Thursday, 28. May 2009, 11:59:37
hosting, vps
I have for some time tried to find a better solution to hosting web applications than using old fashion web hosting.
Well, VPS or Virtual Private Server to the rescue!
I got an OK deal from
Servetheworld, hosted in Oslo/Norway:
- 50 GB of storage
- 512 MB RAM
- 500Mhz guaranteed CPU speed
- "unlimited" bandwidth
- 1 IP address
For 249 NOK/month (+ 25% VAT), which is approximately USD $50.
The only negative so far, is that the server is behind some kind of firewall that keeps dropping network connections if they stay idle for too long. Too long in that sense is less than one hour, but more than 15 minutes. The connections are not reset, so both ends of the connection still beleive that the connection is alive.
Somewhat annoying, but you can tell SSH to send keep alive messages on shorter intervals in order to ensure the connection stays alive (ServerAliveInterval 300 in ~/.ssh/config)
Sunday, 24. May 2009, 19:18:22
adc, spam, p2p
I have been running an ADC-hub more or less on, or off for the past two years - mostly in the interest of developing one.
One of the rising problems on the network is people joining the hub for a couple of seconds, only to broadcast a chat message containing spam. Typically, visit this URL to see naked chicks.
Given that this is unwanted spam, how can this best be dealt with?
Tuesday, 12. May 2009, 10:29:59
hardware failure
My 4 year old Apple iMac G5 just died.
I have no idea what killed it, but it gives me a memory warning during boot, and then simply freezes.
I tried new memory modules, and a new hard drive but that was not it, so I sent a message to my local apple service company, and asked for prizes.
As I bought this machine in 2005 it cost about 22000 NOK. It was a 17" iMac G5 (1.8GHz PowerPC), with 1GB RAM, Wireless and 250GB disk.
The prices from Humac (in Norway) for fixing the machine were:
* A new motherboard with CPU and GPU: 8058 NOK
* A new power supply: 1977 NOK
Plus probably 1113 NOK for the job, which totals to 11148 NOK.
The cheapest new Apple iMac is currently 10490 NOK, and is lightyears ahead in terms of performance etc - but I'll never by an Apple machine again - simply not worth it.
Wednesday, 14. January 2009, 17:09:59
p2p
Peer to peer networks are by their very nature trusting, and one example in that regard are direct connect hubs, which can send a command such as this; to all connected users:
$ConnectToMe 10.22.33.44:56789
Which then results in the client receiving this message will connect to that host and port using tcp. However, that host may not want that connection, and risk getting thousands of connection requests from weird peer to peer speaking clients per minute. From the client's perspective it is merely asked to set up a connection by another user, who it does not know.
In the Direct Connect community we have already seen examples of web servers being shut down due to this type of distributed denial of serivce attacks. They have been going on for days, weeks and even months in some cases. The problem is, how do we deal with this type of problem?
I have suggested a backward compatible extension to the NMDC and ADC protocol that will at least identify which hub(s) are behind the attacks. Read more about that here.
Monday, 17. September 2007, 20:24:29
p2p filesharing leak legal
Internal e-mails from the California based company
MediaDefender has been leaked onto the internet. MediaDefender is best known for "decoying" popular file sharing networks with fake files. This includes responding to search requests and uploading fake .torrents to various BitTorrent sites.
The
leaked e-mails reveal details about how they operate, which networks they target, and which they don't target.
Definitely worth a read.
In related news, also a
phone conversation recording has also been leaked. This involves the New York State General Attorney and an ongoing investigation.
Tuesday, 23. January 2007, 14:10:11
adc, protocol, p2p, filesharing
...
I have for a long time wanted a usenet-style bulletin board system in ADC. It makes a lot of sense for a variety of reasons; first of all, it's a nice place to keep a hub FAQ, and can be used to post sticky messages, as an alternative to long welcome messages, that no-one actually reads anyway...
Read more...
Friday, 22. December 2006, 09:03:27
nat, firewall, p2p, Skype
There is an interresting article over at
Heise Security about how
Skype does it's firewall and NAT traversal for peer to peer connections.
The article can be found here
here.
Tuesday, 24. October 2006, 16:06:45
p2p, protocol, adc, filesharing
A draft of ADC version 0.12 was recently made public, and I have compiled a short list of areas I would like to change in it.
First of all, if you haven't yet read the full protocol draft, read it
here to get an idea of what I'm trying to say here.
Read more...
Wednesday, 23. August 2006, 21:15:50
adc, p2p, Software, protocol
...
That is a server in 500 lines of code
The ADC protocol is stabilizing and maturing, and now the implementations are popping up quickly. I've been working on
QuickDC for a while now, and implementing an ADC back-end was a dream.
Read more...
Tuesday, 14. March 2006, 00:25:27
p2p, Software, adc, open source
I have been working closely with the developers of
DC++ on a new p2p protocol called
ADC. Well, actually my main contribution to this was another protocol called
DCTNG, which later spawned the ADC movement.
This is not only a nice protocol for file sharing, but can also be used for all sorts of things. One such thing could be call signaling, much more light weight than SIP or H.323. And certainly much easier to implement. No implementations take this beyond file sharing, at this point.
WIDGETIZE