I have been going over the idea of premium content within my blogs. I find myself wanting to write more and more, and writing would help one of my other projects I have going. However, I don’t make any direct money from the blog.
In an effort to provide more regular content, I have come up with the following ideas.
1.I will be implementing a premium posts section of this blog. For the foreseeable future, this will be a free section. All that will be required is you fill out a simple registration. We won’t spam you, but you will have the option to be notified of updates.
2.I will be doing more sponsored posts to keep as much content as possible in the non-premium space. As a result, I am looking for vendors with products they would like reviewed. The idea is if I buy a product with my own money, it’s most likely going to be a premium post. If a vendor or manufacturer wish to send a product to be reviewed this will be a public post.
I am looking for vendors and manufacturers that wish to be regular sponsors. This strategy is open and fluid as things progress.
As I get ready for my trip to Vegas to attend WISPAPALLOZA 2017 the following product becomes relevant. Security, namely Identity Theft, is becoming more and more of something we have to deal with. Much like pickpockets, digital Identity theft is a real thing.
This is where the SyncStop by Xipiter comes in. This is a simple device. It allows you to charge your phone on any USB enabled connection, but does not allow syncing by cutting off access to the data pins of the USB connection at the hardware level.
If you travel alot I would suggest investing in a few of these. Let’s face it, we try and find an outlet anywhere we can when it comes to charging our phones. Hackers know this. A cleverly designed “public charge station” could be easily compromised to feed your data back to a remote server in just a few minutes and you would probably never notice.
There was a Facebook discussion that popped up tonight about how a WISP answers the question “Is your network secure?” There were many good answers and the notion of WEP vs WPA was brought up.
In today’s society, you need end-to-end encryption for data to be secure. An ISP has no control over where the customer traffic is going. Thus, by default, the ISP has no control over customer traffic being secure. “But Justin, I run WPA on all my aps and backhauls, so my network is secure.” Again, think about end-to-end connectivity. Every one of your access points can be encrypted, and every one of your backhauls can be encrypted, but what happens when an attacker breaks into your wiring closet and installs a sniffer on a router or switch port?What most people forget is that WPA key encryption is only going on between the router/ap and the user device. “But I lock down all my ports.” you say. Okay, what about your upstream? Who is to say your upstream provider doesn’t have a port mirror running that dumps all your customer traffic somewhere. “Okay, I will just run encrypted tunnels across my entire network!. Ha! let’s see you tear down that argument!”. Again, what happens when it leaves your network? The encryption stops at the endpoint, which is the edge of your network.
Another thing everyone hears about is hotspots. Every so often the news runs a fear piece on unsecured hotspots. This is the same concept. If you connect to an unsecured hotspot, it is not much different than connecting to a hotspot where the WPA2 key is on a sign behind the cashier at the local coffee shop. The only difference is the “hacker” has an easier time grabbing any unsecured traffic you are sending. Notice I said unsecured. If you are using SSL to connect to a bank site that session is sent over an encrypted session. No sniffing going on there. If you have an encrypted VPN the possibility of traffic being sniffed is next to none. I say next to none because certain types of VPNs are more secure than others. Does that mean the ISP providing the Internet to feed that hotspot is insecure? There is no feasible way for the ISP to provide end to end security of user traffic on the open Internet.
These arguments are why things like SSL and VPNs exist. Google Chrome is now expecting all websites to be SSL enabled to be marked as secure. VPNs can ensure end-to-end security, but only between two points. Eventually, you will have to leave the safety and venture out into the wild west of the internet. Things like Intranets exist so users can have access to information but still be protected. Even most of that is over encrypted SSL these days so someone can’t install a sniffer in the basement.
So what is a WISP supposed to say about security? The WISP is no more secure than any other ISP, nor are then any less secure. The real security comes from the customer. Things like making sure their devices are up-to-date on security patches. This includes the often forgotten router. Things like secure passwords, paying attention to browser warnings, e-mail awareness, and other things are where the real user security lies. VPN connections to work. Using SSL ports on e-mail. Using SSH and Secure RDP for network admins. Firewalls can help, but they don’t encrypt the traffic. Does all traffic need encrypted? no.
Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a service that can be used to synchronize time on network connected devices. Before we dive into what NTP is, we need to understand why we need accurate time.
The obvious thing is network devices need an accurate clock. Things like log files with the proper time stamp are important in troubleshooting. Accurate timing also helps with security prevention measures. Some attacks use vulnerabilities in time stamps to add in bad payloads or manipulate data. Some companies require accurate time stamps on files and transactions as well for compliance purposes.
So what are these Stratum levels I hear about?
NTP has several levels divided into stratum. All this is the distance from the reference clock source. A clock which relays UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) that has little to no delay (we are talking nanoseconds) are Stratum-0 servers. These are not used on the network. These are usually atomic and GPS clocks. A Stratum-0 server is connected to time servers or stratum-1 via GPS or a national time and frequency transmission. A Stratum 1 device is a very accurate device and is not connected to a Stratum-0 clock over a network. A Stratum-2 clock receives NTP packets from a Stratum-1 server, a Stratum-3 receives packets from a Stratum-2 server, and so on. It’s all relative of where the NTP is in relationship to Stratum-1 servers.
Why are there levels?
The further you get away from Stratum-0 the more delay there is. Things like jitter and network delays affect accuracy. Most of us network engineers are concerned with milliseconds (ms) of latency. Time servers are concerned with nanoseconds (ns). Even a server directly connected to a Stratum-0 reference will add 8-10 nanoseconds to UTC time.
My Mikrotik has an NTP server built in? Is that good enough?
This depends on what level of accuracy you want. Do you just need to make sure all of your routers have the same time? then synchronizing with an upstream time server is probably good enough. Having 5000 devices with the same time, AND not having to manually set them or keep them in sync manually is a huge deal.
Do you run a VOIP switch or need to be compliant when it comes to transactions on servers or need to be compliant with various things like Sox compliance you may need a more accurate time source.
What can I do for more accurate time?
Usually, a dedicated appliance is what many networks use. These are purpose built hardware that receives a signal from GPS. the more accurate you need the time, the more expensive it will become. Devices that need to be accurate to the nanosecond are usually more expensive than ones accurate to a microsecond.
If you google NTP Appliance you will get a bunch of results. If you want to setp up from what you are doing currently you can look into these links:
Imagine this scenario. Outside your house, the most awesome super highway has been built. It has a speed limit of 120 Mile Per Hour. You calculate at those speeds you can get to and from work 20 minutes earlier. Life is good. Monday morning comes, you hop in your 600 horsepower Nissan GT-R, put on some new leather driving gloves, and crank up some good driving music. Your pull onto the dedicated on-ramp from your house and are quickly cruising at 120 Miles an hour. You make it into work before most anyone else. Life is good.
Near the end of the week, you notice more and more of your neighbors and co-workers using this new highway. Things are still fast, but you can’t get up to speed like you could earlier in the week. As you ponder why you notice you are coming up on the off-ramp to your work. Traffic is backed up. Everyone is trying to get to the same place. As you are waiting in the line to get off the superhighway, you notice folks passing you by going on down the road at high rates of speed. You surmise your off-ramp must be congested because it is getting used more now.
Speedtest servers work the same way. A speedtest server is a destination on the information super-highway. Man, there is an oldie term. To understand how speedtest servers work we need a quick understanding of how the Internet works. The internet is basically a bunch of virtual cities connected together. Your local ISP delivers a signal to you via Wireless, Fiber, or some sort of media. When it leaves your house it travels to the ISP’s equipment and is aggregated with your neighbours and sent over faster lines to larger cities. It’s just like a road system. You may get access via a gravel road, which turns into a 2 lane blacktop, which then may turn into a 4 lane highway, and finally a super-highway. The roads you take depend on where you are going. Your ISP may not have much control over how the traffic flows once it leaves their network.
Bottlenecks can happen anywhere. Anything from fiber optic cuts, oversold capacity, routing issues, and plain old unexpected usage. Why are these important? All of these can affect your speedtest results and can be totally out of control of your ISP and you. They can also be totally your ISP’s fault. They can also be your fault, just like your car can be. An underpowered router can be struggling to keep up with your connection. Much like a moped on the above super-highway can’t keep up with a 600 horsepower car, your router might not be able to keep up either. Other things can cause issues such as computer viruses, and low performing components.
Just about any network can become a speedtest.net node or a node with some of the other speedtest sites. These networks have to meet minimum requirements, but there is no indicator of how utilized these speedtest servers are. A network could put up one and it’s 100 percent utilized when you go running a speedtest. This doesn’t mean your ISP is slow, just the off-ramp to that speedtest server is slow.
The final thing we want to talk about is the utilization of your internet pipe from your ISP. This is something most don’t take into consideration. Let’s go back to our on-ramp analogy. Your ISP is selling you a connection to the information super-highway. Say they are selling you a 10 meg download connection. If you have a device in your house streaming an HD Netflix stream, which is typically 5 megs or so, that means you only have 5 megs available for a speedtest while that HD stream is happening. Speedtest only test your current available capacity. Many folks think a speedtest somehow stops all the traffic on your network, runs the test, and starts the traffic. It doesn’t work that way. A speedtest tests the available capacity at that point in time. The same is true for any point between you and the speedtest server. Remember our earlier analogy about slowing down when you got to work because there were so many people trying to get there. They exceeded the capacity of that destination. However, that does not mean your connection is necessarily slow because people were zooming past you on their way to less congested destinations.
This is why speedtest results should be taken with a grain of salt. They are a useful tool, but not an absolute. A speedtest server is just a destination. That destination can have bottlenecks, but others don’t. Even after this long article, there are many other factors which can affect Internet speed. Things we didn’t touch on like Peering, the technology used, speed limits, and other things can also affect your internet speed to destinations.
For years we have done the following naming conventions for our DNS servers.
NS is reserved for authoritative name servers
DNS is reserved for caching servers.
For MTIN we have NS1.MTIN.NET and NS2.MTIN.NET which are authoritative for domains we host. DNS1.MTIN.NET and DNS2.MTIN.NET are for managed DNS customers.
Below, We have some visio diagrams we have done for customers.
This first design is a customer mesh into a couple of different data centers. We are referring to this as a switch-centric design. This has been talked about in the forums and switch-centric seems like as good as any.
This next design is a netonix switch and a Baicells deployment.
Over the years MTIN has gone from being a computer repair shop to a dial-up ISP, to a Wireless ISP, and many things in-between. Each time technology and market conditions change we adapt to change with it. Our next metamorphosis is needed so we can grow into more aspects of the xISP world In order to accomplish this we are splitting into divisions of what we do.
The first is j2sw.com. This part of the business will be focused on personalised WISP services and support. These will be custom tailored to a limited number of clients. Projects such as the “Start a WISP” book and upcoming WISP publications will be run under j2sw.com. Other projects that benefit the ISP community will run from j2sw.com. Having j2sw Consulting as a separate arm allows for better personal attention to key customers.
The second division of the business is MTIN.NET. This arm will be focused on business to business services such as data center co-location, network connectivity, tower services, and related type services. MTIN is becoming a project management company. We will leverage our vast partnerships to leverage the strength of many to accomplish your medium to large projects. MTIN will be an umbrella company to bring in the right people for the right projects.
Look for changes to the websites and contact information coming over the next month or so. Justin will be involved with each entity on a very regular basis, but having extra folks can allow for time to be dedicated to ever-expanding projects without sacrificing service to the client.
Some FAQs Why the change?
For a couple of reasons. The first is to leverage Justin being known in the xISP community. having a face to the consulting side. This allows for better personal service as well as a trusted name in the WISP community. Secondly, is to allow a better division of resources based on projects and individual needs.
Is MTIN going away?
No, MTIN will move into a project management type of company. We have access to a large network of contractors, partners, service providers, and other groups we have built since 1998. MTIN can bring in needed resources for projects under one contact point. This allows for projects to not depend on just one person.
Will contact info change?
In the upcoming months, we will be publishing updated contact info. The old information will not go away, but things will get routed to the proper folks better.
For now check out http://j2sw.com and like jswconsulting on facebook.
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