…because someone needs to.
Internet
Website Updates
Nov 11th
Here is a web tip for you. Never start tweaking your website or blog when you REALLY need some sleep.
…it’s just a bad idea
Sad Christmas Postcard
Dec 27th
I saw this a few days ago on Post Secrets. (psssst!..for those who don’t know, Post Secrets is a website where people send in anonymous postcards with their secrets on them…interesting stuff.) It made me a bit sad as well because I know people who fit this card. Heck, I suppose at times even I fit this card…luckily for me, when I get sad, I just stop that and… well you get the point.
On a side note, I have a ton of content in my draft section…expect to see it soon.
Be Awesome Instead and happy new year.
Chuck Norris vs SEO
Sep 22nd
An interesting Chuck Norris Fact involving SEO:
Google won’t search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don’t find Chuck Norris, he finds you.
Barracuda Webfilter update
Sep 21st
So long ago in a distant land I mentioned that I had chosen the Barracuda Web Filter (formerly known as their Spyware Filter) to install in our network. If you missed my past post then check out my reasons why here or look through the whol saga of web filter choices here. Well since then I have been quite busy with both work projects and personal projects. As far as personal goes I have been doing a great deal of studying on SEO, blogging, Google and Page Rank stuff so I can try to get a new personal (and not totally techy) blog off the ground ( www.beawesomeinstead.com and also ..well more than also, mainly working on my wife’s new real estate blog (www.dicksontn-realestate.com). Now my wife is brilliant so teaching her to blog has been pretty simple…In fact she usually fixes her own issues before I ever get a chance to help her…but that is all another post entirely. So back to the Barracuda…
I set up the Web Filter off of a stub network here for testing purposes. Energize Updates and Firmware Updates went fine and then synced up the groups and users with Active Directory without issue at all. I have been testing sparaticly for some time now and it seem to be great. For the first few weeks, after putting it between the firewall and our core switch we will monitor web usage just to get a better idea of what will be blocked according to normal web usage… I am still trying to make some decisions on certain categories and whether or not they should be blocked or allowed. The main hurdle keeping me from putting the the filter into full time service (other than coming in after hours, which in my case is sometime between 10:30 pm and 5:30 am) is out Terminal Servers. you see from talking to the Barracuda technician I will need to enable Virtual IP and I need to research just a little bit more before I am comfortable doing so. The bulk of our Physicians work through the Terminal Servers using Citrix so I really want to make sure they won’t be calling me with random error message all week. Hopefully, I’ll have an update soon.
Let me take a second and say this about the Barracuda…while functionality and doing what it should do (filter web results) seems to work great. The reporting…well it blows goats… I mean so very bad. And I know from browsing their forums that there are third party applications that I can dump logs into and..yadda, yadda, yadda..it’s not going to happen. I have enough crap to deal with already…That’s why I bought this filter, do do some work for me. Now the kind folks at Barracuda have assured me that changes are coming to that and it will be (a direct quote) “much better”… kinda give you the warm fuzzies on the inside eh?”…more to come.
OpenDNS. Faster internet for your home.
Sep 10th
My isp at home is Comcast… wonderful company (I’m sure to some) but keeping my internet connection is about as slow and stable as a blind, one winged duck flying through a blizzard while eating a tootsie roll…. but I digress. Either way, about 2 months ago I started using the free public DNS servers at OpenDNS, and wow. My web browsing is noticeably faster and when it comes to the stability there is no comparison. I don’t think I have had an outage yet.
Another cool feature (especially for those of you who have children at home) is the Adult Site Blocking. With this feature a known list of Adult oriented sites will be blocked by OpenDNS on networks you designate. It’s overall pretty easy to use..just change your automatically assigned DNS entries (from your ISP) to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 or for instruction on setting it up on your router at home (I presonally have a Linksys WRT54g running DD-WRT see their help page:
http://www.opendns.com/support/category/2
Some other very nice features they offer besides faster DNS lookups is that they correct spelling errors so if you try to visit www.craigslist.or or www.yahoo.cmo they will correct it for you! Also, anti-phishing at the DNS level so if you try to visit that Bank America site in from the email you suspiciously got (even though you don’t have an account there) and you’ll see a Phishing Site Blocked message from OpenDNS.
Give OpenDNS a try by visiting their website or clicking on the icon to the right and get started. Enjoy.
FTP using your web browser
Aug 8th
It’s amazing how bad my memory is…at least I think so…I can’t honestly remember, never the less. I was needing to access some files on a SNAP server (basically an older NAS unit) that we have and because of complications with the O.S. on it I could not do this easily. I can however FTP to the SNAP server and transfer it that way. There was no FTP client on the storage server I was going to send it to (nor did I feel like installing one) and I didn’t want to use up my resources system resources doing an FXP (still having to install IIS on that server).
So the simple solution…use internet explorer(not the best way I know but humor me). Now if you just get all crazy and type in ftp://ad.dr.e.ss then it will log you in anonymously. That’s no good for me because on the SNAP we have security set-up and while you can see the files, you can get crap. Now I used to remember how to type the user name, password and all that jazz in the address bar, but like I was saying about memory, i forgot.
Well in case you want to know, here it is:
ftp://user:password@ftpserver/url-path
Let your memory serve you better than mine does me.
Barracuda Web Filter Appliance
Apr 13th
Let me start by saying my advice may be worth what you pay for it… so if your reading this feel free to send me some cash so that the advice will be more valuable. (snicker) With that said… I’ve previously talked about my 3 choices for Internet Filtering Appliances in Web Filtering, Look for this:
St. Bernard iPrism
Barracuda Networks Web Filter
Cymphonix Network Composer
…anyways, like I said I decided on the Barracuda Web Filter. Several reasons for my choice. One reason it it got great reviews like this one from SC Magazine. Spyware & malware filtering (including a removal tool that is pushed out from the appliance) were a big plus but honestly the main concern was price. Fortunately for me, this time the cheaper seems to be the better product. I really wanted an appliance that would let me designate web content by group, because while my general office users really has no need for porn at work, my doctors pay for it all so want to look at whatever they might “need to”. Either way..that’s another issue for another day. At the same time I don’t want anyone going to sites that are known to be infected with viruses or spyware, see my point?
Another thing was I wanted really detailed reporting on internet usage and whats more have it emailed to supervisors monthly so I don’t have to spend time running reports. Automation can be a great thing. The Cuda had some other “perks” too. One of which was a by pass port so that if my Cuda goes down, traffic simply bypasses the appliance all together, so people can look at anything, but no network outage. This is especially nice if you don’t like getting call 2 hours before you normally get out of bed…But then again maybe that is just me. The Cuda had all I wanted and for a much nicer price tag than the competitors. Performance was great, it didn’t seem to hinder any network throughput, and my Docs save some bling, bling (sorry I know I shouldn’t use references like that.) Just a few reason, I decided to make it my purchase.
Like I said I should be installing said appliance so I’ll let you know how that goes. Feel free to ask me anything about what all I looked at & have a “gud un.”
Cheers
Web Filtering – Look for this
Apr 12th
So over the past few months I have been shopping for a good Internet filtering solution.
My few requirements:
- Must integrate with AD (mainly so I don’t have to recreate every user)
- Must be an appliance, there were a lot of good software solutions or creating our own proxy kind of things but I don’t have time for that since we only have 2 techs for 200+ users in a medical facility.
- Needs to work well with Citrix & Terminal Services
- Good reporting
- Price (this according to our bosses, all 27 doctors, is the most important)
There are actually a few decent options out there but after 3 months of comparing, researching, webinars, live demos, and talks with sales people (who will tell you the appliance cooks your meals & gets you dates, if it will get you to buy) & techs, I narrowed the field to 3.
St. Bernard iPrism, Barracuda Networks Web Filter and the Cymphonix Network Composer.
All three had most of the features I wanted. I was familiar with the iPrism from a previous job, and really liked it best at first but of the 3 it was the most expensive in the long run. I know the expression that “you get what you pay for” but then again sometime you pay more for a reputation and name than a solid product. The price for the yearly updates were more than double than the price updates AND instant replacement of the Barracuda.
When I first started looking the Cuda had virtually no reporting and AD integration was iffy… but I already have a Barracuda Spam Filter on our network…
(sorry, side note here: the Barracuda Spam Filter is a very cool and helpful gadget. I have never found one that blocks 100% of Spam and anyone who says theirs does is a flat out LIAR…however this one gets so close it is scary)
…and being familiar with the interface was a plus. The more detailed reporting and much better AD integration were promised and by the time I was ready to buy, had came up to the standards I wanted.
The Cymphonix was, honestly, the most interesting and comprehensive option of the three. It honestly did too much. The reporting was very detailed and it had some very cool network traffic analysis features. The catch with the Cymphonix was the way it worked with Terminal Services and Citrix I was going to get charged virtually doubled the per seat cost. Simply put, this means that for my 200 concurrent users I would need 400 “seats” (licenses). Then again the sales guy I talked too read off a script pretty much, which is the most annoying thing to someone who actually knows about technology… So, yes, I went with the Barracuda. I will be installing it next week so I’ll post more on this later. Feel free to ask any questions about my decision and I’ll try to reply here. Cheers!
