Categories
Site News

Facebook and WordPress integration changing

From WordPress

We wanted to update you about an upcoming change Facebook is introducing to their platform, and which affects how you may share posts from your Jetpack-connected website to your Facebook account.

Starting August 1, 2018, third-party tools can no longer share posts automatically to Facebook Profiles. This includes Publicize, the Jetpack tool that connects your site to major social media platforms (like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook).

Will this affect your ability to share content on Facebook? It depends. If you’ve connected a Facebook Profile to your site, then yes: Publicize will no longer be able to share your posts to Facebook. On the other hand, nothing will change if you keep a Facebook Pageconnected to your site — all your content should still appear directly on Facebook via Publicize. (Not sure what the difference is between a Page and a Profile? Here’s Facebook’s explanation.) You can review and change your social sharing settings by heading to My Site(s) → Sharing.

If you’ve previously used Publicize to connect a Facebook Profile to your website and still want your Facebook followers to see your posts, you have two options. First, you could go the manual route: once you publish a new post, copy its URL and share the link in a new Facebook post. The other option is to convert your Facebook Profile to a Page. This might not be the right solution for everyone, but it’s something to consider if your website focuses on your business, organization, or brand.

While Facebook says it is introducing this change to improve their platform and prevent the misuse of personal profiles, we believe that eliminating cross-posting from WordPress is another step back in Facebook’s support of the open web, especially since it affects people’s ability to interact with their network (unless they’re willing to pay for visibility) We know that this might cause a disruption in the way you and your Facebook followers interact, and if you’d like to share your concerns with Facebook, we urge you to head to their Help Community to speak out.

Categories
xISP

What is an LOA for a cross-connect

LOA’s (Letters of Authority/Authorization) are a mystery to many.  We help many of our customers with LOA’s on a semi-regular basis.  If you are here you are probably wanting to find out what an LOA is and how to properly fill one out.

When you or a provider orders a cross-connect within a facility, such as a data-center, you have to generate an LOA that allows someone to run a cross-connect to your space from someplace else. This cross-connect could be fiber or copper.  The other side generates and LOA as well.

An LOA is simply a piece of paper with a few parts.  It usually starts on your company letterhead to make it more official. It states you are giving authority to the other party to land a cross-connect to your physical space.  Normally it reads something like this in the first paragraph.

The undersigned appoints ______________________________________________________ (“___________”) authority to act as an authorized agent to order cross connects to be delivered to YOUR_COMPANY (“YOUR_COMPANY”) collocation facilities.

Specifically, this letter authorizes ___________ to order services on the behalf of YOUR_COMPANY in order to engineer and deliver access and transport to the collocation designated below.

___________ is hereby released from any and all liabilities for making pertinent information available to necessary contractors and for following instructions provided by YOUR_COMPANY with reference to the following order:

The above establishes who, why, and somewhat the what and where. The meat of the LOA is usually in the next part.  This is where you define where the LOA is specifically going.  Most LOAs include the following information:
-Where your physical space is in the facility
-What cabinet or rack the connection is to land in
-What patch panel to go in, If you are not using patch panels you really should
-The port designation to plug into on the patch panel
-The type of media (single mode, Ethernet, etc.)
-If fiber what ends your side should be (LC,SC,etc)
-Any other pertinent instructions.

Depending on several factors you may or may not need to include all of the above.  Some data centers are totally hands off and just run the cable to a spot in your space and you are responsible for plugging it into your gear.  Others will plug into the patch panel ports you designate.  Others can do a full turnkey of actually patching it down to your equipment.  If they do this you will need to include additional information on where the switch is, what switch port, what cable needed, etc.

You may ask why can’t I just tell them what I need and they do it? Part of it is because the person doing the work needs to know exactly what they are doing. The person running it into your space may never have even seen your gear and set up before they get there. Secondly, it is a check and balance.  If you tell them to plug into ports 3/4 on patch panel 2 and there is already something there it helps to make sure your documentation is correct, and you meant to type the correct thing.  Thirdly, its a CYA for the data center or the contractor running the cable.  If you specified LC and the contractor put SC on it’s the contractor’s fault.

Lastly, the LOA includes signature, and title of someone who has been authorized by the facility on your behalf.  This is another check and balance.  Some LOA’s have additional wording about a time limit this LOA is valid for or additional notes.

LOAs are an important part of the documentation process.  Data centers are a place most people do not visit very often.  Having good documentation to generate a proper LOA is essential to things running smoothly.

Hope this helps.

Categories
Mikrotik

Mikrotik Advanced Tools

Recently I had a customer call and was missing some tools like “Ip Scan” and others under tools.  They had forgotten to add in the “advanced tools” package.  Sometimes this is not default.  You have to manually add it in.

Categories
News

Rep. Brooks talks about Rural Broadband

This was a visit to Beck’s Hybrids and a visit with one of our Clients.

Categories
WISPA xISP

Splynx 2.1 released

Splynx Changelog, version 3.0

 

Categories
Data Center Networking

Skinny cables and the lowdown

The new ANSI/TIA-568.2-D cabling standard which now allows for the use of 28 AWG patch cords. What does this mean and how does it affect you? Read this article from Fluke networks.

Number one takeaway.
-Recommended length no more than 15 meters. This means it is great for dense racks and patch panels.

http://www.flukenetworks.com/blog/cabling-chronicles/skinny-28-awg-patch-cords

Categories
Mikrotik

New Mikrotik hardware

From the latest Mikrotik newsletter

Categories
Uncategorized

Winbox brute Force

You really should not have your winbox port open to anything but a management network, but if you need a script to help with brute force on the Mikrotik.
add action=drop chain=input comment="drop winbox brute forcers" dst-port=8291 \
protocol=tcp src-address-list=winbox_blacklist
add action=add-src-to-address-list address-list=winbox_blacklist \
address-list-timeout=1w3d chain=input connection-state=new dst-port=8291 \
protocol=tcp src-address-list=winbox_stage3
add action=add-src-to-address-list address-list=winbox_stage3 \
address-list-timeout=1m chain=input connection-state=new dst-port=8291 \
protocol=tcp src-address-list=winbox_stage2
add action=add-src-to-address-list address-list=winbox_stage2 \
address-list-timeout=1m chain=input connection-state=new dst-port=8291 \
protocol=tcp src-address-list=winbox_stage1
add action=add-src-to-address-list address-list=winbox_stage1 \
address-list-timeout=1m chain=input connection-state=new dst-port=8291 \
protocol=tcp
add action=drop chain=forward comment="drop WINBOX brute downstream" dst-port=8291 \
protocol=tcp src-address-list=winbox_blacklist

Of course changing your Winbox port number and disallowing access from anything but trusted Ip addresses is one of the best ways.

Categories
Wireless WISP

Ac Wave 1 vs Wave 2

There has been much discussion on the performance of going from an N Series outdoor wireless system to AC.  Not all AC is created equal.  Right now there is AC Wave 1 and AC Wave 2.  Just about all the AC stuff currently in the pipeline for outdoor wireless is wave 1.  There is wave 2 indoor gear available, but for a WISP you are interested in the outdoor gear.

So what’s the difference?
For some reading about spatial streams, channel sizes, etc. look at this article https://info.hummingbirdnetworks.com/blog/80211ac-wave-2-vs-wave-1-difference

For the WISP folks who want the Cliff Notes version here are some key differences.

-Wave 1 uses 20,40,and 80 Mhz Channels.  Wave 2 can support 80 and 160mhz channels.  The 160mhz channel would be two 80mhz channels bonded together.

-Wave 1 can do 3 spatial streams.  Wave 2 does 4. This requires an additional antenna to take advantage of wave2.  This is a hardware upgrade from wave1 to wave 2.

-Wave 2 supports MU-MIMO. The AP can talk to 4 clients individually at once.  The client must also support this, which is a hardware upgrade from wave 1 to wave 2 on both the client and the AP.

The question to ask your vendors is what is the upgrade path if you are using existing AC gear.  If you are running AC currently you are most assuredly going to have to replace your AP radios and antennas.  Will your existing clients work with the new AC wave 2 aps? An important thing to ask.

 

Categories
Uncategorized

What is a BGP Confederation?

In network routing, BGP confederation is a method to use Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to subdivide a single autonomous system (AS) into multiple internal sub-AS’s, yet still advertise as a single AS to external peers. This is done to reduce the number of entries in the iBGP routing table.  If you are familiar with breaking OSPF domains up into areas, BGP confederations are not that much different, at least from a conceptual view.

And, much like OSPF areas, confederations were born when routers had less CPU and less ram than they do in today’s modern networks. MPLS has superseded the need for confederations in many cases. I have seen organizations, who have different policies and different admins break up their larger networks into confederations.  This allows each group to go their own directions with routing policies and such.

if you want to read the RFC:https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5065