to
act as a server?" This means that the application is attempting to
send information from your system to the internet. Be very cautious
about granting this permission. The safest way to handle this is to
say"No"and see if the application still functions correctly. Applications
such as instant messengers, IRC clients, file-sharing clients (Napster,
etc.), FTP servers, and internet phones require server privileges
to work correctly. Apps such as web browsers, mail and news readers,
games, audio/video players, and FTP clients do not need server privileges.
Further below are some general questions about NetBios attacks on your
firewall - make sure you read carefully through those as well.
Visit Microsoft Security and/or Windows Update and be sure to download and install ALL "critical updates" and/or "security updates".
You can access Windows Update by clicking "Start" and then "Windows
Update". Browse the list of available updates for your system and
get ALL of the updates labeled "Critical". Sometimes updates are not
available for older versions of an application, so you may be required
to download an entirely new version (Internet Explorer 5.5 for example).
Make sure you get the updates for and/or newest version of Outlook
Express if you are using it.
Check your Windows Security configuration.
It is recommended you start with AT LEAST the "Medium" setting until
you understand the difference between Low/Medium/High. This may help
prevent rogue websites from delivering hostile scripts to your browser.
- Click Start.
- Click Settings.
- Click Control Panel.
- Click Internet Options.
- Click "Internet"
- Click the Security tab.
- Click Custom Level...
- Select either Medium or High from"Reset Custom Settings"box.
- Click the Reset button. Windows will ask"Are you sure?"
- Click"Yes".
- Click "OK" to finish and save settings.
- You should also click"Custom Level"and make sure the following are set to"Disable":
- Download Signed Active-X Controls
- Download Unsigned Active-X Controls
Test your system online.
Go to these sites to request a "scan"of your IP address to be sure
everything is working correctly. With File & Print Sharing turned
off and a properly configured firewall installed, the scan should
report that you are"safe". If not, see what the scanner says and
take it from there. Other sites are available for this same purpose.
Try as many as you can find.
Do your own research!
Here are some starting points:
Why does my firewall complain about NetBios attacks from Speakeasy IPs?
One reason may be the QAZ worm - see http://www.netmeister.org/se/QAZ.txt
for
details.
Why do I get all these probes on port 80? Or, what"s the deal with this "CodeRed"I hear about?
Many people using Windows run Microsofts IIS server; many people are not even
aware that they run this server. IIS has repeatedly been the target of many
exploits, the most recent being a worm called "CodeRed". Just plug it into a
search engine for details. While Microsoft has released a patch to fix the
bug that allowed this worm, many people did not patch their machines.
The worm spreads by trying to overrun the buffer in other vulnerable
web-servers -- these are the probes on port 80 you see. If you can determine
who probed you, please forward the relevant information to that persons ISP
(for example, if it was somebody from within speakeasy, you"d email
abuse@speakeasy.net).
If you must run a web-server, you might consider installing apache
(http://www.apache.org
) instead of the notoriou IIS.
Some URLs about CodeRed and it"s various incarnations:
Is there a secure way to use Windows File & Print sharing?
It can be done. For step-by-step instructions (with screenshots) see:
http://netsecurity.about.com/compute/netsecurity/library/weekly/aa051600b.htm
My firewall reports"Connection to port "xxx" was blocked". What"s up with that?
Applications use specific ports (or a range of ports) to channel incoming and
outgoing data through your internet connection. By referencing attempted
connections to a specific port, you can sometimes determine what the offending
machine was looking for. For example, if a connection attempt was made to port
28001, they were probably looking for a"Starsiege Tribes Server", which uses
ports in the 28001-28008 range. For a large list of default ports for various
applications, see: http://www.robertgraham.com/pubs/firewall-seen.html
5.2. Mac
Hmmm, nobody seems to know anything about this. If you run Mac OS X, please
compare with the "Unices" subsection below. If you run any other version of
Mac OS and know something, please email us at se_faq@netmeister.org
5.3. Unices
General Security
See http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Security-HOWTO.html
Also, try to keep up to date with the latest bug-fixes for all your
programs. http://www.securityfocus.com
might be helpful.
Open Ports
If you want to find out which ports are open on your machine, isse
the following command:
netstat -vat
Refer to `netstat -help' and `man netstat' for information on that
command. A listing of which services listen to which ports can be
found in /etc/services. You will want to make sure that you are only
leaving ports open that you definitely need. Refer to `man inetd.conf',
man `hosts.allow' and `man hosts.deny' for more information.
Firewalls
See http://www.linux-firewall-tools.com/linux
Intrusion Detection
See http://www.snort.org/
Testing your system
Get SAINT (http://www.wwdsi.com/saint/
) - this program will scan your
computer (and your network) and report security-holes to you as well
as suggest what to do to fix them.
Also, check out http://www.nessus.org
6. My Own Domain
6.1. Hey, I want to be www.myowndomain.com, how do I do that?
Well, you can't - somebody else already bought www.myowndomain.com
;-). But if you want to own and host your own domain using your static
IP given to you by SE, here's what you have to do:
First you need to register your domain. There are several services
that let you do that, here are some URLs:
Decide on your DNS-serving
You have the following options:
- let your registrar handle all DNS issues
- let your registrar handle either primary or secondary DNS serving and provide your own primary or secondary
- let SE handle all DNS-issues
- provide primary DNS-serving and let SE provide secondary
- provide all DNS-serving yourself
Most services let you choose if you want to let them do the primary
and secondary DNS-serving, or if you want to provide your own. Certainly
the easiest way is just have your registrar deal with the entire DNS-issue.
If you choose to have SE provide primary and secondary, please see
http://www.speakeasy.net/main.php?page=res_primarydns
If you choose to provide your own primary DNS-server and have SE handle
the secondary, see http://www.speakeasy.net/main.php?page=res_secondarydns
and read the next section. What it boils down to is that you pay a
one-time fee of $35 to have SE do secondary DNS serving.
If you choose to have somebody else handle both primary and secondary
nameservices, you're on your own. here are a few links that might
help you find a service-provider:
6.2. Running your own DNS
Unix/Linux
Windows
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/winnt/install.asp
6.3. Your own Webserver
Unix/Linux
Windows
6.4. Your own mail-server
Unix/Linux
Windows
7. Pings, Lags and Latency
One of the things you'll see most often in speak.easy are posts containing
pings. People either want to show off what an awesome ping they have,
others want to show how bad off they are, and others just jump in
and say`Hey, me too! Here's my ping:'You may judge for yourself
how useful that technique is, but it certainly is, without a doubt,
a very frequent topic.
7.1. So what is a "ping", anyway?
In short: it sends x packets to a host and checks how long it takes
the host to respond.
In long: Here's the gory details from the man-page (unix-specific,
but I'm sure you get more information than you needed):
man ping:
Ping uses the ICMP protocol"s mandatory ECHO_REQUEST datagram to elicit
an ICMP ECHO_RESPONSE from a host or gateway. ECHO_REQUEST datagrams
("pings"") have an IP and ICMP header, followed by a "struct timeval""
and then an arbitrary number of "pad"" bytes used to fill out the
packet.
[...]
This program is intended for use in network testing, measurement and
management.
[,,,]
ICMP PACKET DETAILS
An IP header without options is 20 bytes. An ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packet
contains an additional 8 bytes worth of ICMP header followed by an
arbi trary amount of data. When a packetsize is given, this indicated
the size of this extra piece of data (the default is 56). Thus the
amount of data received inside of an IP packet of type ICMP ECHO_REPLY
will always be 8 bytes more than the requested data space (the ICMP
header).
If the data space is at least eight bytes large, ping uses the first
eight bytes of this space to include a timestamp which it uses in
the computation of round trip times. If less than eight bytes of
pad are specified, no round trip times are given.
DUPLICATE AND DAMAGED PACKETS
Ping will report duplicate and damaged packets. Duplicate packets
should never occur, and seem to be caused by inappropriate link-level
retrans missions. Duplicates may occur in many situations and are
rarely (if ev er) a good sign, although the presence of low levels
of duplicates may not always be cause for alarm. Damaged packets are
obviously serious cause for alarm and often indicate broken hardware
somewhere in the ping packet"s path (in the network or in the hosts).
TRYING DIFFERENT DATA PATTERNS
The (inter)network layer should never treat packets differently depending
on the data contained in the data portion. Unfortunately, data-dependent
problems have been known to sneak into networks and remain undetected
for long periods of time. In many cases the particular pattern that
will have problems is something that doesn"t have sufficient "transitions"",
such as all ones or all zeros, or a pattern right at the edge, such
as almost all zeros. It isn"t necessarily enough to specify a data
pattern of all zeros (for example) on the command line because the
pattern that is of interest is at the data link level, and the relationship
between what you type and what the controllers transmit can be complicated.
This means that if you have a data-dependent problem you will probably
have to do a lot of testing to find it. If you are lucky, you may
manage to find a file that either can"t be sent across your network
or that takes much longer to transfer than other similar length files.
You can then examine this file for repeated patterns that you can
test using the -p option of ping.
TTL DETAILS
The TTL value of an IP packet represents the maximum number of IP routers
that the packet can go through before being thrown away. In current
practice you can expect each router in the Internet to decrement the
TTL field by exactly one. The TCP/IP specification states that the
TTL field for TCP packets should be set to 60, but many systems use
smaller values (4.3 BSD uses 30, 4.2 used 15). The maximum possible
value of this field is 255, and most Unix systems set the TTL field
of ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packets to 255. This is why you will find you
can "ping"" some hosts, but not reach them with telnet(1) or ftp(1).
In normal operation ping prints the ttl value from the packet it re
ceives. When a remote system receives a ping packet, it can do one
of three things with the TTL field in its response: Not change it;
this is what Berkeley Unix systems did before the 4.3BSD-Tahoe release.
In this case the TTL value in the received packet will be 255 minus
the number of routers in the round-trip path.
Set it to 255; this is what current Berkeley Unix systems do. In this
case the TTL value in the received packet will be 255 minus the number
of routers in the path from the remote system to the pinging host.
Set it to some other value. Some machines use the same value for ICMP
packets that they use for TCP packets, for example either 30 or 60.
Others may use completely wild values.
7.2. How do I`ping'using Windows?
If you"re using Win9x, open up a DOS Prompt box and type the following
at the prompt:
(If you do not have a shortcut to DOS, you can hit"Start", then"Run",
then type in"command"(without the quotes) and then"OK").
ping your-DNS-IP-address
An example (for the x.x.95.x @ NYPop) would be:
ping 216.254.95.2
If you would like to redirect the screen output to a file, use the
following syntax:
ping [your DNS IP address] > filename
If you want a hard copy of your pings, you can redirect to PRN rather
than a filename:
ping 216.254.95.2 > PRN
This will fire up your printer and dump the screen, line by line, to
your printer.
7.3. My pings to the gateway are higher than the pings to the DNS. Why?
"The gateway router treats ICMP echo requests with a very low priority.
When you ping the DNS, which is one hop past the gateway, the gateway
router treats that traffic with normal priority, and you will see
better response times." - Tim Hurley in [39B6AB73.A14BF6A@speakeasy.org]
7.4. XYZ keeps pinging me - why? Should I report XYZ to abuse@speakeasy.net?
Here are a few reasons why you might be pinged:
\begin{itemize}
- Napster - When a file you are serving is returned in a search, that user has an option to"Ping Results", in which case, you will be pinged.
- Tracerouting - Perhaps a fellow Speakeasy user is curious about the latency between you can your gateway [for comparative purposes].
- Games - If you have acted as a public game server you will certainly be pinged.
- IRC servers - we used to state that"IRC servers routinely ping users to determine if they are still connected. Other users logged into the same server have an option of pinging you as well." While this is technically incorrect [see the explanation below], spending time on IRC might lead to somebody pinging you, even if it is not actually related to the IRC server [or client] at all.
- Dynamic IP - If you have a dynamic IP, any user who had your IP address before you may have used it to run a temporary server [game, FTP, WWW, etc.].
And now the reason why our statement is wrong. Kevin...
"RFC 1459 specifies that IRC servers may use PING (not ICMP PING) to
determine whether or not a user is still connected if they have been idle
for more than that specified in the Y: for their connect classes. RFC
1459-compliant clients are required to respond with a PONG.
The client"s /ping command is a CTCP (client-to-client protocol) Request
which is also specified in the RFC. This is strictly a client-side
feature in which CTCP-aware clients (which most of them are) are supposed
to respond with a CTCP Reply.
However, most IRC networks will publicly make available the IP address of
the connecting users. If a user chooses to use said information to run a
command such as ICMP PING against the IP address, that is strictly outside
the scope of IRC, and there is nothing that can be done against that sort
of thing, short of logging into another box and IRCing from there or to
use a IRC proxy of some sort. That said, some networks have made effort
to hide or mangle the IP information so that it cannot be abused."
--- Kevin Arima in
[Pine.LNX.4.32.0102281505050.1902-100000@bolse]
7.5. Reprovisioning
What does"reprovisioning" mean?
Lots of people who have had a bad ping reported that after their line
got reprovisioned, their pings dropped massively. So what exactly
is reprovisioning? Well, apparently there are two opinions on what
the term describes exactly:
"Reprovisioning the line means essentially that they"reboot"the path
that your data is traveling. They reset the route that your data is
traveling from the dslam to the atm in seattle/la/ny and can optimized
the route to take less hops or take the less congested hops etc, also
if they need to modify settings ie for the new RADSL ECC patches."
- David Erickson in [39B4DD06.FDC8B9FC@speakeasy.org]
"It means that your local phone company take the old wired off your
phone line and tries to choke a chicken to death.. If the chicken
dies it means your wires are bad if the chicken lives then your good."
- nyorker in [IC7t5.577039\$MB.8667095@news6.giganews.com]
Choose the explanation you like better - the point is, it seems to
help with latency.
How do I request to be reprovisioned?
Send all reprovision requests to "pings@speakeasy.net".
Does reprovisioning help with SDSL lines?
Reprovisioning will really only affect RADSL lines. BUT:"In some cases,
yes. If your line is sub-optimally routed through Covad"s ATM network
(which often happens during an outage to keep your circuit live),
reprovisioning the line will (usually) place you back onto an optimal
path. This goes for all xDSL services."(Tim Hurley in an email to
us ([Pine.LNX.4.21.0009142009560.496-100000@web0.speakeasy.net]))
Why should I request my RADSL line to be reprovisioned?
"Covad has recently implemented a patch at the DSLAM level for Speakeasy
RADSL lines. This patch switches the modulation type from Interleaved,
which has an inherent 32ms added on to any traffic for error-checking,
to Fastpath, which has no inherent error-checking. Reprovisioning
a RADSL line will switch the modulation type to Fastpath, thus lowering
your latency by 30-40ms. Another added benefit of this patch is noticable
on Windows systems. Windows has a difficult time sustaining bandwidth
of over 1 megabit when the latency to the host is greater than 50ms.
By having this patch implemented, Windows will be able to sustain
higher bandwidth to certain hosts."(Tim Hurley in an email to us
([Pine.LNX.4.21.0009142009560.496-100000@web0.speakeasy.net]))
7.6. Where can I monitor my latency?
Well, there are, by now, two "Unofficial SE Latency Monitors":
8. Kontent
8.1. Where?
http://www.kontent.net/
8.2. What?
Seti@home
What is Seti@home?
SETI stand for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It is an organization
that uses radio astronomy to listen for spikes or unnatural occurrences
in the radio noise background or the universe. SETI@Home is a project
that allows regular Internet users to help out with the search for
these signals. For more information on Seti@home, please refer to
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
How can I join the speakeasy-team?
http://www.setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?cmd=team_lookup&name=Speakeasy
See also Distributed.net - similar approach, different, more "earthly" goal:
http://www.distributed.net/
Games
See http://www.kontent.net/sgn/newserver.html
8.3. Why?
It"s all Ed"s fault!
9. Questions regarding News
Speakeasy outsources their usenet news servers to Supernews. They
don"t run any news servers themselves.
As such, Speakeasy has very little control over the performance and
configuration of the news servers. Any requests send to Speakeasy to
add news groups or fix something broken will simply be forwarded on
to Supernews.
Speakeasy has repeatedly mentioned that they want to develop an in-house
solution to this problem by providing a non-binary newsfeed and possibly
asking subscribers of binary newsgroups to subscribe to some"premium"
newsservice. If and when this will eventually be implemented is unclear as of
now.
9.1. Newsserver
Which newsserver should I use?
Currently there are
- news.speakeasy.org, news2.speakeasy.org and news3.speakeasy.org
All of the above are aliases to corp.supernews.com, the IP of which has
changed some time ago and will change again, as we"ve been told - there
are NO OTHER news servers SE"s users have access to.
You can substitute".org"with".net"in all of the above names. If
you are on the east-cost, you should probably use news-east.speakeasy.org
and if you are on the west-coast, news-west.speakeasy.org. By the
time of this writing, the Supernews servers are no"official"news-servers
for SE - consider yourself a beta-tester. This means service might
not be as reliable as with the other servers, however, these two tend
to be faster than the others.
If you are being asked for authentication on one of the servers,
you can enter any username/password combination to log in - you do
not have to give your speakeasy username and password. Authentication
is done over your IP.
How can I read news from somehwere else but my DSL account?
You can connect to news-remote.speakeasy.net (an alias to
corp-radius.supernews.com - another supernews server) and log in with your SE
login name/password combination.
This may be helpful if you are experiencing an outage and have to dial-up or
if you wish to read news from a location other than your normal DSL line.
Which newsgroups are there?
What do you mean - which newsgroups are there? Two bazillion, approximately.
For an overview of the newsgroup hirarchy take a look at
http://kom.net/~dbrick/news/newspage/
Since currently all of SE"s newsservers are outsorced to supernews, you might
be interested in the following newsgroups:
- supernews.general
- supernews.test
As always, YMMV, depending on which server you"re using...
9.2. How do I request an unavailable or new newsgroup?
If you want to subscribe to a newsgroup which currently is not available
through the news-servers above, write to news@speakeasy.net
Alternatively, you may post a message to supernews.general
9.3. Which Newsreader should I use?
There are a couple of good newsreaders out there - which one you want
to use will depend mostly on your personal preferences. A newsreader
which conforms to standards makes it much easier for others to read
your posts, thus increasing the possibility of getting helpful replies
to your questions. The most common newsreaders currently are:
For Macintosh:
For Unix/Linux:
For Windows:
Please refer to http://www.newsreaders.com/
for details and a more
complete listing.
If you want to try out your new newsreader, please post to speak.test
and NOT to speak.easy. All test-posting should go to a test-group
like alt.test or speak.test.
If you use Forte, you might be interested in the following tidbit posted by
AllenC in [kejbfto9b5u71uaanm86pes1tamhfprdvg@4ax.com]:
"supernews representatives have stated that it"s server creates
messages out of order and recommend that users of Forte"s software
check the "Server Creates messages out of order" box located here:
Options => User and System Profile => System tab
Doing this will insure that all messages are retrieved correctly."
9.4. Netiquette
It is true, on the internet nobody knows you"re a dog, but it is still
considered good netiquette to follow a few simple rules when posting
into usenet.
General
For a general overview of the Netquette please refer to:
From
As we mentioned above, nobody knows who you are, and sometimes you
may not even want to reveal your identity. However, many people prefer
answering questions when asked politely by somebody with a real name.
Your name is like your outer appearance in cyberspace - if you post
under the name "K3wl d00d", your postings might not be taken seriously.
Likewise, if you choose a rather offensive name, people might killfile
you right away, without even looking at your posts.
Subject
Try to keep the subject line short, but significant. If you post a
message seeking help with your network-configuration, just putting
"HELP ME PLEASE!!!"in your subject line might be a bad idea. Many
people read thousands of messages on usenet everyday, skipping the
ones that do not sounds interesting or unprecise. A subject line like
"i boot my machine and everything seems to be normal, but after about
30 minutes my network connection suddenly drops and I can"t reach
the outside world"with a body saying"see subject"is a Bad Idea
(tm), too. Try to summarize your problem in one brief statement a
la"network connection drops unexpectedly".
Quoting
When you reply to another message, quote only the relevant portions
of the message you are replying to. Don"t quote the whole message
if not necessary, especially deleting previous signatures. Be careful
to not misattribute something. Leave in the attribution line that
most newsreaders provide. Observe the attribution lines and read posts
carefully. Replied text goes below the quoted text!
Please see http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
for a more detailed discussion on the Quoting in Usenet.
Signatures
Everybody wants to have a funky signature. Everybody wants to advertise
his or her website etc. That is fine. Just keep your signature at
no longer than 4 lines. Otherwise the percentage of content vs. noise
easily becomes rather ridiculous. An example:
In Message-ID: [39B1E426.2EB0A5EC@tom.com] the author quotes 26 lines
(the entire message, including the other persons signature), writes
3 lines himself and attaches a 25 line signature. This gives a content/noise
ratio of 3/51 or 5.55% content vs. 94.45% unnecessary noise. Granted
this is an extreme example, but you get the idea. Keep your sig short.
Also, make sure that your signature is separated from the rest of the
message by"--" (two dashes and an empty space). The correct delimiter
for a signature is"--" and NOT"--". Outlook Express manages to
actually provide the correct delimiter, but strips the trailing whitespace
when sending the message, resulting in a wrong delimiter. You might
want to check the section on newsreaders again.
Attachments
Many people assume that everybody who reads speak.easy has a fast internet-connection,
and that it is therefor okay to post large binaries to this newsgroup.
Aside from the fact that it is simply bad netiquette to post any binary
into a non-binary newsgroup, this assumption simply is not true. Many
people who have just signed up for SE"s service are accessing the
newsgroup through a dialup connection. Starting to download a message
which suddenly takes up all your bandwidth and seceral minutes to
download can be very frustrating.
Also, sometimes it is not even neccessary to post an attachment. If,
for example you just want to post your ping-results (as mentioned
above, this seems to be the main reason for some people to read this
group), you do not need to take a screenshot, import that picture
into a Microsoft Word document and then post this document as an attachment.
;-)
If you absolutely must post an attachment to SE"s attention, please
email it to the involved parties after asking them if it is okay to
email them an attachment of some kind (many people simply delete attachments
if they do not know that they are coming due to the high virus-risk).
Do NOT post any attachments into speak.easy.
Also, be aware that supernews is filtering all posts with attachments to
non-binary news groups. If your post has an attachment, and the news groups
you are posting to are not binary news groups, your post will end up in the
bit bucket. Groups are defined as binaries if the groups are properly named
(ie: they have "binaries" in their name.) This filtering is preformed on
articles generated by users of supernews as well as posts originating
elsewhere.
Flame
If a certain person keeps bugging you, if you find a person especially
annoying, you may choose to flame that person. Flaming is a rare skill,
and should not consist only of"Your Momma"s so fat...";. For your
convenience we provide an exemplary"generic flame-mail"- just fill
it out as you see fit and then copy"n paste where indicated. But be
warned, flaming is not for the faint of heart - it might lead to flame-wars,
killfiling and other hostilities. But it"s fun, too ;-)
========================= begin generic flame mail ======================+
Dear:
[ ] Clueless Newbie [ ] Lamer [ ] AOLer
[ ]`Me too'er [ ] Pervert [ ] Geek
[ ] Spammer [ ] Nerd [ ] Elvis
[ ] Fed [ ] Freak [ ] Scientologist
[ ] Scammer [ ] Moron [ ] Pre-teen
You Are Being Flamed Because:
[ ] You posted MODs in pieces LESS than 5000 lines
[ ] You posted something asking for warez sites
[ ] You quoted an ENTIRE post in your reply
[ ] You continued a long, stupid thread
[ ] You started an off-topic thread
[ ] You posted a`YOU ALL SUCK'message
[ ] You didn't look on Deja first for the answer to your question
[ ] You did not read the FAQ
[ ] You haven't learned the difference between E-mail and newsgroups
[ ] You posted a blatently obvious troll
[ ] You posted pretending to be someone famous (See`troll'above)
[ ] You replied to the above message type believing it was actually
someone famous
[ ] You said`me too'to something
[ ] You suck
[ ] Your sig/alias/server sucks
[ ] You posted a lame-sex ad
[ ] You posted a stupid pyramid money making scheme and claimed it
was legal
[ ] I think you might be a fed
[ ] You posted something other than plain text to a newsgroup.
[ ] You posted in ALL CAPS because you think your question is more
important than anyone elses.
[ ] You posted in ElItE CaPiTaLs because you think that makes you cool
[ ] You didn't do anything specific, but appear to be so generally
worthless that you are being flamed anyway
To Repent, You Must:
[ ] Stop masturbating for a week
[ ] Give up your AOL account
[ ] Bust up your modem with a hammer and eat it
[ ] Tell your Mummy you've been a bad boy
[ ] Jump into a bathtub while holding your monitor
[ ] Actually post something relevant
[ ] Read the FAQ
[ ] Be the guest of honor in alt.flame for a month
In Closing, I'd Like to Say:
[ ] Blow me
[ ] Get a life
[ ] Never post again
[ ] Age 10 more years before you post again
[ ] I pity your dog
[ ] Go to hell
[ ] Yer momma's so fat/stupid/ugly that etc...
[ ] Take your shit somewhere else
[ ] Get fuckked, you pathetic loser
[ ] Learn to post or fuck off
[ ] All of the above
========================= end generic flame mail =========================
9.5. Who am I?
If you keep posting to usenet for a while, you will soon discover that most
people can be classified in certain categories. To find out in which category
you might belong, or what kind of folks hang out in Usenet, take a look at
http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame1.html
10. Misc
10.1. Testing Throughput
"You can actually go http://dslcheck..speakeasy.net/ to reach
our test sites, where pop is "sea" for Seattle, "nyc" for New York,
etc.
http://216.254.95.2/
will take you to the same place (assuming you"re
on the New York POP). Seattle and New York are currently up, and we
will be extending this to all new POPs, as well as improving the site
itself." - Henry Hurley in [jAvD5.8444\$UP5.156899@news6.giganews.com]
As of 2000-12-20, you may as well enter"chi"(if you"re on the Chicago POP),
"den"(if you"re on the Denver POP),"sfo"(if you"re on the San Francisco
POP),"lax"(if you"re on the Los Angeles POP), or"dfw"(if you"re on the
Dallas POP).
Usually it"s a good idea to start several downloads at the same time
and then add the numbers up.
Does Win9x provide a means to check my download speed?
As long as no other applications are writing to disk at the same time,
Windows System Monitor does a fine job.
- Click Start, then Run, and enter"sysmon"without the quotes.
- Click Edit, then Add Item.
- Select"File System"on the left and"Bytes Written/Second"on the right.
- Click"Ok".
- To change the refresh rate, click Options.
- To configure the individual meters, double-click them.
10.2. IRC
Which servers can I access?
Here is a current list of efnet irc servers that speakeasy users are
allowed on (as of 2000-09-27):
- irc.emory.edu
- irc.lightning.net
- irc.mcs.net
- irc.east.gblx.net
- irc.west.gblx.net
- irc.prison.net
- irc.ins.net.uk
- irc.colorado.edu
- irc.concentric.net
You also might want to check out http://www.efnet.org/servers.html
or post a message to speak.easy - one of the people there is involved
with mirc and will most likely be able to respond to your question
with more detail than we could.
My connection has been K-lined at various public IRC servers. What"s the chance of Speakeasy hosting one or more IRC servers themselves?
"Speakeasy has no plans to run an IRC server, and we aren"t considering
running one. From our perspective, having an IRC server is like putting
a BIG red target saying "Come attack me" on our network. However,
you"re welcome to run an IRC server at your end of the DSL line."
- Lisa Phillips in [39B532D5.3FA6E48A@speakeasy.net]
My connection is K-lined at my favorite IRC server! What can I do?
"You could E-mail the IRC operator for the server and request an"I:
line"for your specific IP address(s). This will work only for"static-IP"
(i.e. non-DHCP) accounts."- Brian Chaney in [tDet5.62153\$g53.1000337@news5.giganews.com]
Can I run my own IRC-server?
Contrary to what it written in the TOS, you are allowed to run an IRC
server over your DSL line: "Essentially, you can run your IRC server.
But at the point where it may become disruptive (if you, for example,
experience a DOS attack) we may ask you to turn it off."- Lisa Phillips
in [39B542AD.61CA4A95@speakeasy.net]
Can I run bots, then?
"You can run it on your own server on your own line. But if it becomes
a disruption we may ask you to stop. I believe the TOS has always
said something about not running Bots, we just haven"t removed that
yet.
Bots and IRC servers are strictly prohibited, however, on our shell
servers (grace and eve)." - Lisa Phillips in [39C6587E.20C50BCA@speakeasy.net]
10.3. I am aware there are sites that allow me to make long distance calls from either my PC to a land line, from my PC to another PC, and even from POTS to POTS at a reduced rate. Where can I find these sites?
The"Big-3"are Net2Phone, Dialpad, and PhoneFree. Here are some links:
10.3. I have heard about`Off-site Internet File Storage'. Tell me more!
Services offer storage space at their remote web-based for files. Once
stored there, you can access them from anywhere in the world. Different
sites have different plans (amount of space they give you for free,
how much additional space costs, etc.). Some creativity on your part
is required to make efficient use of these services, but here are
some links:
10.4. Where can I learn all the buzzwords?
Check out the Jargon File, a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang
illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor,
available from a large careity of sites. Just feed your preferred
search-engine with the phrase"Jargon File". For all you lazy bastards,
here"s one
: http://rudy.mif.pg.gda.pl/~pck/linux/jargon.html
10.5. If I want to move before my 1 year of service is up, but get Speakeasy DSL service at the new location, what penalities would apply?
Even though Chris Hunter explained some time ago:
"If you have another Speakeasy/Covad Line installed, no early-termination fees
occur, and your 1-year commitment is not restarted. If Covad service is *not
avialable* at your new location, no cancellation fee
applies."- Chris Hunter in an email to us
([20001116194635.L27902@speakeasy.net])
We now were informed of a change in the TOS:
"In the event of a service move (if you move and have the service installed
at the new location,) the twelve-month term begins again from the date of
installation at the new location. Additionally, in the event of a switch
from another ISP to Speakeasy, the twelve month service term will begin from
the date that the ISP switch is completed.
If you request to have your service migrated to another provider anytime
during your first year of service with a specific order, your account will
be subject to a $250 Outbound Switch Fee to cover our provisioning expenses
for your line."--"Myles Cochran" in
[DDEAIFDLGKOAJIJKOONJIEMNCHAA.myles@speakeasy.net]
10.6. How do I set up my second email account?
"Either drop a mail to "support@speakeasy.net" or give our support
line a call: 1.800.556.5829 x2"- Tim Hurley in [39BEFA82.3CAEC545@speakeasy.net]
10.7. How can I forward my mail to another account or use /.forward in another way)?
"All mail to speakeasy accounts is now first directed to our mail cluster.
Normally, you can just read your mail on the cluster with your favorite POP3
or IMAP client. However, if you wish, you can setup forwarding on the cluster
to any account, via the "Preferences" section of the webamail interface.
http://webmail.speakeasy.net/
If you"d like to use a shell based reader like pine or mutt, you can setup
this forward to go to username@grace.speakeasy.org, and all your mail wil be
delivered there. However, if you do this, you will no longer be able to use
the webmail interface to read stored mail, since webmail looks to the cluster
for stored messages. (you can still send messages with webmail though).
.forward files on grace/eve are only read IF you have the above forwarding
setup, and mail would forward to whatever account you have in the .forward."
-- Christopher Hunter in [3B4507C3.611B23C7@SPAMAWAYspeakeasy.net]
10.8. Can I run a Napster Server or similar?
The Problem:
"I received a cease and decist letter from the RIAA today involving running
an Opennap server. [...] If I decide to not refuse this, will I have to find
another provider?" Jon Keating in [te9kthb5nr21b8@corp.supernews.com]
No Problem:
"At this point, we believe this issue is between the RIAA and the end user.
We will not request termination of any servers allegedly providing
copyrighted material unless we receive legitimate cease and desist
notification (ie. a court order) from the RIAA or any other firm acting on
the behalf of an artist or company." Kat Oak in
[tebiptbsljqn4e@corp.supernews.com]
Nice.
11. Who is Who of speak.easy
The following is a list of people posting regularly into speak.easy:
Immortals:
- Edward Bender -
- Matt Chapman - [Support Technician]
- Chris Hunter -
- Henry Hurley
- Tim Hurley -
- Bryan Middleton - [Speakeasy Networks Corporate Shill /Cheerleader In Tights]
- Lisa Phillips - [Network Operations]
- Kat Oak -
If you would like to be added to this list, please send an email to
se_faq@netmeister.org
12. Contact
The following is a list of contact email-addresses and telephone-numbers,
mainly from http://www.speakeasy.net/contact.html
12.1. SE Says
"Speakeasy Technical Support is Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week.
Our Support number is 1-800-556-5829
in Seattle please call 206-728-9770.
You may expedite your support email requests by using the following
addresses:
- our main address: support@speakeasy.net
- Accounting \& billing: billing@speakeasy.net
- DSL pending installation questions: spkdsl@speakeasy.net
- Aliases for hosted domains \& email: aliases@speakeasy.net
- Hosted domains \& DNS questions: domains@speakeasy.net
- Spam \& abuse complaints: abuse@speakeasy.net
- Sales \& service changes: dsl@speakeasy.net
- DSL IP requests: dslips@speakeasy.net [or dns@speakeasy.net]
Please do not send attachments to support via email, and please note
we are unable to send passwords over email for security reasons.
When contacting support, please check TAC system status first to see
if there are any system wide issues, and then please let us know:
- your speakeasy username or order number
- your operating system
- your status: pre-order? pre-install? open trouble ticket?
- any relevant trouble ticket numbers
- a specific explantion of your problem including :
- what software you are using
- any error messages you are getting
- what you have tried to resolve the problem
We will try to resolve your issue as quickly as possible. Thank you."
12.2. We Say
There are a few other contact-addresses you might want to know about:
- pings@speakeasy.org - to reports latency. [traceroutes are allowed in the body of the message, no attachments please!]
- news@speakeasy.net - to request a new news group
- dns@speakeasy.org - IP allocation and reverse lookup changes
- domains@speakeasy.org - Domain hosting issues and forward DNS requests