The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

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xyzzy, Relay Conferencing before IRC even existed

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/28

Edit 20260607/20260608: added more archived links and noted which links have died because of link rot, added 2 relay hosts; moved MIT net-directory links to a new location.

A while ago, I remembered [Wayback/Archive] xyzzy by David Bolen: a VAX/VMS program for the BITNET Relay conference system on BITNET/EARN. Yes, relay chat before IRC. Even ELIZA did operate [Wayback/Archive] as a chatbot on BITNET Relay.

I was part of it from the late 80s until the early 90s and vividly remember the chat rooms where at one time you could have smart people from all around the world participating: Asia, Middle East, Europe, North America and other regions.

All people had one thing in common: an enthusiastic vibe as they had immediately recognised what the benefits of near instant feedback were. World Wide before you had the WWW. It was addictive too (:

The most important Dutch relay node was HEARN which was named unlike the HNYKUN patterns at the University in Nijmegen (now Radboud Universiteit, but previously known as Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen hence the KUN in the HNYKUN pattern).

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Posted in archive.is / archive.today, Archiving, BITNET Relay, Chat, History, Internet, InternetArchive, IRC, Power User, SocialMedia, WayBack machine | Leave a Comment »

Internet Archive Wayback machine – New Beta Release Allows Users to Keyword Search

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/24

I totally missed this because most of my WayBack activity is through the JavaScript buttons on my Chrome toolbar, so here it is:

A month ago, the WayBack machine introduced a new beta that allows for searching inside the archives.

Some links:

There actually seem to be two betas going on at the same time:

–jeroen

Posted in InternetArchive, Power User, WayBack machine | Leave a Comment »

Schlechte Nachrichten für Fritz!box User: http://nic.box/ Euer http://fritz.b…

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/18

[WayBack] Schlechte Nachrichten für Fritz!box User: http://nic.box/ Euer http://fritz.box ist nicht mehr das, was es sein sollte. EDIT: Muahahaha … – Kristian Köhntopp – Google+

Now there is http://nic.box/ for the new [WayBack] box top level domain and AVM does not yet have the pre-registered fritz.box there effectuated (because .box is not in final registration state yet).

Kristian:

Schlechte Nachrichten für Fritz!box User: http://nic.box/ Euer http://fritz.box ist nicht mehr das, was es sein sollte.

EDIT: Muahahaha

kris@h1755802:~> host fritz.box
fritz.box has address 127.0.53.53
fritz.box mail is handled by 10 your-dns-needs-immediate-attention.box.

The joke is in the cryptic “your-dns-needs-immediate-attention” and usage of 127.0.53.53. to indicate a gTLD name collision.

Chrome knows about ICANN though and explains it in a slightly more readable form when browsing to http://fritz.box (:

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Posted in Chrome, Fritz!, Fritz!Box, Internet, Power User, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »

openSuSE Tumbleweed: solution for `ImportError: No module named pkg_resources`

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/11

If ever on openSuSE Tumbleweed you get an error ImportError: No module named pkg_resources then check you have the installed the python-setuptools package it is different from python3-setuptools which was installed by default but is not the default python used.

This is how to install it:

zypper install python-setuptools

Tools like speedtest-cli require it.

The odd thing: on a Mac, the homebrew speedtest-cli installed and ran with no additional packages needed:

retinambpro1tb:tmp jeroenp$ brew install speedtest-cli
==> Downloading https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/archive/v0.3.2.tar.gz
==> Downloading from https://codeload.github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/tar.gz/v0.3.2
######################################################################## 100.0%
🍺 /usr/local/Cellar/speedtest_cli/0.3.2: 5 files, 52K, built in 2 seconds
retinambpro1tb:tmp jeroenp$ speedtest-cli
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Routit BV (37.153.243.246)...
Selecting best server based on latency...
Hosted by ExtraIP (Amersfoort) [3.99 km]: 6.488 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 49.89 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 47.81 Mbit/s

(this is on one of my fiber connections back when it was 50/50 megabit).

Note that for both the web interface of speedtest.net and command-line versions (like Python based speedtest-cli) sometimes needs some fiddling with chosen servers and repeated measurements to get a consistent average as quite some factors can influence the measurements.

For my home location, this one gives me the most consistent results for my fiber connections (they’re so good and reliable that I don’t have ADSL or cable any more):

speedtest-cli --server 3629

You can get the list of servers ordered by increasing distance using this command:

speedtest-cli --list | head -n 20

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Internet, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, SpeedTest, SuSE Linux | 2 Comments »

Just blocked 95.131.[184|185|186|190|191].0/24 on my firewall because suspicious port scanning @WillHillBet

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/02

I just blocked these IP subnets on my routers:

  • 95.131.184.0/24
  • 95.131.185.0/24
  • 95.131.186.0/24
  • 95.131.190.0/24
  • 95.131.191.0/24

Within a day they managed to get 60+ IP addresses from these subnets into my port-scanner blacklists because of suspicious port scanning activities.

They mostly belong to Whg (International) Limited, Gibraltar and Whg (International) Limited, United Kingdom  which seem to be related to William Hill Organization Ltd, United Kingdom that I just blocked before.

If the situation continues I’m going to block the 95.131.184.0/26 superblock as well:

–jeroen

Continuation of Just blocked 141.138.130.0/24 and 141.138.131/24 on my firewall because suspicious port scanning @WillHillBet « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Posted in Internet, Network-and-equipment, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Another +ESP8266 gizmo, this time to automatically reboot your router…

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/10/28

Another +ESP8266 gizmo, this time to automatically reboot your router if connection is lost in order to get 24/7 connectivity. – Jean-Luc Aufranc – Google+

Source: Another +ESP8266 gizmo, this time to automatically reboot your router if…

Posted in Internet, Power User, routers | Leave a Comment »

OpenSuSE Tumbleweed: after installing from ISO, be sure to disable/remove the ISO repo

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/10/26

TL;DR: OpenSuSE Tumbleweed – after installing from ISO, be sure to disable/remove the ISO repo.

A while ago I had a weird thing on my OpenSuSE Tumbleweed system while upgrading (yes, zypper dist-upgrade is the recommended way to update Tumbleweed): it would complain in this way zypper dup indicates python3-urllib3-1.16-1.1.noarch requires python(abi) = 3.5:

# zypper dup
Warning: You are about to do a distribution upgrade with all enabled repositories. Make sure these repositories are compatible before you continue. See 'man zypper' for more information about this command.
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Computing distribution upgrade...

Problem: python3-urllib3-1.16-1.1.noarch requires python(abi) = 3.5, but this requirement cannot be provided
 Solution 1: Following actions will be done:
  deinstallation of python3-urllib3-1.15.1-2.1.noarch
  deinstallation of python3-wheel-0.29.0-2.1.noarch
  deinstallation of speedtest-cli-0.3.2-4.3.noarch
  deinstallation of python3-six-1.10.0-4.1.noarch
  deinstallation of python3-pycparser-2.14-2.1.noarch
  deinstallation of python3-pyasn1-0.1.9-2.1.noarch
  deinstallation of python3-pyOpenSSL-16.0.0-3.1.noarch
  deinstallation of python3-idna-2.1-1.1.noarch
  deinstallation of python3-chardet-2.3.0-1.4.noarch
 Solution 2: keep obsolete python-cupshelpers-1.5.7-7.2.noarch
 Solution 3: break python3-urllib3-1.16-1.1.noarch by ignoring some of its dependencies

Choose from above solutions by number or cancel [1/2/3/c] (c):

What eventually – with help from the excellent help by DimStar on the #openSUSE-factory IRC channel – led to the solution was the part Solution 2: keep obsolete python-cupshelpers-1.5.7-7.2.noarch.

But first let’s look at the installed versions and repos:

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Posted in *nix, Development, Internet, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, SpeedTest, SuSE Linux, Tumbleweed | Leave a Comment »

The IoT strikes back again: half a million IoT devices killed DYN DNS for hours, but fixing this will be hard

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/10/22

Less than a month after The IoT strikes back: 650 Gigabit/second and 1 Terabit/second attacks by IoT devices within a week the IoT struck back again: an estimated half a million IoT devices was used to perform multiple DDoS attacks against Dyn Managed DNS that took around 11 hours to resolve.

Google DNS appears to

Google DNS appears to “live” near me in Amsterdam

High availability usually involves a mix of DNS TTL and/or BGP routing. That’s typically how CDN providers like Cloudflare work (it’s one of the reasons that global DNS servers like Google’s 8.8.8.8 appear near to you and over time routes – some MPLS – to it change). Short DNS TTL can help CDN, requires a very stable DNS infrastructure and is similar to but different from a Fast Flux network.

Last months attacks were on a security researcher and a single ISP. The Dyn DNS attack affected even more internet services (not just sites like Twitter, WhatsApp, AirBnB and Github). So I’m with Bruce Schneier that Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet.

Handling these attacks is hard as the DDoS mitigation firms simply cannot handle the sudden increase of attack sizes yet. BCP38 should be part of mitigation, but the puzzle is big and fixing it won’t be easy though root-causes of bugs change as a lot of research is in progress.

I’m not alone in expecting it to get worse though before getting better.

On the client side, I learned that many users could cope by changing their DNS servers to either of these Public DNS Servers:

  • OpenDNS 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220, 208.67.222.220, 208.67.220.222
    • OpenDNS does a good job of handing “last known good” IPs when they can’t resolve.
  • Google Public DNS 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4
  • Level 3 DNS 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5, 4.2.2.6

Some more interesting tidbits on the progress and mitigation on this particular attack are the over time heat-maps of affected regions and BGP routing changes below.

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Posted in CDN (Content Delivery Network), Cloud, Cloudflare, DNS, Hardware, Infrastructure, Internet, IoT Internet of Things, Network-and-equipment, Opinions, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Olive – Juniper Clue

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/08/19

The original http://juniper.cluepon.net/index.php/Olive is gone, but the WayBack machine sitll has it: Olive – Juniper Clue

It describes how to install JUNOS on x86/x64 (or emulated) hardware.

–jeroen

via: Can I learn Juniper? : networking

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Posted in Internet, Juniper, Olive - JUNOS, Power User, routers | Leave a Comment »

Remote VPN to Fritz!Box from Mac OS X: don’t forget to set your Group Name to be the same as the User Name

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/08/01

With en empty Group Name you get this:

No Group Name means no connection

No Group Name means no connection

The bad thing is: the Fritz!Box will not tell you this in any of the logs.

So don’t forget to set the Group Name to be the same as the Account Name in the ….:

Always enter the Group Name in the Authentication Settings

Always enter the Group Name in the Authentication Settings

Then you can successfully connect:

VPN connection succeeded!

VPN connection succeeded!

–jeroen

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Posted in Fritz!, Fritz!Box, Internet, Power User | Leave a Comment »

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