Thursday, September 29, 2005

First day of Microsoft MVP Summit

Well, I managed to fly into Seattle, drop by bags off at my hotel and make it over to the Microsoft Campus. The buses were horribly disorganized. Meet tons of folks and the regional dinner was fun once we finally made it over there. Got to meet Suzanna Moran finally and to chat with Susan Bradley face to face. Looking forward to catching up with some other folks and perhaps getting to know a few more MVP's.
- Ed

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Heading up to Microsoft for the MVP Summit

I will be on a flight tomorrow to Seattle. Looking forward to the visit to the Microsoft campus (it will be my first) and to meeting some other MVP's also. I'll try and post while I am up there for the week but it might be a little tough given the schedule they have handed out so far.
- Ed

Cisco releases new products for protection against network threats

Cisco announced two new products today. They fall under the suite of the Cisco Self-Defending Network. They are the Cisco Incident Control System (ICS) and the Distributed Threat Mitigation for Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS). Seems like Cisco really likes the folks over at Trend Micro who Cisco uses for their Network Admission Control (NAC) product line. It is going to be very interesting to see how Microsoft reacts since they have their Network Access Protection (NAP) initative as well. Cisco seems to be cranking out the product lines in this area. It doesn't appear that Microsoft is moving as fast on this front and I am not really sure why. They certainly have the ability to own a good portion of this market if they so desired, especially in the corporate enterprise market.
- Ed

Monday, September 26, 2005

Feds to enforce FCC VoIP 911 regulation

CNET News.com is running an interesting article about the FCC's current plan to enforce VoIP providers compliance with their 911 services requirement. I actually don't have a huge issue with the FCC doing this. There are some serious hurtles to overcome for universal VoIP and 911 emergency services is one of them.
- Ed

Friday, September 23, 2005

Microsoft's Netsh overview

It seems that most Microsoft networking reference material I see out there still has folks using basics older tools for working on networking related issues for the newer Microsoft OS's. One that folks are going to have to start adding to their toolkit is Netsh which is VERY robust and very well supported for scripting. Given that fact that this is basically the only way you are going to be able to set IPv6 configuration information I think it is important for folks to start taking a look at it earlier rather then later.
- Ed

John Dvorak's Second Opinion: Microsoft shakeup prelude to breakup?

John Dvorak is at it again. I don't know if I agree with John's opinion on this one. If Microsoft were really thinking about splitting into three companies why did it not happen 5 years ago when the US Justice Office was REALLY hounding them. Right now they are in relatively cool water regarding anti-trust action and there is no external pressure to break the company appart. Shareholders aren't asking for it, to the best of my knowledge senior management isn't talking about it and I don't think it would change any of the moral issues going on within the company.
In addition to all that, it would be a huge change for all the reseller and support models that Microsoft has spend years investing in. I really don't know if they are willing to rock the boat with that channel of sales.
- Ed

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Microsoft Realigns

"Microsoft Realigns for Next Wave of Innovation and Growth: CEO Ballmer appoints presidents of three core divisions; Allchin announces retirement plan" is the press release from Microsoft's site. I've been mulling this one over since the announcement. I honestly don't see an issue with Microsoft doing this and I don't think Google is the only reason for the motivation to do this either.
I have never understood why Microsoft had 7 divisions to begin with and the new organization will certainly make giving feedback to Microsoft easier and potentially more valuable since it has the potential to touch a lot more folks downstream.
In case you don't remember what the original 7 were, here you go:
Windows Client
Server & Tools
Information Worker
Microsoft Business Solutions
MSN
Mobile & Embedded Devices
Home Entertainment

The new three are:
Microsoft Platform Products & Services Division (Windows Client, Server & Tools, and MSN)
Microsoft Business Division (Information Worker and Microsoft Business Solutions)
Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division (Home Entertainment and Mobile & Embedded Devices)

What I am excited about is the potential to get the Groove product integrated in the majority of the product suites. I think that one product could completely change the way people use and extend their work environments. The fact that Ray Ozzie is expanding his roll as CTO and primarily helping to push the software based service across all three divisions will make for some interesting changes ahead.
- Ed

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Thawte Personal E-mail Certificates

For those who are looking for a free personal x509 cert for their e-mail look no further then Thawte which has a Personal E-mail Certificates program and in addition has a very cool program for validating who you are so your name can appear in your cert. That program is call the Web of Trust or WOT. I happen to be a Notary for the WOT so if you are interested and in the Bay Area please feel free to hit me up. You just need to have an existing Thawte personal cert before I can help you.
- Ed

Qwest and Microsoft to offer Net phone service

Qwest and Microsoft to offer Net phone service has been announced. Well eBay, that Skype purchase doesn't look as attractive right now. I would not be surprised to see Microsoft start to leverage the huge base they have for offering SIP gateway services by partnering with the likes of Qwest and other providers. The VoIP market is going to start changing.
- Ed

Monday, September 19, 2005

Flying Spaghetti Monster

Bobby Henderson has written an Open Letter to the Kansas School Board and it is one of the more amusing things I have read in awhile. I might just have to add an FSM logo to my blog site for kicks!
- Ed

Friday, September 16, 2005

Slashdot story on Microsoft Employees Critical Of Their Employer

Slashdot is running an interesting article on some of the internal issues Microsoft is facing. I don't think this is anything new for Microsoft, I just think there are a lot more forums for folks to talk about it. I know Microsoft in the past has done some big changes to recruit and keep the talent they have, I would be surprised if they don't do the same again.
Well, I might get a chance to ask a few folks about it when I am up there at the end of the month for the MVP Summit. Then again, if I bring that up I might get the boot - haha.
- Ed

Thursday, September 15, 2005

My links have moved!

OK, I finally had enough links on the sidebar that is was getting hard to find stuff. So I have built a seperate page to hold them all. I will most likely spend a little time getting them more organized and adding a few more catagories and such. If you have any recommendations send them on over! The new links are here.
- Ed

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

NANOG and ARIN joint meeting in Los Angeles, CA - Oct 23-28

NANOG! and ARIN will be hosting their fourth joint meeting in Los Angeles, Ca. The NANOG meeting will be from Sun-Tues and ARIN from Wed-Fri. There is going to be a special hands-on tutorial on IPv6 that looks to be worth the time on Sunday. Its only $350 for both.
- Ed

North American IPv6 Technology Conference

The first annual North American IPv6 Technology Conference will be held at San Jose State University next week (Sept 19-22). If anyone is interested in finding out what is going on with IPv6 this is the place to be to hear from all the folks that are actively involved in trying to get IPv6 rolled out and put to use in commercial industry.
- Ed

Monday, September 12, 2005

eBay to Acquire Skype

eBay to Acquire Skype?!? What the heck was eBay thinking? Nothing like straying from your core competence a little bit. Considering how quickly other folks are going to be building out similar VoIP services (think Microsoft for starters) this is sort of nuts. I don't know how they are going to translate any of the Skype user base over to eBay and the reverse even less so. Well, they say Skype has 54 million members (I would read that as a free member basis number) I think the pricing they paid was a little out of line. Get ready for ugly eBay ads in your Skype client!
- Ed

Thursday, September 08, 2005

RFC-Ignorant info

For those not initiated into the world of RFC's here is a great place to start, its called RFC-Ignorant.org and it is an interesting resource to find out about all the things you've been doing wrong for all those years (like not accepting abuse@ on your mail server)! If you need a tool to help you debug what you need to do to be RFC compliant both the RFC-Ignorant site and DNS Stuff are the places to go. In fact, almost every day I make use of DNS Stuff, I think it is one of the most useful sites for network administrators on the Internet.
- Ed

Public Traceroute, Looking Glasses and Route-Servers

OK, occassionally I need to perform traceroutes from locations other then our core BGP routers. Mainly for Europe, Latin America and Asia. There are a great listing of available servers at traceroute.org.

Also, if you are looking for the route-server listings then hit BGP4.NET Wiki - Tools:IPv4 Route-Servers for some route-servers you can use to check BGP routes. A short list of ones I have used:

route-server.as5388.net
route-server.cerf.net (this one gets a ton of traffic so it can be tough to get in)
route-server.exodus.net or route-server.savvis.net (goes to the same route-server)
route-server.gblx.net
route-server.ip.att.net (this one gets a ton of traffic so it can be tough to get in)
route-server.he.net

They are mainly for North America so if you need something in Europe or Asia hit the list above and you should be able to find something you can use.

As for looking glasses you can get a listing at BGP4.NET Wiki - Tools:IPv4 Looking Glasses which should give you a good enough start.
- Ed

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Bogon IPs

For those not familiar with the term Bogon IPs they are basically IP address blocks that haven't been allocated or have been reserved by IANA. In a nutshell they are not to be used by anyone on the public Internet. They could be reserved due to RFC requirements, special use designations and a host of other reasons but basically you should never see them on the Internet.
What is tough about them is that they do change! So if you plan to use ACL's to protect your routers make sure you check back with the Bogon IPs site to make sure you aren't blocking legit traffic.
They provide some really great templates on the site to allow you to build ACL's very quickly and you can pick and choose how much you want from their list depending on your requirements. In addition, they have a very neat idea which is blocking bogons using DNS lists (like a realtime blackhole list) and you can even do BGP peering with them where they basically blackhole all the BOGON IPs on the net for you. There are some limitations and holes in that method but overall its a pretty cool solution, especially if you are running BGP as an end user (non transit).
- Ed

Monday, September 05, 2005

Back from work travel!

I spend a week in Hollywood working out of the office for j2. Always nice to see my fellow co-workers but I rarely have time to post when I am down. I have a few interesting items to put up over the next week.
- Ed