TV and Hi-Fi sit behind the fan, and some of the books on the upper shelving can be seen.

The eighth image (h) shows Oxford, the clone, and four Seagate U160 half-height drives sitting to its front, just left of the ML570. Two of those drives will be placed in an old ProLiant 800, for which a hot-swap drive cage is currently sitting on top of the shelf above. Philip Pullman's HDM can be seen in the upper left of the photograph. Don't ask. The camera that had a purportedly blank film sits, almost visible, above the binocular case. The bed is to the left of the picture, with a coat lying on it just visible here. The ninth (i) is almost the same as the previous image.

The final row starts (j) with a view of the two Dell Precision 650 workstations. The one in front has yet to be started. Another way of recognising it is by noticing the boot marks where it was stored underneath Dave's desk at CHS. It contains 2GB PC3200 DDR and five U320 15k drives. I need extra RAM and monitors before it becomes stabilised. I shall test drive it with either XP Pro or Vista shortly. The next image (k) shows the layout, with the diagonal beams placed on top of four self-standing book cases. The third image (l) shows what's above the bed, with a ProLiant cage holding four of the dead U320 147GB drives. Finally (m), this is what I gaze at when the evenings arise or soccer is available, or I'm tired of reading. The TV is actually older that my ScanJet IIc, but hangs in there. It will have to be changed when digital HDTV becomes compulsory. However, it will still show any one of my hundreds of VHS tapes, so I won't throw it out.

n) o) p) q)
Plus ça change, c'est la même chose. In this line, the p) image shows where the two monitors attached to the Dell now sit. See b) and c) above. The image o) shows that the Dell now sits next to the ML570, which has its door open. That image reveals the two arrays and the addition, at the bottom lhs, the two drive SCA cage. That holds the boot drive, and was accepted without bother when I installed the cage and its cable. In the background sits the old red mahogany dresser, solid wood: made by my father. The green cloth at the bottom indicates the bed. In n) we see that the white box has been moved to the place where the two monitors were (a) above). The HP scanner sits on top. This will, if it happens, allow me to install the air conditioner with minimum fuss. The last on the right is the view from the door. Congestion rules, milord.

All finished except for this, computers in storage, awaiting parts or dismissal:
 
What is seen here includes, in both images, to the right, a pile of Compaq computers. There are six ProLiant 800 server cases with a variety of parts. Two of these will be transported to The Cell in the foreseeable future and the second and third from the floor are the lucky ones. Of course, one might be sold off: one never knows, does one? In the third up, the cage is a hot-swap item that takes six drives. One can just see the Ultra-2 cable that came with it. One needs a different cable, of course, if one inserts Ultra-3 (U160) drives therein. That computer will eventually contain two of the 1.6" U160 72.8GB drives kept warm in The Cell. The fourth item upwards is an ML350 rack mount with only a few innards, kept for spares. Behind that is a Compaq 3092 storage machine, which needs caddies and drives. One can find 36GB Ultra-3 drives with the necessary old-style caddies quite cheaply. That would result in enough storage capacity to make its setup worthwhile.

The brown object on the floor to the left is a chest, of solid timber, how rare these days, that came from England some thirty years ago, and it is much older than that. It came out of a cellar in a Queen Anne house in Bristol, and has contained many of my tools ever since. The brown boxes sitting on it at the rear contain books. There are about eight thousand in boxes in this storage space. The left hand image shows that on top of the books sits a ProLiant hard drive cage which was the original tenant in the afore-mentioned ProLiant 800 server.

One day, this space will be emptied and my network will grow accordingly. And my books will be placed on shelving so that I can find all those hidden gems.

Changes here, too, at the storage centre:

There are two rooms rented now, one to contain books, the other all the tools and parts and spare computers. Constant flux. The lh shot reveals that the rear of the room can be seen once more. A shock, that was!

There are hot-swap cages now in two of the old ProLiant 800s that are stored there, so that six drives, rather than four, can be placed in the same place. That, when they become usable in the Cell, will allow easy replacement, and an ability to repair drives without having to disconnect everything: simply place in a caddy and insert. In the centre shot above can be seen, at the right rear, an old travel chest, made in Belgium, that I have had for forty-odd years. Came over from England with me, and belonged to my grandfather for years. It is well over a century in age.

A  The dickins.lan network, as it is called in Active Directory, is 100BaseT with a 1GB switch that has a couple of the quickest nodes. Mainly, however, especially for the internet, 100MB/s is adequate. Currently, the network has two Windows 2003 Enterprise R2 SP2 Server computers, and three, soon to be four, XP Pro SP2 boxes.  W2003 can run more interactive networking software than the simple XP box. (There is one server set up as the DC, as the network is too small to bother with extra Active Directory domain controllers.) And yet, the XP Pro boxes enable me to play around with IPv6 stuff, which will arrive someday soon to enable us to attach our dogs' collars to the internetwork.

On July 29th, 2001, see the Time Line page, I successfully installed Windows 2000 Server on Warwick, which was then the PDC for the NT4 based network. It was done holding my breath, but having installed SP2 before working on the LAN, etc., I felt better about things. Which intuition proved accurate, since all the servers are now NT5. Eventually I found software so I could use my old, but still serviceable, ScanJet IIc Hewlett-Packard scanner. That old scanner keeps on working and is on my main XP Pro box. The drivers refer to an Inkjet, but so what, the images that one can grab are useful.

Still back in 2001, my SCSI Zip drive wouldn't work until, once more, I found new drivers. It, with a Jaz drive, was on Cornwall, on the same SCSI chain as the ScanJet. Both these and the Iomega drives are gone because they are faulty. What I discovered is that the proprietary technology used in these drives leads to failure, and nothing can be done to repair them.

Go to Gibson's site for an explanation. Even in late 2006, one can still find these drives in second-hand stores. Leave them there.

AA  Go to Adobe and compare what's needed between a G4 and an X86 box for various suites or programmes; very interesting. An Apple OS requires less memory to work properly, it seems.

B  I never installed Windows Me on any machine, mine or others. Would rather use 2000 Professional since it was much more stable: only thing, beware of drivers. Why have a machine running Me, that can't be upgraded to 2000, especially if there is much software that was installed post purchase. Otherwise, a clean installation is required. One could upgrade Me to XP, although originally the latter had a registration nightmare. All to do with the licensing algorithms, called Product Activation, which prevent system changes, over a certain number, to any particular machine.

Not the brightest of marketing plans from Microsoft if IT personnel are expected to retain their sanity. Microsoft eventually relaxed this fubar, especially since it now works to deny activation for unauthorised copies of the operating system.

C On April 20th, 2000, I bought a Hewlett-Packard 712/60 PA-RISC machine, with a 19in. monitor. Very nicely made, and I hoped I could install the Puffin Linux port on it. Later, I found that although there are ports, nothing will actually run if one is trying the current version. It's now late 2007, and I still have no external SCSI CD-ROM to use with the latest Debian native Linux OS. I did, June 2006, find one of the correct external CD-ROM boxes. What it needs is a power source which is still missing: so, must search for that before it becomes the CD useable for a Debian installation. (Eight plus years, and still it sits clueless)

INTRA/INTER || top
D  The office network includes substantially different computers enabling research on and determination of the reliability of hardware and software. The http://mattoid.com Windows 2003 domain is placed at MyHosting, as are the http://mattoid.ca and http://mattoid.net domains. They all have subsidiary Linux accounts. This will enable practice with many types of pages implementing databases and search capabilities. I have been playing with PHP and MySQL on http://mattoid.ca especially.

This situation with rented hosting is maintained prior to one day obtaining a direct connection to the Internet, with its attendant benefits and problems. With that in mind I am slowly planning an installation of a Unix/Linux web server and a determination of the best proxy and firewall soft/hardware for Windows and Unix/Linux.

E  Firewalls ahead! Oh, yes, with IPv6, I suppose. If you want a domain for yourself, check availability with a whois, this one still works: Whois.  In 2000 I had to place a switch between the "modem" (xDSL or cable box) and the local machines to protect them. The increase in security problems, especially with the overwhelming popularity of MS OS throughout the world has allowed systematic attacks from script kiddies, game server searchers, including the infamous Scour.net operation, and other nefarious characters. Microsoft has bought an Anti-Spyware software company which, in 2005, has brought some sanity. It's ridiculous that, for example, Symantec won't allow installation of its commonly used security software on a server. They expect everyone in a home/office situation not to run servers and instead to be running XP Pro, or Win2kPro or something similar, when connecting to the internet. Networks don't run well without a server to help matters along. Peer to peer is a nightmare.



READING MATERIALS || top

F  For the literate amongst you, I can highly recommend several sources of information, viz., Mark Minasi's books on Windows 2000, 2003 and NT4 (there are lots of places still running this, and having no intentions in updating: for example many libraries still have NT4 servers allied with Windows 95 public access boxes), published by Sybex. Subscribe to his monthly emails at http://www.minasi.com/nwsreg.asp. His website also has support pages that can be useful. I also recommend most of the O'Reilly computing publications, particularly the Nutshell series. There are many good authors: it is better to visit a library or talk to knowledgeable friends before buying texts that soon enough become outdated.

G  On the buying side, now that I am in Ottawa, Computer Supply House is excellent for all of one's computer paraphernalia and books, all of which are regularly discounted.

H  A plug here for all independent bookstores, mainly run by aficionados, not purely for the almighty dollar, like some chains we could mention. Chapters is a horror, and don't hold your breath for any improvement even though they were "obtained" by Indigo. On Elgin Street, in Ottawa, is Perfect Books, with, again, some very nice people working there.

I  For software that adds value to NTx, go to Systems Internals. They are now owned and augmented by Microsoft.

 Too many magazines with small readership have lessened the variety available as they gradually ceased publication. Luckily, is now on the Web, (Jerry Pournelle, Martin Heller, Jon Udell and others who wrote for the best computer magazine that ever was . . . .) Unfortunately, Byte is now subscription funded, which people out of work, and there are still many ex-dot.com workers around, cannot afford. It's not that the charge is high, it's simply that it is part of the constant diminishing of one's money by tiny amounts. To add up how much one spends each month on magazines, if one is sufficiently desirous of maintaining currency with trends, is sometimes astonishing. I simply buy them and forgo nutrition. Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine (that's a downloadable PDF now), PC Magazine and Linux Journal all come in handy. Don't forget to read other journals, simply because all work and no play, makes one as dull as William, the fat boy, Gates. Read The Economist for international politics, science news and literature reviews. Scientific American, National Geographic, Harrowsmith Country Life, Wilson Quarterly (if one can find it), all contain articles and material that ensures that there is balance to one's life.


INTERNET ACCESS: HISTORY & NEWS || top

J  This section is purely of historic interest. Additions to the Time Line pages have noted what I currently use to connect to the Web.

So, Internet access using ADSL from BCTel MMG was once installed in the home office in Vancouver, though problematic at times. It was apparent in those early years that DNS and DHCP on their servers and the asymmetric transmission speeds of ADSL didn't work well together. And, that they have/had available an insufficient number of IP addresses given the number of their subscribers. Mind you, it is inexpensive, and 5Mbps+ is now on offer. Plus, one is allowed to host one's domain directly from one's home or small business. If you are an Internet Direct, in BC, subscriber, see the newsgroup direct.adsl on their newsgroup listings.

K  Bell, Ontario, in in their wisdom, late 1998, cancelled 2.2Mbps ADSL in favour of Nortel's 1MegModem. Less than half the speed, for 90% of the cost. (The Nortel modem is, apparently, flash upgradeable and may be 1.3Mbps capable; it ended as  970kbps, newer technology usurped it).

Obviously the service is controlled by marketing, not by technical rules. Rumours abound that Bell Nexxia might introduce a better and faster version of xDSL.

Magma competes and uses Cisco products. They have a residential service, of the PPPoE variety, and use the same equipment over the same geographical area. Magma can only compete on service standards, since it is more expensive although it does offer fixed IPs at certain prices. See the High Speed comparison.

Also, Telus is in Ontario with business offerings and alliances, (for example, for faxing ASPs, with Protus,) and residential service may be available late 2001/early 2002. How will the dot.com fallout affect services? Look has gone, just like Iridium. Nortel has halved in size in one year. So many techies out of work that computer magazine sales have also plummeted. All of this has been exacerbated by the September 11th tragedy in the US. On one particular day, October 3rd., 2001, Greyhound suspended all buses after someone slit the driver's throat on a bus in Tennessee. 

L  Rather Cisco than Lucent hardware, what? Did you notice what happened in August, '99 to MCI with the Lucent software upgrade? If you didn't, don't worry. It doesn't matter now that Lucent is barely conscious. Not that Cisco were very far away from the constantly shrinking disease that has hit the dot com world. Eventually, CISCO has escaped and become a dominant entity.

M  Bell Nexxia, alias Sympatico, (also August '99) implemented PPPoE throughout Ontario and this, caused endless problems. PPPoE, and the software Bell made its users install, introduced a PPP DUN style ability to confirm accounts. This caused between 5 and 10% bandwidth losses. The only advantage in sight is that PPPoE does not necessarily need identical xDSL boxes at each end of the phone line. Bell eventually discarded this system. (September, 2001).

N  For network access to the Internet, I at first had to move the Sygate server from an NT4  Server to the then Win98 box, because Bell did not support NT, and the Access Manager software (bug-filled, supplied by Network TeleSystems) will not work on any of my NT Server machines. This was the experience of many users and led, eventually, to the closing of their contract with NTS.

O  For an interesting guide to PPPoE visit Redback. They had a contract with Bell Nexxia to supply SMS (Subscriber Management Services) boxes for PPPoE dispersal. It isn't good news for xDSL aficionados because it is purely a connection lease enabler with attendant bandwidth overhead. If you require decent xDSL and HSE information from users, you once could go to Richard Virtue's SympaticoUsers site and search its comprehensive links. However he became stressed out and closed the site. Too many obfuscations by users and the Bell staff.

Access Manager was finally removed, for my office computing equipment, in early December 2000. There is now a Netgear RT314 switch with four 100Mb ports allowing up to 254 computers to access the Internet through my HSE connection. Highly unlikely. But, as previously mentioned, Bell is worried about the constant technical problems with Redback: they are deciding on who to choose for a better replacement (April '01)

However, in Europe is the new G.SHDL which, September 2001, is a working trial at a symmetrical 2.3Mbps. This might arrive in North America by mid-2002. Cost?! It is aimed at businesses.

P  In general, I prefer xDSL (cf cable access) and a good site for all manner of information and links to other sites is dslReports.com or xDSL.com. I had been using Sygate, a NAPT software package, to share several computers over the xDSL link. If only its diagnostics executable didn't crash the computer if the NetworkTeleSystems Access Manager is active. This prevented a complete, and sadly necessary, reinstallation of Sygate. Access to the internet was problematic, during this period, for browsers on the Sygate client machines. Oddly, email worked over the Sygate link, also ftp in an incomplete manner. Now that I have version 4, which works with NT5, there are fewer, if any, problems. The server engine sits there, waiting for requests from clients, and simply works. A similar product, Wingate, a proxy style offering, works, obviously, quite like NT4's MS Proxy Server, although it is certainly not as complex to administer. 

Currently, this cell-like office is attached to the internet via http://ncf.ca at a nominal 5Mbps rate. It works with a Thomson 546 adsl modem, and this non-profit organisation has given me very few problems.

Q  Even though much email was transferred early in September 1999 between mattoid, INK and Sygate, Redback and others, no solution offered was workable. Therefore, Wingate was installed. It worked with PPPoE straight away and was stable. However, it is relatively expensive, if one chooses the Pro version, compared with Sygate. Current situation for small businesses facing the introduction of PPPoE is highly problematic on a cost only basis. A move to Cable was the only viable option.

Which is what I did, when I introduced cable as the primary mode of access for my NT servers, and left the Win98 box alone on Bell's HSE. 

In late August, 2001, Excite, which supplies the portal and the access servers for cable, approached bankruptcy. Shaw, in BC, and others, have built up their own server lines to cope with this situation. Even if Excite survives, its income will be curtailed, since many cable companies do not plan to renew contracts. Rogers has said that since AT&T has a major stake in Excite, then it does not worry about its service. Given that Rogers is not exactly flush with cash, that may be the real reason it has its eyes closed.

R  Obviously, with NT4 one could use MS Proxy Server, but is anyone going to buy SBS or the full Back Office suite, just for that? Since one should be OS agnostic, maybe one ought to try Linux, especially Slackware or RedHat as the OS for an Internet server. It seems that Linux is tough to beat for multi-connection strengths. Even against other *nix brands.

S  Also, for all manner of help for the WWW, use WebMonkey, through your fast connection to the Internet. It's workable if yours is a permanent connection and you have a network with at least two computers side by side so that reading the text and practising html is possible. I really believe that several computers around you are needed for building your web pages properly. Have you noticed how different versions, not just browser types, can ruin your whole day, if you haven't tested how your html appears?

There are too many different html editors and suites to wonder at. Some of my colleagues have always used Notepad, since as long as one understands html, then simple pages can be built quickly with this primitive editor. Of course, software designed for the production of more complex web sites needs to be much easier to use. I have also used Macromedia Dreamweaver, Flash & Generator, Allaire Cold Fusion and Microsoft Front Page (which, don't forget, was developed by a group that MS bought up. Once again, they bought, rather than develop). Front Page also has to work with the other members of the MS Office suite: and that's why it has become fat and buggy.

Of course, each programme has its quirks and benefits. Some are better than others, and it is purely what you, or your company, demands or prefers that might rule your decision. Simply because Front Page is part of Office is beneficial, for the incorporation of tables, data and other modes of propagating information, doesn't mean that using other programmes won't work. Of course they will, and they may have better html and graphic integration. Practice makes perfect. Not that I have found Office to be well integrated. Given the preponderance of work for Intranets, that is a gross shortcoming.

And, make sure that graphics and Java applets are easily handled. These days, that's an essential part of how eyes are caught by surfers to your site. And, don't forget to check what you have done on monitors that are of different sizes and with any number of browsers. What I have noticed lately is that Netscape does not show what Internet Explorer shows: one simple example is that after editing any of my pages, Netscape drags down the last line of a paragraph so that there is a space, and it is ugly! Open the same page in IE and everything looks as it should. Simple things, but infuriating when one forgets to check! 

WHAT HAPPENS HERE || top

T  mattoid INK, as an entity, provides technical advice for WAN/LAN and hardware installations and maintenance; database, spreadsheet, financial and word processing services; Web sites maintained and pages built; desktop publishing with Adobe products. 

U  Early November, 2000 (after my wife had left me, and whilst I still inhabited the townhouse in Ottawa) the office was drastically improved. Everything necessary was moved up to the ground floor. No unwanted electromagnetic flux followed me up the stairs. Well, if Ottawa Hydro won't fix the problem (a common earth wire under the basement floor running between each of the units along to the transformer, which some fool had made live!!!), what else was feasible?  As I say, until I left this house I was able to work close to the galley; take a few steps and refill my innards, episodically. Equally close, on my primitive shelving, were all of my books on computing, of reference, dictionaries, on physics, geology, foreign languages, mathematics and lies, sorry, statistics: everything at hand and ready for desperate searches.

Today, even in my injured condition, and periodic shocks to the system, I persist in knowledge search. French, Latin, history, current affairs and literature of all kinds are facets of my book-learning.

Constantly fiddling with MS Exchange; Windows OS service and action packs, Office, BIND and TCP/IP, particularly IPv6; implementing Perl, php and Java scripts, other tools contained within Visual Studio; and other aspects of using networks, such as VPNs. Not to forget security issues and associated software. With the increase in interoperability these days, it is so important to make connections secure. 

There is too much to learn, perhaps, for one single, simple person. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, it has wisely been said. As time permits, I work on my computer language skills: I must admit that I am somewhat delinquent here, trying only to use what I find I need. 

One thing more: harassment is illegal: click here for my (somewhat unfortunate) position.