Building The Net

The end of an Era…

Back in 1999, My company, ACT USA leased a small storefront in Thousand Oaks, CA. At the time, we did just about everything related to business computing. Not only did we service desktops back then, but we also served as a Corporate ISP to many of our customers, with T1s and Frame Relay connections terminating directly to that little facility.

A few months back, the CFO and I started to review our costs, and came to the conclusion, that we no longer needed to host any services locally, and that we could save a fair amount of money relocating to a business / industrial park. So, the hunt was on for a new facility. We managed to locate a new office only five miles from our old storefront that was perfect for our use.

Needless to say, these are exciting times for all of us at ACT USA. New bigger office in a beautiful complex, with a large shop area and room for a classroom! This move however, set into motion the dismantling of our NOC in that office.

See, the only way the move really made sense, was to completely eliminate all outward facing services from the Thousand Oaks NOC. This idea was nothing new, I had started this process almost 5 years ago, but found a few services / customers to be difficult and expensive to move, so I procrastinated. Well, that procrastination ended with the signing of a new lease, and all of a sudden I was faced with unraveling a location that I had personally kept operational 24/7 the last 12 years.

Today, November 18th, 2011, without fan fair or even a whimper… Yes, today, the NOC in Thousand Oaks fell silent. As I reached over and turned off the last router (border1), the sound of absolute silence over whelmed me. I had spent the last 12 years making sure this room stayed noisy, keeping this equipment running. Yes, the last 12 years… Responding to power failures and carrier issues all times of day and night. And now… Silence… How strange… How strange…

Thousand Oaks NOC

Brought On-Line: November 1, 1999

Decommissioned: November 18, 2011

– Stu

Open Source Groupware – The Clear Leader is SOGo:

Some of the early groups of articles I penned on this blog, were comparisons of Open Source Groupware projects. At that time, the only one I could really recommend was eGroupware. Although I still believe eGroupware is a valid contender for your Groupware server, I have discovered a project, that in my opinion is leaps and bounds ahead of the pack. The project is called SOGo.

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Amazon Brute Force SIP Attacks – Dave Michels Interviews Me.

Shortly After my “SIP Brute Force Attack Originating From Amazon EC2 Hosts” post, Dave Michels interviewed me for an article Dark Side of the Cloud. This is that interview:

Dave:   What do you believe the intent was of the attacks? Free long distance?

Stu: Certainly free long distance would be one reason… But there are many other reasons to hijack a SIP account. I’m sure that organized crime would pay for a block of active SIP logins. They could use them to circumvent surveillance, or possibly use them for fraudulent boiler room calls about extended warranties and such.

Remember, most folks still believe that the Telephone System is secure… They tend to believe someone who is calling them.

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SIP Brute Force Attack Originating From Amazon EC2 Hosts.

I woke up Saturday morning to find strangely high network activity on some of our inbound connections. After a quick review, it turned out that most of the traffic was going into several of our hosted PBX systems. After a little more digging, I discovered that several systems on the Amazon EC2 network were preforming brute force attacks, against our VoIP servers. They were attempting to guess user names and passwords for our SIP clients. I immediately blocked all traffic from the attacking IPs and examined the logs. Thankfully, I found that non of the attacks had succeeded in guessing passwords.

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The Technology of SCALE8x – A Post Event Review. PART – 2

This is the second installment all about the technologies used for SCALE8x. The first installment dealt with the services that the technology group has setup and maintains for the event year round. This installment will cover the pre-show setup that went into the technologies that were used at the show.

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The Technology of SCALE8x – A Post Event Review. PART – 1

Every February in Los Angeles CA, a group of dedicated volunteers get together to put on what many believe to be the largest all volunteer organized open source technology conventions in the US. This three day event features talks and exhibits specifically targeted at Open Source users, programmers, and system administrators.

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S.C.A.L.E is coming! Feb. 19-21!

Sorry to take so long between posts… But I’ve been kinda busy getting ready for The So. Cal Linux Expo, coming up in Los Angeles February 19th through the 21st. This is the premier open source show on the west coast! I’ll be there as the network architect this year, with Mike Maki taking over my position as Tech Committee Chairperson.

This year, we are pushing the envelope by adding IPv6 connectivity network wide. As near as we all can gather, this makes us the first show of this type to provide a dual stack network show wide!

If you are in to opensource, or getting pressure to reduce your IT costs, come enjoy the show! A quick sumary:

• Over 80 exhibitor booths
• Over 100 talks and presentations
• B.O.F. events
• Gatherings and Fun & Games

See their web page for details http://www.socallinuxexpo.org.

Come be a part!

Hope to see you there.

– Stu

This can’t be right. It’s going to cost $1000.00 just for software?

I must admit, this is quite a surprise, even for me. While pricing a PC for a client, I was shocked when I calculated the total cost of the software that they are required to use for their business.

The cost of software is one of those things that most business owners understand, but very few employees grasp. While there are open source alternatives available for these software packages, chances are that the client will elect to purchase this software, but as always, I’ll sure give him the option to try something different.

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Is the Internet killing Main Street, or was it already dead?

When I was a kid, I could walk down Las Tunas Blvd. and not go more then 3 store fronts without knowing the the business owner’s names. Well, at least their family names, because back then you called people by their last name, usually preceded by a Mr., Mrs. or Miss.

That’s not to say that there weren’t Super Markets and Department Stores. But you still went down to the corner drug store to get your prescriptions, paper and office supplies were purchased from the local stationary store, and small toy stores and hobby shops were where I would go and dream of all the fun I could have for the price of a months allowance.

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