I own two Vonage phone adapters. The first is one of the Linksys 2 line adapters, the other is a VTech wireless adapter.

The Linksys system was and remains associated with my business Vonage account, which I pay for and use.

The VTech unit I also purchased, but associated it with an account owned by someone else as I was using it to work with them. I paid for the hardware, but not the account.

Now, here is the beware part. I wanted to move the wireless VTech onto my account to replace the older Linksys adapter and gain the flexibility to use the wireless phones.

No can do, apparently there is a balance owing on the other account, and even though I bought and paid for the hardware, I can no longer use it until the balance on the other account is paid up.

I cannot even pay the outstanding balance myself and close the account. So in essence I am out $100.00 for the hardware.

Something to think about before you do business with Vonage.

Robert Porter

My friend, Ken Spry, sent me a link the other day to a web site that tests your connection (broadband) speeds. I tried both it and BellSouth’s test page today just for comparison sake.

Here are the results from http://www.speedtest.net/: (click the image for a larger view)

The interface for the speedtest.net version is all shiney and nice! It’s fun to use as well.

And here are the results from http://speed.fastaccess.com/:

They appear to agree with each other which is nice, I am never sure if the ISP based speed test is “rigged” to report what they sold you vs. what you are actually getting.

eWeek has published a slide show titled “The Thirteen Scariest Things in IT.” and some of them were very good. Take a quick peek yourself.

My favorites, #8 “Management by Book of the Month Club.” and “The Merger”.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

Triangle .Net Users Group will be hosting Doug Rosenberg at our next meeting. On Thursday, November 2, 2006. See below for time and location details.

Doug is President of ICONIX Software Engineering and has written several books on the software development process.  

(The following information is copied directly from the Trinug web site.)

 November 2, 2006 at 6pm (Thursday)
Doug Rosenberg - The ICONIX process

Doug is in town and has graciously agreed to give us a special presentation!

Topics:

1) His upcoming book:

"Use Case Driven Object Modelling with UML - Theory and Practice"
where (among other things) we are delivering ICONIX Process as a hierarchical set of activity diagrams.

2) Seamless integration between UML and code using the Sparx MDG Integration product, as discussed in his article here...

When: November 2, 2006 at 6pm (Thursday)
Where: EBSCO Publishing           3710 University Dr.
           Durham, NC

           " target=_blank>LocalLive Map...


Robert Porter

I recently had an issue with an application that uses the ASP.NET 2.0 Membership API and the standard Login control.

Basically, seemingly for no reason I could determine, all Login attempts failed with ubiquitous error “Your login attempt was unsuccessful.”.

I checked all the membership provider settings in web.config, checked the database, all the standard things. Everything was fine. After a lot of digging, even rebuilding from scratch the database tables involved, I still could not resolve the issue.

The “Lost Password’ functionality worked, it happily asked you for the answer to your secret question and e-mailed the retrieved password as it should. This told me that the infrastructure and providers were all functioning.

I added the following code to the LoginError handler in an attempt to diagnose what was happening:

There has been a lot of activity about the so called “Iron Triangle” in the blogosphere of late. And one of my favorite metaphors resurfaced during the conversations.

You can have [it] good, fast, cheap, pick any two.

I first heard the phrase from a co-worker years ago. (Thanks Damon!) And it has proven true over and over. Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror has been writing a series of blog posts about development issues in general. He has an excellent post called “The Iron Stool” Which takes the Good, Fast, Cheap metaphor and converts it to Time, Resources, Functionality.

He adds what he calls an “unstated” fourth element which is Quality and results when Time, Resources and Functionality are evenly balanced. However we all know that such perfect world combinations rarely happen. Also the metaphors, all of them, don’t always hold water in reality.

Agile technologies and other advances can significantly reduce the Time part of the equation without sacrificing Resources and Functionality or Quality. When they are properly applied. And there lies the proverbial rub.

Any way, go read the post, and the comments. It’s well worth the read.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

In my post entitled “Gee, More Microsoft bashing, what a shock!” I ranted about the fact that no matter what Microsoft does they get slammed by a group that just likes to bash Microsoft. I did not do as great a job explaining my viewpoint as George Ou does in his recent post “Media bias rears its ugly head on IE7 ‘flaw’” so it you want to see what I was trying to say go read his article.

Then for fun look at the one line comments to his post. The majority are from folks that have an average mental age of about 5 years old. You get the idea.

Media bias exists against any large entity, but Microsoft always seems to garner much more than it’s fair share, and I for one am truly sick and tired of it.

Anyway, rant mode off.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

My home office network is fairly simple. DSL Modem, to a 5 port 10/100 Hub, Hub to NetGear Router, Router to 5 port 10/100 Switch, Switch to 1 laptop and 1 desktop. Other laptop connects to router via Wifi connection and I have a Vonage phone system connected directly to the router.

The hub is upstream of the router so I can connect a sniffer when needed for diagnosing chatty programs, and other traffic issues both in programs I own as well as those I write. It’s a poor-mans network tap.

Recently I have noticed some strange, albeit rare, behaviour on the switch. (I apologise for the poor quality of the picture, photography is not my strong suit.)

This picture shows the switch in normal operation, you can see that the Link, 100, and Full lights are lit for both workstations as well as the patch cable back to the router.

Every now and then I will come in and find only the Link light active. The 100 and Full Duplex lights will be off for all 3 ports. A simple reset of the switch restores full 100m connectivity. But it baffles me as to why it happens in the first place. My understanding is that the most common cause is that a network card “lost sync” and fell back to 10m half duplex operation. But since it affects all 3 ports I am guessing it is the router that is losing sync.

Anyway, a reset of just the switch suffices. Thought I would share what I have seen in case someone out there knows what the deal is, or if you are experiencing something similar at least you will know you are not alone!

If I ever come across the cause and or solution I will update this post.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

Like most geeks, I like to know as much information as possible about my environment. Over time, and with experience you begin to learn which indicators about your environment are important to you.

In this case, I am speaking about my computers’ environment. And I have determined that for me to feel comfortable about the relative health of my system there are a few key indicators that I like to keep track of.

Windows Management Instrumentation or WMI for short, is a set of API’s, functions and scripts that allow you or a program to determine real time and static indicators about your system, or your entire network for that matter. WMI has allowed me to track either summary data or drill into the depths of my system to determine what exactly is happening.

A simple example that I use daily is a Yahoo Widget called Sys Monitor. Yahoo Widgets are small, typically single purpose, programs that are run by the Yahoo Widget engine. This engine was originally called Konfabulator but renamed when Yahoo bought it. The engine is basically a JavaScript runtime engine.

The Sys Monitor, as I have it configured, displays the current system up time, CPU and Memory load, Swap file usage and size, battery charge level, Wireless signal strength and SSID connected too, as well as the IP address both local and external. And hard drive size information as well as used vs. free.

These metrics are the ones of most interest to me. But the widget can display a number of others as well.

I use a number of other Widgets, but this particular one I use all the time, it’s small and sits quietly on the desktop so that I can tell at a glance how I am doing. It has often saved me from trying to download or copy files to a drive that was almost full, and has warned me when something was eating physical memory, or hogging the CPU.

Recommended.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

Less than a day after IE7 was released various and sundry pundits began to loudly proclaim that IE7 had a “major” vulnerability in it. Further it was described as a “new” vulnerability, and to the uneducated reader would seem to indicate that IE7 was less secure than it’s predecessor. FUD in action.

Sigh…

Okay, everyone, take a deep breath. Hold it, okay let it out slowly. It’s all right, the world is still there. And guess what, some people make a living spreading FUD. (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) especially where Microsoft is concerned.

The “flaw” was reported by Secunia here it is actually on older flaw that is still present in IE6. It’s risk rating is very low. And according to Microsoft the vulnerability is not in IE but rather Outlook Express, although IE is used as a vector to exploit the vulnerability. (Now, I still consider that a vulnerability in IE no matter how you slice it.)

The point is this is a known exploit (shame on MS for not patching it yet) but not a new vulnerability and not one known to have been exploited in the wild. What all this amounts to is that MS bashers are once again attempting to impune all that MS has done to make the OS and it’s systems more secure, because it’s fun to beat up on MS.

In other words, there is no value add from these reports, they just strive to cause confusion, they don’t clearly identify the source of the issue, the risks involved or even deliver factual information. Anyone can take a poke at any major institution or person of interest. It’s our national pastime it seems, but I would respect someone a lot more for being clear, concise and factual than for casting FUD around.

Robert Porter

Updated

I have recently read two books. One of which is not new, but which I now wish I had bought years ago.

Both books are exceptional, both kept me reading, both gave me equal shares of good dreams and some real nightmares.

I am probably the last person in the country to have read “The World is Flat” by New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. But if I am not the last and you have not yet read this powerful book, then RUN to the bookstore and buy a copy!

There has been more discussion and regurgitation of this book than any other I have seen in recent times, so I won’t add any more, other than to say, go buy it, but more importantly READ it.

The other book that I have recently read and also could not put down was “Micro ISV – From Vision to Reality” by Bob Walsh. This book is much more than yet another “How to start a business and be the next Bill Gates” type of book that bookstores are way to full of.

This book looks at the factors driving a whole new type of business, and how to grab hold of a piece of that for yourself.

I would describe myself as “Marketing Challenged”, I have plenty of idea’s even a few ready to go products, but I am terrible when it comes to marketing.

This book has taught me more in one sitting than years of reading other books and talking to professionals.

No, it won’t replace true marketing help, but it sure does an excellent job helping you understand how to look for and find what you need, and how to at least get your business to the point where you can attract and afford marketing help.

Check out http://mymicroisv.com it is a “Blog+resources” site maintained/run by the author, Bob Walsh. It does not have a forum system, by design, but it does offer a wealth of resources for anyone considering becoming a Micro-ISV. The “missing” forums? You can find those here at Joel on Software!

Go get ‘em, read ‘em, then repeat!

Cheers,

Robert Porter

MSDN Magazine is available for download as a compiled help file. It appears that at least 2005 and 2006 are available. The link is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/htmlhelp.aspx 

I used to subscribe, but have not recently. However as long as this resource remains available I will certainly take a look at it again.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

As you may recall in a previous blog post I mentioned I had changed from a Linksys to a Netgear router following a failure.

Well one of the un-looked for benefits of doing so was that the Netgear router appears to do a better job of handling data. I also recently upgraded my DSL to the fastest non business option that Bellsouth offered. This is their FastAccess DSL Xtreme 6.0 which is still anemic when compared to Europe and Asia but pretty fast for the US. Connected directly to the DSL modem I ran several speed tests.

The advertised speed for my brand of DSL was 6.0 Mbps down and 512 Kbps up. With the computer directly attached to the modem I was able to achieve these speeds.

I then bridged the modem and added the Linksys router to the equation. The best I was able to achieve then was 4.5 Mbps down and 380 Kbps up. The router overhead was significant.

On a whim I decided to re-run the speed tests now that I have the Netgear router in place.

This was amazing! After running the tests a number of times it is apparent that the Netgear router does not add as much “overhead” as the Linksys router. Now this is all very unscientific, I did not track the time of day, or day of week I ran the previous tests, and to be fair I should have run a number of tests over a longer period of time and from multiple locations etc. However, it is encouraging!

I know that the Linksys routers firmware source code is available, I wonder if the same is true of Netgear? And if so I wonder has anyone made any comparisons in efficiency and overall ability between the two?

Cheers,

Robert Porter

My ISP at my home office is Bellsouth. I use their FastAccess DSL and until yesterday the service had been more than acceptable.

Last night at 11:30 p.m. according to their website, they suffered a network outage. Now that happens, and I understand that things happen. But when I attempted to call Tech Support to find out if it was my end or if there was a system outage, I ended up getting the call dropped, not connected, fast busy, all kinds of issues.

Several times I did get through all of the automated voice prompts to the hold queue only to be summarily dumped. All of these issues combined began to give me the distinct impression that they were indeed having issues. But even when I had identified myself as a DSL customer, I never got an automated announcement that they were indeed experiencing an outage. Instead I just got placed on hold, and dumped.

An automated announcement to the effect that there was an outage in my area, (I had to input my DSL phone number so they knew what area I was in), would have kept me off the phone, and probably reduced the incoming call load.

What was worse, when I finally got a friend that had a different ISP, to go to Bellsouths web site and find the backup dialin numbers for me, I checked their network status page and was greeted with the standard “No Serious Issues” message. Only when I entered my state and city did I get the following:

Subject:	All Cities - Customer Affecting Outage
Problem:	What? Some customers may be unable to connect to the Internet or surf at this time. Who? All customers When? The outage began at 11:30 p.m. EDT on Monday, October 16, 2006. Where? The entire nine-state region that BellSouth Internet Services serves Why? We are currently investigating the cause of the outage. Additional Comments: FastAccess customers that have downloaded our Connection Manager Tool may see a yellow diagonal line, or a red X through the tool. The yellow line indicates which system is affected by the maintenance, and the red X indicates that the customer has no connection. We apologize for any inconvenience, and we thank you for choosing BellSouth Internet Services.
Status:	Open	-- Updated: 10/16/2006 11:29:14 PM

Notice the Where? line? “The entire nine-state region that BellSouth Internet Services serves”

If an outage that affects their entire service area is not a “serious” issue then I am not sure I ever want to experience their idea of a “serious” issue. (Nuclear war perhaps?).

Again, if this notice had been placed prominently on their help and support web page, or even the front page of the network status page it would have reduced calls. I had tried to get to this page via my PPC cell phone but although I could select my state, the city listbox never populated so I could not see this info until I had access to a PC based browser.

Someone at Bellsouth really dropped the ball AND shot themselves in the foot on this one. Over 12 hours later, service was restored.

Cheers,

Robert Porter

I have gone through 3 Linksys Wireless Routers in under 2 years. All were some variant of the WRTG54G. I tried numerous firmware versions including 3rd party firmware with the first 2, the last one I left vanilla other than one upgrade just after purchase to the latest available firmware from Linksys’s web site.

The first 2 turned into semi bricks. Meaning lights were on but no one was home. The first one allowed wireless connections, but no longer allowed wired connections, even though the link lights showed normal for connected ports on the front panel. I reset, repowered, and reflashed the first one, all without error, all without success.

The second one lost the wan port. After the second one I began to suspect power transients or possible spikes on the network itself. However I placed a small hub between the router and the modem (for network sniffing) and it had no issues, nor did the DSL modem. The router is powered by a DC transformer, I checked for voltage levels and they were where they should be etc.

The third one lost the wireless lan, computers could see the AP, and sometimes even connect, but they never remained connected longer than 10 seconds, and the dang thing would never connect more than once. I tried 3 different computers and my PPC phone that has Wifi, all to no avail.

So this time I bought a Netgear Wireless router. I have used Linksys since their very first broadband router came out, but after going through 3 routers in less than 2 years I decided it might be time for a change. I have had numerous clients that used both Linksys and Netgear (as well as other brands), and could not remember hearing of any difficulties with Netgear, so I plunked down 39.99 for a brand new Wireless G 4 port router.

Installation was straight forward, I connected the router directly to my laptop, ignored the insert CD first warnings, and fired up IE. Got to the setup screens, configured the router for my PPoE connection and let it suck down the DNS and static IP from my ISP. (Bellsouth recently offered me a static IP address for no charge!).

Blamo, everything was up and running, I reconfigured the wireless settings, changed the SSID, and setup WPA security, also changed the admin password etc. All my wireless clients connected no problem, on the same channel (6) that the Linksys had been running.

We shall see what happens now, but so far the Netgear had performed flawlessly. One thing I did notice, the DDNS offerings on Netgear do not include TZO, so I downloaded and setup the software client to run as a service on one of my desktops so not a show stopper but I wonder why it was not an option?

Some stole Dori Smith’s license plate. It’s a California plate that says “WEB GEEK”.

If you run across this plate please notify the owner. She just wants it returned, she is not asking for anyone to file charges etc. So if you see it, please follow the link above for contact info and let her know.

Cheers,

Robert Porter