Comcast Cares

An interesting thing happened a couple hours after my last post and a similar notice posted on Twitter regarding this issue; I was contacted by ComcastBill on Twitter asking if I needed any help. I hadn't had a chance to contact tech. support so this pre-emptive contact on their part was a pleasant surprise. I replied with my experience (see previous post) and that I would like to have the line tested. Unfortunately, I had already left school for the weekend and would not return until this past Wednesday due to an illness early in the week. My reply was recieved after ComcastBill had left the office so ComcastBonnie (on Twitter) followed up.

When I returned to school last Wednesday, I ran a few tests on the network to see if the issues had cleared up. So far, the disconnection issues have not returned. Our speed seems to have returned to expected levels too (see below).

I don't know how long Comcast has been doing tech. support via Twitter but I love the idea. Saves me time on the phone. Also, while I have no direct knowledge that they actually changed anything on their network, at least their AWARENESS of the issue has resulted in better connection quality. Thanks, Comcast!!

What's Happening?

Over the last the days, our internet connection has been spotty. The firewall appears to be handling the load (50 total nodes) with no problem, but at times, webpages fail to load. I powercycled the the cable modem yesterday, which seemed to help but the Internet is still sluggish. I ran another speedtest and came up with the following results...





Compare this to the result I blogged about last May when they launched their Boost feature.



While I realize this is not scientific, at the time I ran today's test all students and teachers were in the mulitpurpose room for an assembly. Only a couple of office staff could have been online at the time. Pings work internally with no problem but sometimes don't hit the internet. Something is fishy. What's up, Comcast?

To Cache or Not To Cache

Untangle server continues to run beautifully. It is amazing to me how slick the interface is. For me, the interface, with it's virtual "rack" makes the whole package the perfect solution for those with limited knowledge in this area. Customization is easy and it is astounding how much power you get in the open source package. Add in the Commercial packages as needed and you have an easy to manage kick-butt gateway with options for any need. With my limited network administration background, the feature set combined with the interface and the availability of support was the clincher for me. See the screenshots here.

The one feature I do find missing however is a caching "rack". After doing some research on this recently, I have discovered that there is some disagreement among IT professionals as to the need for caching in the current online environment. Some argue that, since most pages are dynamically generated, that caching does little good and may actually cause a bottleneck in your network. Others counter that educational institutions often visit the same sites over and over again so caching is still a benefit. If you have thoughts on this debate, please leave them in the comments.

Firewall Success

Hallelujah! I finally have a fully functional open source firewall that is now installed at the school. It took a few months but we have done it!

Those of you who have read this blog (sparse though it may be) have read my trials and tribulations with IPCop. For a novice such as me, I found it a bit cumbersome and difficult to troubleshoot. Remember, my MAIN job is being my school's Computer Teacher. This IT stuff is an undesirable necessity. Don't get me wrong, I love training teachers in the use of technology, but when it comes to dealing with servers, I lack enough knowledge to really be comfortable with these duties.

I had installed IPCop over the Christmas break because we could no longer afford the ongoing subscription costs to filter our web content. It worked well, though it was still a bit confusing for me. With IPCop, however, we were experiencing regular browser messages stating that Internet Explorer could not load the page. The choice of browser didn't make a difference, nor did upgrading switches. In addition, all the information I collected about IPCop indicated that, while I was using a older machine (760 MHz), my hardware was still plenty capable of handling its tasks on a 50 user network. I even tried shutting off intrusion detection and caching, but the problem continued.

Enter, Untangle! Untangle is extremely easy to use. While the base package is free to download and install, Untangle offers some educational modules we plan to explore in the near future. For now, I installed the base software "bare back" on a server and 4 modules to define the roles of the server. These modules are easily downloaded and installed from within the Firefox browser supplied with the software. (Nice touch!) Once installed, they appear in your virtual "rack" and can be customized by entering the Settings for that module. I set up the Web Filter, Protocol Control, Firewall and Attack Blocker modules and was easily able to enter settings according to our needs.

I did have one small glitch, however. The Untangle server is connected to a gigabit switch and other workstations could not PING the Untangle server initially. After some tinkering (and sweating), I was able to accomplish a connection by setting both NIC's (inside and outside) to a speed of "10/100" instead of "Auto". Once that setting was changed, everything worked flawlessly.

I don't think IPCop failed me, however. First, the IPCop box was connected initially to 10/100 switch before I swapped it out for a gigabit switch, thinking my issue was with network traffic limitations. This proved not to be the case. Also, I decided to use a completely different repurposed computer which had more RAM and processing power, though I doubt the IPCop box was hindered in any way running on the slower hardware. The best I can come up with is a NIC driver issue or a bad Ethernet cable. Nevertheless, the system is working beautifully now and I am not going to question it. It's done and I don't have to worry about it anymore.

Now, back to teaching!

This Is Not An Easy Job

My job title is "Computer Teacher" at small private school.  And before you decide that "private" means that we have money to spare, you could not be further from the truth.  My technology budget for everything except Internet access is $1800.  That's HALF of the same line item from last year.  It is a number which has not changed in over 10 years until it got slashed last year.  Forget about getting NEW technology, I am restricted to only replacing broken equipment and begging for money left and right.  We also have to constantly look for open source solutions whenever possible which means that I need to find more time for the research and instalation time and hope it doesn't break on me.

But that is not why I am venting right now.  I am frustrated because I am, by default, THE I.T. guy for the school, a responsibility that is NOT in my job description. I have learned a great deal in the last 8 years in this position but there are things I simply cannot do -- issues for which, in the past, I have been able to outsource to solve.  This year, things are very tight and I have to do more myself, despite my lack of knowledge in these areas. What I really want to do is focus on my teaching.  Instead I have to fix, replace, troubleshoot, etc.  When I can squeeze it in, I have file paperwork for federal discounts on phone and internet services from the E-RATE program or collect/ship cartridges for recycling fundraiser we run. Forget moving forward, I am simply racing to keep our ground-losing to a minimum.

Don't get me wrong.  These things greatly help our program but the also a lare huge distraction from my REAL job of teaching.  It's a pain sometimes and I get tired of sacrificing my time and energy for things that don't help me to be a better teacher.  So far, I am doing a fair job of not letting my teaching suffer due to these distractions, but I could be a more inspired teacher if I were able focus more on the duties listed in my job description.  

Some day....

IPCop Clean Install

OK, so I screwed up.  After some comments left on this blog by "Anonymous" discouraged me from running IPCop over VMWare on a Win2003 Server for a "live" environment, I decided to do a clean install of IPCop running native. So far, everything is going fine.  I installed the URLFilter addon and setup Snort (intrusion detection) and have begun testing the new box in preperation for going "live".  All went smoothly once I decided to switch 320 GB HD out for a 80GB to avoid any 48-bit issues with drives over 136GB.  Besides, I don't need THAT much space.  The only glitch is that I accidently ran the install using IPCop 1.4.2 instead of 1.4.20, which are different animals. I suppose I could have downloaded the 1.4.20 ISO and do another install but, since I am a newbie with IPCop, I decided to run the approximately 18 patches in succession to get it up to 1.4.21.  Once I figured out the system (and that I didn't have to expand the .tar  files before uploading), everything went fine and I was able to see the changes as IPCop had grown since 2005.  It was a bit tedious but a good learning experience.  Thanks again, Anonymous!

IPCop Deputized

After much research and time, we have decided to try out the IPCop firewall with URL Filter for the school's needs. Our VERY limited budget made the decision even more difficult. So, we are currently testing it as a VMWare appliance on a Windows 2003 box. For the time being, we are directing 2 computer's traffic through it to test the waters. While IPCop is running in transparent mode, our LAN currently uses a Surfcontrol plugin on an ISA server and forcing the transparency to happen would require removing the MS Firewall client for all machines. A friend of mine will be scripting this so that the all workstations we be automatically run the uninstall.

One issue I am having is that I sometimes have to ping the IPCop box from the workstation in order to get internet access. For the testing phase, I am simply using IPCop as the gateway, but Linux seems to have an issue recognized other nodes on the network unless they are pinged. I haven't been able to find out much about this by Googling it. I guess I'm not using the correct keywords. If has any information on this, I would very much appreciate hearing about it. I suppose I could write a boot script but my guess is that there is an easier way. Anyone?? Does the fact that it is a VMWare appliance affect things? Thanks!!

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