Gateways vs. Access Points

Some time ago, I had an occasion to set up a wireless network for some
friends.  They had a broadband connection to the Internet through a cable
modem provided by Mediacom and two desktop computers.  I suggested they buy
an 802.11b gateway and 802.11b cards for each computer they wanted connected.

After installing and connecting all the hardware they bought, each computer
seemed to be able to connect to the Internet fine, and we were able to do some
file and print sharing between them.  But it all wasn't fine.  I
quickly discovered that the computers could surf the net, but not at the same
time.  It is then that I discovered that they'd purchased an access point
and not a gateway.

A wireless access point does one thing.  It broadcasts a single RJ-45
jack to multiple wireless network cards.  It merely provides direct
connectivity to the public.  In this case, the public network sees all the
computers connected.  This is a problem because Mediacom (and many other
cable companies) will only assign you one IP address.  Not one for each
computer you have plugged into their network, just one period.  So when we
connected the AP and fired up the first computer, we were fine.  Mediacom
asked us to verify our new mac address, as expected.  Then we fired up the
second computer.  And again, we were asked to verify the mac address. 
Doing this, we got on the net with that machine too.  So all's well, right?

Wrong!  Being asked to verify a new mac address the second time was a
bad sign.  It meant Mediacom could see the mac addresses on each machine,
which told us that the wireless base was not fronting for us, but was exposing
each machine attached to it to the network, requiring each machine to obtain its
own IP address, which Mediacom will not do for more than one machine
simultaneously.

Ah hah!  It's an access point, not a router.

If my friends had purchased a wireless gateway instead of the simple wireless
access point, the gateway would have appeared to Mediacom as a single computer,
and only asking to update the mac address once, and that mac address would have
been for the gateway and not one for each of the computers.  With a
gateway, we not only insulate each of the internal computers from the Internet,
but we sort of fool Mediacom into thinking we only have one machine connected to
their network.  A gateway acts as the go-between for all Internet requests
coming from inside the network -- so instead of each computer requesting its own
IP address from Mediacom directly, each computer would ask the gateway (and not
Mediacom) for their IP address, which would in turn assign each machine a local
IP address from a bank of local subnet addresses.

Lesson learned.  Access points are fine if you're already behind a
firewall and are not limited to the number of IP addresses you can
request.  But if you're using a cable or DSL modem, make sure you use a
gateway to connect several computers to the network or you may have the same
problem we had.

Wireless home networking update:

Lots of people assume that you need
broadband (cable or DSL modem) to have wireless networking.  Not
so.  You can still use your single dialup connection and share it
with all users on your home or office network.  But there are a few
complications, including slower surfing and downloading.

In order to share dial up internet, you
need to have a modem doing the dialing.  There are a number of ways
to get dialup internet into your network, but none are all that common,
or even very easy:

• A dedicated server, such a
  Linux computer with a modem and a
  network card.  This machine will act as a gateway between the
  Internet and your local network.  Whenever someone tries to get
  on the net, the server will make a dialup connection.  You can
  also use it as a file and print server.  The advantages here
  are that can be very cheap to set up and use and it is extremely
  feature-packed -- but the downside is that it's very complicated to
  setup and maintain.


• A Windows computer that is
  turned on and available to dial up the ISP whenever someone on the
  network wants to get on the Internet.  More expensive, but
  easier to set up.


• A gateway device that has a
  built-in modem, designed specifically to provide dialup access to
  the Internet in this way, such as the base station one below.

Here's what I suggest for most home/small
office users on a shoestring budget:

The base station is a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=ZoomAir+Wireless+IG-4150+Wireless+Gateway"
target="_blank">ZoomAir Wireless IG-4150 Wireless Gateway for under
$70, connected to either your phone line (56K dialup) or your Cable/DSL
modem (usually 256Kbps to 1,500 Kbps).  What makes this unit unique
is that it has a built-in 56K modem where most all Gateways/Routers do
not.  Those gateways and routers that do facilitate 56K dialup
connections to the Internet only do so through a serial port which you
must connect an additional external modem.  The ZoomAir Gateway is
configured to dial and logon to your ISP using a web browser.  I
assume this is a dial on demand situation, so that whenever a computer
needs an Internet connection, the modem will make that connection, and
hang up after a period of in-activity.

The downside of using this
particular gateway is that computers and the software running think
they're always connected to the net, so may make frequent connections
to update software such as weather bugs, chat clients, anti-virus
software definition updates and automatic Windows updates, and
therefore may never be inactive.  This can increase your ISP
service charges if you are billed on an hourly basis.  It would
be beneficial if you could configure the modem to ONLY dial up during
specific hours of the day, so that you could 'throttle' usage to stay
below a certain number of hours a month.  I have no idea if this
feature is built into this gateway.

802.11b Wireless network adaptors
for all computers on your network.

• A laptop should use a href="http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=279434&pfp=BROWSE"
  target="_blank">wireless PC Card, ( href="http://www.zoom.com/graphics/prod_shots/4150photo.JPG"
  target="_blank">Photo.) which is a PCMCIA card that slides into
  a PC Card (PCMCIA) slot on almost all laptop/notebook
  computers.  Any brand will do, but it must be 802.11b
  compliant.


• Desktops use an internal href="http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=292350&pfp=BROWSE"
  target="_blank">wireless PCI card.  Again, any brand will
  do the job, but make sure it's 802.11b compliant.

How it works:

The base station connects to the internet
through either the phone line or your cable or DSL modem.  It then
sets up a private local area network, isolated from the outside. 
It assigns local IP addresses to each computer that connects to it in
ranges that are not accessible from outside your LAN and Internet
connection.

NBC's West Wing hits DVD market

The premiere season of "The West Wing" is expected to be realeased late this year on four discs and will retail for $60. Gag reels to commentaries may also appear on the set. More...

Yahoo! tries to knock off Google

In a bold move, Yahoo!, one of Google's best customers, has acquired some contender Internet search engines to go head-to-head with the biggest dog on the block. Microsoft isn't fdar nehind, chomping at Yahoo!'s heels. More...

Worst virus week ever

F-Secure says Sobig.F is among four major virus threats discovered in a week. It's an email worm that sends a .pif or .scr file to recipients in users' address books. It also prepares the computer to receive orders and tries to download files from the Internet, according to one news report. If the infected computer is on a shared network, the worm tries to copy itself to the other computers on that network. The worm is programmed to stop spreading on Sept. 10. More...

Israel attacks the US

Got your attention, didn't I?  What's this about?  In June, 1967, during the Six Day War, Israeli war planes attacked and nearly sunk a US spy ship staffed with NSA intelligence gathering personnel. 
Israel calls the attack a horrible accident; a case of mistaken identity. Survivors and conspiracy theorists say that's a load of crap. 
You decide.  I'll deliberately leave out my viewpoint in all this, and instead suggest you read what's being
written about the incident.  Do your own Google searches and read the words on the web sites on the two
sides and make up your own mind.  Here are some links in no particular
order:

• Washington Post story: The Assault on the USS Liberty Still Covered Up After 26 Years
  
  


• USSLiberty.org
  
  


• Jewish Virtual Library's USS Liberty story
  
  


• Judge AJ
  Cristol's web site on the Book, The Liberty Incident


• HonestReporting.com's href="http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/critiques/Return_of_the_USS_Liberty.asp"
  target="_blank">Return of the Liberty


• NSA documents (audio and transcripts)


• Jon Borne's Dissertation, "Attack on the USS Liberty"


• target="_blank">A CNN story


• 
  

  href="http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/01/04/USSLiberty0401.html" target="_blank">A
  UK Book Review of James Bamford's "Body of Evidence"



• 
  

  target="_blank">The Israeli News Agencies comments

Here's one scenario of what might have happened:

A zealous LBJ wanted to do right by Israel, since just 19 years prior, the US had sponsored Israel's very statehood, and he knew in advance of their plans to spank surrounding enemies who'd sworn to push the Jews into the ocean. LBJ nods in blind approval and vows he will know nothing of it. LBJ figured it would be ugly, but he didn't have to know unpleasant details of the gore. But he would later be shocked, for his own people would pay with their lives and dignity for LBJ's wink of an eye.

During this spanking, Israeli leadership learn there's a US intelligence ship lying quietly just 19 miles off the coast, watching the whole bloody mess unfold (like the execution of
Egyptians in an Israeli firing squad). Israel is slightly dismayed (a sentiment LBJ will soon share) at the NSA intrusion, and so tries to sink the snoopy ship to silence it.

It was a knee-jerk response and not well planned, but it had to be done. They'd do damage control and spin a tail of mistaken identity later, but right now, stopping Liberty is priority or there could be a very large audience and a paper trail of evidence against them.

So, despite that Israeli Air Force war plane pilots could plainly see what they were doing, orders to destroy Liberty are delivered and carried out, as dutiful warriors must, without question.

And what could LBJ say? He's all but fighting the Egyptians alongside the Israelis. How could he defend Liberty and not take action against Israel's air force? He had no choice. He had to turn a blind eye to the slaying of his own countrymen or burn in hell for not protecting the chosen ones. It would take generations to repair the damage on Israel's world status if the world knew the truth -- at least the official truth.

So, while commanders of the sixth fleet were sending warplanes to defend Liberty, LBJ turns them back.

American Power Failure!

Can I just say, "Oh my God!" When I heard Rush Limbaugh playing the blame game and turning the eastern seaboard power outage of last week into a partisan issue, it made me sick to my stomach.

I think the power companies have going one of the best games in town. They do a much needed service, providing for us the so-called comforts of home. But he who provides for our needs can certainly take away what we need, and that's just too much power for one industry to have. And don't tell me that's a partisan problem.

I think more than power companies lost a lot of steam last week. I just hope the failure did some good, that is awakened us to several of the issues that face us.

Is anyone else tired of listening to politicians bicker? Republicans want to impose religious belief on me. Democrats want to socialize the world. I hate them both equally! Fact is, democrats and republicans alike want more than anything to be elected into power without regard for the good of the people. Corporate America wants to get more and more of consumers' paychecks and will buy politicians to get it. Borders will not be protected because democrats want immigrant votes and republicans need the low wages. Health care will never be affordable if insurance lobbies continue to exist.

We all know "drunk driving" is a real problem in America. Everyone, it seems, looks to the 'drunk' part of the equation and fails to understand the huge impact mere 'driving' has on public health & safety and energy issues. While we know driving is a privilege, our society treats the function like a Constitutional right, akin to liberty and freedom. That's a load of crap. Infrastructure is one of the few elements of our society that should be standardized by the federal government, and it should be done through technology, driven by safety and efficiency.

People are human, and humans are not well suited to manage very complicated traffic considerations, such as road conditions, flow and weather. Our brains are not equipped to take in all the information needed to be safe and efficient with multi-ton equipment on busy roads. It's a scientific fact.

And bigger is not better. Jets, trains and busses keep getting bigger; bull’s eye more prominently affixed thereto. They have, are and will always be targets for terrorist attacks. Small vehicles, evenly spread, are not.

The whole transportation infrastructure needs a major overhaul, and quickly. Isn't it time to start turning the corner here? Isn't it time for America to demonstrate leadership in the world and introduce a state-of-the-art transportation model that can work everywhere?

Education is a hot button issue too. Why? Because tax payers don't get their money's worth. All it takes is a few good leaders to do the right thing here. Stop taking bribes and start paying attention to the needs of the kids. Schools should be guarded and monitored by more parents and fewer police and administrators. Bigger is not better. More schools in more and smaller multi-use structures. Air conditioning is not a must. Bussing is not a given. Extra-curricular activities should not be subsidized by taxes. Teaching kids comes first, and should be conducted by those best suited and not chosen through arbitrary, political standards.

Don't get me started on free trade and the border issues. When American companies recruit illegal aliens onto American soil though such porous, we're going to have problems with living wages and national security.

Is insurance really a good thing?

Nearly everyone has insurance of some type, and most have several: car insurance, life insurance and medical insurance. But is the basic concept of insurance, paying insurance premiums and subsequently filing claims, really the best way to pay for unplanned expenses?

Let's look at the benefits and the effects:

Insurance is good because it allows us to better buget our money, and provides a safety net in case a crisis arrises. But let's look beyond the known benefits and get to the actual societal effect.

Most people agree that prices consumers pay for goods and services should be set by free market forces, such as supply and demand, cost of living and simple competition. But when you put the insurance company between you and the doctor, as in health insurance, then basic market forces are all but lost because the insurance company -- and not you -- writes the checks to pay the bills, which frees the health care industry to increase prices to levels far above what consumers can normally afford.

For this reason, I am beginning to wonder if todays insurance models don't add up to social corruption.

Before the insurance model existed...

It used to be simple. Industries mostly didn't gouge their customers because they'd have priced themselves right out of business. People generally paid cash as they went. The breaking point on prices was relatively far lower because the deep pockets people went after when they were injured by medical malpractice or in a car crash were simply not present.

The insurance model is socially corrupt because facilitates gouging.

Employer-provided health insurance...

My electronics instructor had a saying which applied closely in electronic circuits: You can't get something from nothing. You can increase the voltage, but at the expense of amperage. This applies in life as well. When an entire society demands that employers provide health care to employees, there is a feeling that we're getting something for nothing.

I guarantee someone is paying, and it's probably you.

Perhaps the company you work for is passing some of the health care cost on to consumers of its goods and services, but my sense is that the lion's share of the health cost comes in the form of limits on wages and other benefits. And that has a dramatic effect on standards of living.

The pie is only so big, right? The smart people will figure out how to get larger and larger pieces of that pie. The really smart people will get laws passed that will guarantee them a piece of the pie.

The Peer-pressure Model

Employer-provided health care causes a social phenomenon not seen before. Because we don't pay our own bills in a 'pay-as-you-go' system, fat people, smokers and people who have a lot of kids are scoffed by their co-workers. Why? Cost sharing. It's an easy relationship to draw; the more babies YOU make, the more MY health care costs.

I don't think it's fair, but I don't blame co-workers who choose an unhealthy lifestyle for themselves. (Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.) No, I attribute the problem to socially inept leadership; politicians and industry lobbies, for instance, who permit this kind of model to exist in the first place.

Yes, you might think you live in a country that has a free market system, but someone doesn't want you, the consumer, to have any impact on health care costs.

Another MS Exploit

This worm, LoveSan (or Blaster or MSBlaster), exploits a vulnerability in the Distributed Component Object service that is hosted by a Remote Procedure Call feature in Windows 2000 & XP. More...

According to the Reuters article, the worm contains a message: "Billy Gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!!"

On a Past Wise Guys...

While
Dan Adams is out of town, Mix 100 FM's Dee James joins us for
another fun and exciting Wise Guys show this week.

On the show, we'll have Phil Parks, author of "Beat
the Car Dealer, Beat the Car Game".  He'll tell us how to find out if a
used car had its oil changed regularly, or whether there's Bondo under the
paint.

Jeff Green with Click's Cyber Bar & Grill, the Des Moines metro's
newest Wi-Fi cyber-cafe, will be here at noon.

The Helpline, as usual, is at 1pm.

Got any show ideas?  Send 'em in:
Danny@RadioWiseGuys.com.  Got
a Mac question?  Ask Dan, the Mac Man:
Dan@RadioWiseGuys.com.

See ya Saturday!

Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement's Marijuana Eradication Project

On the next Wise Guys, we'll have Office of Drug Control Policy Director, Marv Van Haaften, DNE Director, Ken Carter and Ms. Janet Zwick with the Iowa Department of Health, who will educate us on the negative effects of pot on our society.  We'll
extol the virtues of our drug laws and the state's efforts to clean the scum off the streets.

I don't do drugs. Well, not the illegal kind anyway. I've been known to crack open a Bud Light while barbecuing on the deck, but there's no law against that and I don't abuse it. Come to think of it, if pot were legal, who's to say I wouldn't light up once in a while -- and not abuse it either.

Hence comes NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). This national lobby says there's nothing
fundamentally wrong with occasional and responsible marijuana use by adults and for medicinal purposes -- and they don't believe those particular kinds of uses should be against the law.

I'll ask some tough questions about whether pot is really a "gateway drug" and why statistics seem to focus on the worst of the worst in society, and never really appear to conclude that marijuana use is such a big killer and must be stopped. In fact, out of all the research materials I've read, I can only positively conclude that marijuana is illegal and that it, if abused, might harm you.

Nevertheless, our job is to serve the community and educate you about things that you should know. Pot is illegal and if you grow it, consume it, sell it or use it, state law enforcement official will come after you. Pot is also very dangerous. It stifles learning. If abused, pot can cause a number of health problems. And if you drive while under its influence, you are
dramatically less able to control your vehicle, meaning, you might kill someone. In reality, marijuana use is nothing to take lightly and public education about its use and abuse is needed. That's where begin our discussion Saturday, July 26 at 11 AM on Newsradio 1040 WHO!