I’ll confess to having a lot to learn about IP ethernet networking. I feel pretty comfortable with basic TCP/IP (v4), the concept of UDP vs. TCP ports, ICMP pings, etc… but ARP is something that I haven’t dabbled much with. It is, of course, a layer that TCP depends on. When a machine sends a packet to another machine, it sends an arp packet out to “discover” the hardware (MAC) address of the machine on the other end, so ARP underlies everything. These days ICMP is many times blocked by firewall rules. The default with XP’s software firewall is to block ICMP pings for instance.
Tag: LAN
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Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 9 – Know your network
Once more into the breech… Ok you’ve taken account of the software and services on your pc. The next thing we need to talk about is knowing your network. Do you have any wireless access points? Not sure? Print servers? How many pcs? Are any of them portables? Public access? Are all of them secured?
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Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 2 – A Software Firewall
Do I really need a hardware firewall? I’m running XP Service Pack 2 with the built in firewall? (or norton, or zonealarm?) Well, personal firewalls (the name that software firewalls go by) are good for a great many things that hardware firewalls AREN’T. They do have their limitations though and I’ll try to cover those in this post. Of course, a software firewall is running on the pc that you use to connect to the internet and one of the functions it serves is to “close the doors and windows” or those open ports that a computer can listen for connections on.
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Australian Linux consultancy lodges complaint against Microsoft Windows
A Melbourne based open source firm has lodged a complaint with that country’s Competition and Consumer Commision against Microsoft. According to The Computer Business Review online, they claim that Microsoft’s monopoly is harming consumers. They are calling for 1) the availability of computers without a preinstalled operating system and 2) the commision to force Microsoft to disclose any information that would allow for interoperability with their software.
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How do I find my IP address
This is one that can be handy from time to time, trying to find your ip address. If you’re on a lan there aren’t too many ways to find your public ip within the operating systems software. However, under Windows if you go to, Start, Run and then type cmd and press enter you’ll get a command prompt from which you can type ipconfig and see the ip address for each network interface. One (more…)