The Comms Room

Ryan Ries

11:00 PM

publib.boulder.ibm.com/iseries/v5r1/ic2924/index.htm?info/rzahl/…

Tanner

Yes, unfortunately.

Ryan Ries

"You can also use the Windows 95/98/NT Network Neighborhood to access AS/400 NetServer file shares by following these steps: "

I would have shot myself so long ago

Use the Network Neighborhood, Luke

MDMarra

You should power it off, @Tanner. It probably won't turn back on.

Ryan Ries

One of my former companies had one of those. It literally sat on a pallet because you needed a pallet jack or forklift to move it. It was only powered on when lawyers came looking for some very old historical data.

Tanner

@MDMarra When the boss "IPLs" it, I shut off my phone. If it went down, we may as well close shop. Can't stand the suspense...

Ryan Ries

11:04 PM

They should pay good money for a contractor to come convert the data to SQL.

Tanner

They don't want to move from it.

Ryan Ries

So what are you going to do when your 30 year old machine breaks?

Ry Jones

convert it to sawdust

Ryan Ries

I was 6 years old when that thing debuted

And I loved G.I. Joes

brb

Michael Hampton

0

Q: How to configure a small network of computers within a larger university network?

I have a small computer lab (8 HP workstations, 1 HP server, 2 NAS boxes, 1 HP networked printer) where currently all the devices are connected directly to my university's network. Each device has an IP address allocated by the network via DHCP (but I am told that these are effectively bound to t...

Can someone tell me why this question is closed?

MDMarra

11:11 PM

sounds like it's a student or a professor and not IT staff would be my guess

Michael Hampton

@MDMarra Unfortunately it's all too common in academia that campus IT just allocates some IP addresses and leaves departments to sort out their own IT.

MDMarra

And don't we close questions from people that are like "I'm an accountant but do computer things for my company..."

?

Michael Hampton

@MDMarra Not if it's a good question about something that a sysadmin would be expected to handle.

Ry Jones

on one hand, I am a total hardass on reddit and I delete tons of posts every day. On the other hand, that seems like a weak reason to close it. You're arguing against the person, not the question

Michael Hampton

Or network admin or whatever.

freiheit

11:14 PM

@MDMarra Many universities have a central IT department and multiple "satellite" IT departments.

MDMarra

If someone said "How do I connect a smaller network to a larger network securely" wouldn't you tell them to go get training or a book on networking?

Michael Hampton

@MDMarra No, I'd tell him to go get a Cisco ASA

MDMarra

@freiheit Right, I get that. But there's a difference between being that department's IT person and being a prof or student worker or something

Michael Hampton

And maybe some training...

Mathias R. Jessen

@MichaelHampton Agreed, @MDMarra you can't exclude certain people from asking because of their primary job capacity

MDMarra

11:15 PM

Of course you can. It's the first line of our on-topic section.

Michael Hampton

Yeah, we've had this discussion a few times on meta, and even once earlier this year with SE.

MDMarra

for professional system and network administrators

freiheit

@MDMarra It's not clear from the question or comments to me that that's what's happening here.

MDMarra

Do you really consider that a useful question that will have value to future visitors?

"Get a firewall"

That's going to help someone out of a bind or increase the sum of knowledge on the internet for our profession?

Michael Hampton

I learned something from the question. And, if it helps steer some future visitor away from trying to use consumer-grade hardware in a professional setting, then I'm all for it.

Magellan

11:18 PM

@MichaelHampton Amen to that.

MDMarra

@MichaelHampton There are dozens of questions every week that get closed as OT because they're about a WRT54G or some belkin piece of shit. They're all examples of why you shouldn't use SOHO kit in an enterprise. They're all still closed

I mean go ahead and re-open it. I'm really just playing devil's advocate

Michael Hampton

And even Microsoft doesn't have a campus-wide firewall.

84104

@MichaelHampton Don't they IPSec all the things?

MDMarra

That's disingenuous and you know it. They do domain isolation with IPSEC and drop all non-domain IPSEC and non-IPSEC traffic at the host firewall

Michael Hampton

@84104 Yeah, it's all IPSec.

freiheit

11:21 PM

My campus only got a campus-wide firewall about 2 or 3 years ago...

Ry Jones

I may just visit Chicago: facebook.com/…

MDMarra

But today I've seen: Help me find out who fraudulently ordered a laptop on our company credit card, help me write a SQL query for my homework, how do I plug these 8 computers into my larger network, and now how do I build my own voip solution?

freiheit

Universities tend to have big networks, small budgets and somebody far away making key architectural decisions.

Matt Bear

@freiheit im kind of confused by that statement... you mean there was no firewall at all?

MDMarra

I think you're slowly being eroded by the waves of crap, @MichaelHampton. :)

84104

11:22 PM

Pretty sure there isn't a campus wide firewall here, though there is a campus wide IDS.

Michael Hampton

@MDMarra It's possible?

Ryan Ries

IPsec is so dreamy... as long as you have NICs that do task offloading.

Ry Jones

@MichaelHampton that isn't really true, unless things have changed quite a bit in the last 12 months

Michael Hampton

@MDMarra I just don't think this one qualifies as waves of crap.

freiheit

@MattBear There was a firewall for the server subnets... There was a router... I think the router might have had one or two basic "firewall type" rules on it. But, basically, no, no firewall for the other 20,000 ips on campus. :)

Matt Bear

11:23 PM

@freiheit wow...

MDMarra

@RyJones They're shifting to edge firewalls and RFC1918 addressing to free up IPv4 addresses for Azure

freiheit

@MattBear Universities also tend to have a mandate towards openness.

Traditional firewall + central control + change proposal == not that open.

Michael Hampton

Universities also got nice big /16 netblocks way back when, even when they had no particular need for the space.

freiheit

@MichaelHampton But our /16 is so convenient.

Michael Hampton

Well, /16 was considered big back then. Nobody thought it would ever run out!

Matt Bear

11:24 PM

back in 2002 when I was working at community college, we had $150,000 in the main firewall/router, active directory, fiber between buildings, and no OS pre 2k Pro

MDMarra

When I worked at $university they also had a /16

Ry Jones

@MDMarra both of those were in place as far back as 97

freiheit

@MichaelHampton Actually, we're a small ("medium") university. I bet larger ones get more than a /16.

Matt Bear

COMMUNITY college

Ry Jones

and still in 2009

MDMarra

11:25 PM

@RyJones Really? They've published recent material to the contrary

Ry Jones

@MDMarra URL?

MDMarra

It was in the IPv6 networking MS Press book they published recently. @MichaelHampton posted excepts before

Michael Hampton

> The Microsoft Corpnet is “open” in the sense that routers are not performing firewalling or
packet filtering functions. Instead, communication security is enforced at the endpoints of
communication by using the built-in Windows Firewall, which protects against unsolicited
incoming communication, and a domain isolation deployment, which requires the use of
Internet Protocol security (IPsec) for incoming connection attempts to corporate resources.
Because there is equivalent support for IPv6 in both Windows Firewall and IPsec in versions

Ryan Ries

That is some dogfooding right there

Good stuff

Michael Hampton

Well, I'm glad somebody understands Windows Firewall.

Ryan Ries

11:28 PM

I like WF

It pisses me off that everyone just forces it off via GPO, because they couldn't be bothered to figure out how to configure it.

MDMarra

That's actually a big point of contention with us

Some of us have VPN access to internal MS resources, but they use NAP that requires that the firewall be enabled

Our GPO disables it because our internal support guys are...not...well...nevermind

Ry Jones

@MDMarra I handle that by having a non-domain-joined VM that I use to VPN into Microsoft.

everyone's happy.

MDMarra

Well you're not a windows user typically though, correct?

Ry Jones

@MDMarra This machine is Win 7, my personal machines are all OS X

MDMarra

ah

Joel E Salas

11:32 PM

@MDMarra I'm running windows on my laptop nowadays

MDMarra

@JoelESalas wawaweewoo

8.1?

Ry Jones

work provides me with Windows laptop and a couple Linux boxes

Joel E Salas

@MDMarra win7 ent

Ry Jones

oh, actually, I forgot my Windows 8 surface, but I never use it

MDMarra

Dude, 8.1 w/ client hyper-v

so good

Joel E Salas

11:32 PM

Man these blades take forever to boot

MDMarra

Although I use OS X for non-work stuff as well

Ry Jones

so, anyway, microsoft VPN access is a Windows 7 VM hosted on a Windows 7 laptop. The VM is not domain joined

MDMarra

@JoelESalas why the switch?

Joel E Salas

@MDMarra Because Linux + thinkpad dock = tears

MDMarra

Linux + (!$server | !$phone) == tears

Michael Hampton

11:35 PM

@MDMarra I happen to be very happy with my Linux desktop.

Mathias R. Jessen

@MDMarra How long did it take to install ?

MDMarra

Well, I tried to in-place upgrade first. That was a nightmare

A clean install took 15 minutes

Ryan Ries

I'm doing 8.1 on some bitchin new desktop hardware, but I have a separate Hyper-V machine, and I have another 8.1 VM on it that I use as my sandbox machine... install all the junk on it like Visual Studio, Wireshark, Windbg, all that stuff, that I don't want to install on my main PC

MDMarra

@RyanRies dude so I'm running dedup on 8.1

Ryan Ries

Does it work?

MDMarra

11:39 PM

ya so far

Ryan Ries

Score

MDMarra

totally a EULA violation

but it works