Tag Archive for 'Networking'

OpenWRT WDS works like charm

Published 4 months, 2 weeks ago in OpenWRT and Uncategorized. 4 Comments Tags: , , , .

A try with OpenWRT 8.09 in April to setup a WDS with additional AP functionality and encryption, like described in the documentation, failed. So I keeped with my halfbroken solution running on DD-WRT, which is going a bit too commercial these days in my eyes.
Now I have found time to try OpenWRT again for this purpose, since the issue was fixed really fast. I just did setup a stock 8.09.1 installation and then dropped the following into /etc/config/wireless:

config ‘wifi-device’ ‘wl0′
      option ‘type’ ‘broadcom’
      option ‘channel’ ‘5′
      option ‘disabled’ ‘0′
config wifi-iface
      option device “wl0″
      option network lan
      option mode ap
      option ssid “OpenWrt”
      option encryption psk2
      option key “keyforclients”
config wifi-iface
      option device “wl0″
      option network lan
      option mode wds
      option bssid 00:16:B6:19:63:C8
      option ssid “OpenWrtWDS”
      option encryption psk2
      option key “pskforWDS”

And guess what? It worked like a charm! So I could replace the odd DD-WRT boxes. Anyways ... does anybody have an idea where to find the sourcecode of anything > v23 SP1?

Bayreuth Festival – Online streaming of “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”

Published 1 year, 8 months ago in Uncategorized. 6 Comments Tags: , , .

Actual I’m involved into a project which maybe of interest for you if you like opera particular when you are a Richard Wagner enthusiast.
Since long time, the waiting period for obtaining tickets increases a lot. At the moment I think you have to wait around 8 years, which is a worse.
Time changes also at Bayreuth Festival, they seems to refocus their audience. Looks like the aspects of huge waiting list and new medias influenced that process.

This year the opera “Die Meistersinger” is broadcasted online under the slogan “live dabei” (live there) via the great thing called “Internet” and to a public viewing area in Bayreuth, which is a premiere in both cases. So if you don’t have a ticket for the Festspielhaus and not in a position to make use of the public viewing but interested to have a look at the opera, you may want to check if your system matches the technical requirements and give it a try.

Kabel Deutschland breaks DNS System for it’s customers

Published 1 year, 9 months ago in Networking. 5 Comments Tags: , , .

Last week I noticed, that Kabel Deutschland, a cable provider in germany, returns for any non existing hosts “204.9.89.60″. It seems, thats it is rolled out since last fall. Even for DNSSEC enabled infrastructure it breaks it totally:

; <<>> DiG 9.3.4 <<>> +dnssec web.pixaco.se @83.169.184.161
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; ANSWER SECTION:
web.pixaco.se. 0 IN A 204.9.89.60

Beside that, this behavour breaks the whole DNS, since many mechanism rely on a negative answer. The most visible effect for the users is, that when having a typo on surfing, he will forwarded to http://suche.kabeldeutschland.de/de.kde.assist/?domain=<domainyoutypedinyourprompt>. Since 204.9.88.0/21 is located at our transatlantic friends from US, there might be some problem with leaking privacy informations. I don’t feel happy, if I had a typo in my URL and getting listed for it on any terror list or providing the newest porno links to my american friends inside the organisations with the tree capitals.

All that for getting some extra money, but racing pricedumping for connectivity, this sucks a lot.
If you are a customer and feel pissed, you can send a friendly note to them:

Kabel Deutschland Vertrieb und Service GmbH & Co. KG
Beschwerdestelle
99116 Erfurt
kundenservice@kabeldeutschland.de
Fax: 01805299925

A quick and dirty workaround for dnsmasq maybe to add “bogus-nxdomain=204.9.89.60″ to your config file. This doesn’t fix the DNSSEC problem.
The problem also pops up at dns-operations and there are traces at google too.

[UPDATE] Over 1 year later zdnet.de discoverd the problem.

Routing Suite in an ISP environment?

Published 2 years ago in Uncategorized. 12 Comments Tags: , , , .

Searching for an alternative for our old Cisco Border Router we are evaluating some software routing suites on “normal” server hardware.
First we tried Vyatta, but the routing software frequently crashed completly. Maybe this is fixed with VC4 Alpha 1, but we didn’t test that.
Next try was the development version (0.99.9) of quagga from Debian testing, but it looks like a peering with one of our cisco router fails after the hold timer expires. Continue reading ‘Routing Suite in an ISP environment?’

Too Cool for Internet Explorer