When I'm not traveling, I like to work from home some days rather than endure the trek from Seattle to Redmond (although it's much better now that our own employee transit service has expanded into my neighborhood -- the existence of which is sad commentary on the availability and reliability of Seattle's public transit companies).

This means, of course, that I need fast and stable network connections. Comcast with their PowerBoost is working very well for me. But I just can't find a decent wireless router at all. My Lenovo T61p (with Intel 4965abgn adapter) just won't stay connected to my D-Link DIR-628 and IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY! (Yes, I've tried various driver versions, from both Lenovo and Intel.)

My house is in an area with a lot of wireless activity -- sometimes I can see nine or ten SSIDs. I'm running draft N on 2.4GHz (which occupies two non-adjacent channels, currently 1 and 4), and I suspect the problem is collision interference. I could shift the router to 5.2GHz, which I probably would help, but then the rest of the computers in my house won't connect. Why, you ask? Well get this: the DIR-628 is part of D-Link's RangeBooster N family. So I stayed in the family and got two DWA-542 adapters for the desktop computers. Yet they only do 2.4GHz! Silly me, I assumed that being in the same family means full support of the router's capabilities.

I'm very tempted to replace my router again -- and I'm thinking that the best option is to get one with dual radios. That way I can move my T61p to 5.2GHz and replace the desktop adapters, while still having single-channel 802.11b/g on 2.4GHz for the Wii and my PlayStation Portable.

Now my request: tell me about your experience with home routers. What do you really like, and why? What should I buy?

If you still subscribe to fixed site recovery services using shared IT infrastructure from the likes of HP, IBM BCRS, or SunGard, among others, you will quickly become a dinosaur in the next 1 to 2 years.

These types of shared infrastructure services involve lengthy restores from tape and a recovery time objective of 72 hours, at best. Plus, you'll be lucky if you recover at all because chances are, you've had trouble scheduling a test with your service provider and it's been a LONG time since the last one, if indeed you’ve ever tested.

72 hours recovery just doesn't cut it anymore. And frankly, understanding your provider's oversubscription ratio to shared infrastructure to determine the risk of multiple invocations, or attempting to negotiate exclusions zones and availability guarantees is a time suck. Most companies are either taking DR back in-house or, if they still rely on a DR service provider, they are using dedicated infrastructure.

A dedicated infrastructure is attractive as it enables replication to improve recovery objectives. But it’s expensive, and puts advanced IT recovery out of the reach of many companies who can't measure downtime in millions of dollars.

But, there are new services on the horizon that will make advanced IT recovery affordable for the masses. This month SunGard announced the availability of its new Virtual Server Replication Service. As I discussed in my most recent Forrester Wave™ of DR Service Providers and other reports, server virtualization is transforming IT recovery. With replication to a virtualized server infrastructure and shared storage infrastructure, customers can enjoy improved recovery-time and recovery-point objectives without the cost of dedicated and custom IT recovery solutions from the DR services provider.SunGard is the first DR service provider to productize these virtual services. I expect other DR service providers to follow suit.

So, the next time your contract is up for renewal, you need to completely rethink your approach to IT recovery. Get off tape and move to these new virtual services. It will improve your recovery capabilities and you don't have to worry about the oversubscription issue with shared virtual infrastructure -- the DR provider can manage capacity much more easily in this environment. In fact, SunGard is offering an RTO SLA of 6 hours as part of the offering. To my knowledge, this is the first time a DR service provider is offering this as part of a standard contract. I'm looking forward to the day when vendors will offer most services with transparent, subscription-based pricing, and standard contract terms that don't take a team of procurement professionals to negotiate. 

People ask why do you blog?  In the final analysis I blog because I like to. Every once in a while though you get a comment from a reader that reminds you why it is all worth while.  Here is one I received today from a person alleging to be a Julie Peterson:

Julie Peterson commented on Safe Access wins SC Magazine Award Reader Trust Award, again!:

Dressed in a tuxedo and chewing those rubber chicken breasts at the award ceremony is your idea of fun? Aren't you the same mentally retarded idiot who said in 2007 that you hated SC awards and that anyone can buy the SC awards with a sponsorship? Why do you think people give over $10k as sponsorship for the SC awards? Who is watching the awards except other vendors? By the way you suck big time with your rubbish blogs. Didn't networld magazine give you the boot within 3 months? Think before you write Mr. mental. Well done on winning, but please, dont give the impression that you cant buy an award from SC! And don't forget to eat your medication pills tonight, otherwise from your hair it is obvious you ran away from a mental hospital.

First of all Julie, let me thank you for your kind words! You made the statement and let me answer your questions for you.

1. Is dressing in a tuxedo and chewing rubber chicken breasts my idea of fun?  Actually, I do enjoy dressing up in a tuxedo once in a while.  The food at the awards ceremony was actually pretty good, if not diet friendly, as were the cocktails.  The entertainment at the awards show was pretty good as well. Catching up with friends you had not seen for a while and networking with industry peers was pretty worthwhile too.  Maybe your idea of a good time is putting on a bowling shirt and swilling a couple of beers and pretzels before going home and undressing into your dirty ripped underwear. Hey I say to each his own.

2. I am not the idiot who in 2007 said that I hated the SC awards and that anyone can buy the SC awards with a sponsorship.  I am the idiot who said that about the InfoSec Products Guide award by the folks at Silicon Valley Communications.  In contrast I have always said nice things about the SC awards. I actually have a lot of respect for them.  Also for the record, StillSecure has never been a sponsor of the SC Magazine awards. I have seen sponsors who did not win awards as well.  So looks like you got that one wrong Julie, but it happens.

3. ???Networld??? magazine didn???t give me the boot within 3 months.  They never had the chance, as I never wrote for ???networld, network world or any other magazine. Maybe you have me confused with Mike Rothman or Mitchell Ashley, who do and did write for Network World. But let me assure you that I do try and think before I write.

4. Regarding what medication pills I take and does my hair make it obvious I ran away from a mental hospital. I don???t take any medication, maybe I should.  Better living through chemistry you know ;-)  As to my hair, what can I say.  At this stage I am happy I have any hair at all.  My wife always says when I get my haircut it looks like a Buzz Lightyear style, but no one ever mentioned a mental hospital look to it.  In any event sorry it doesn???t appeal to you.

So who is this troll Julie Peterson?  Could it be Richard Stiennon in drag?  Maybe his wife striking out?  Maybe another one of my fans?  Who knows, but these sort of comments keep me juiced about blogging and remind me of how much fun I have doing it.  Thanks again Julie!

People ask why do you blog?  In the final analysis I blog because I like to. Every once in a while though you get a comment from a reader that reminds you why it is all worth while.  Here is one I received today from a person alleging to be a Julie Peterson:

Julie Peterson commented on Safe Access wins SC Magazine Award Reader Trust Award, again!:

Dressed in a tuxedo and chewing those rubber chicken breasts at the award ceremony is your idea of fun? Aren't you the same mentally retarded idiot who said in 2007 that you hated SC awards and that anyone can buy the SC awards with a sponsorship? Why do you think people give over $10k as sponsorship for the SC awards? Who is watching the awards except other vendors? By the way you suck big time with your rubbish blogs. Didn't networld magazine give you the boot within 3 months? Think before you write Mr. mental. Well done on winning, but please, dont give the impression that you cant buy an award from SC! And don't forget to eat your medication pills tonight, otherwise from your hair it is obvious you ran away from a mental hospital.

First of all Julie, let me thank you for your kind words! You made the statement and let me answer your questions for you.

1. Is dressing in a tuxedo and chewing rubber chicken breasts my idea of fun?  Actually, I do enjoy dressing up in a tuxedo once in a while.  The food at the awards ceremony was actually pretty good, if not diet friendly, as were the cocktails.  The entertainment at the awards show was pretty good as well. Catching up with friends you had not seen for a while and networking with industry peers was pretty worthwhile too.  Maybe your idea of a good time is putting on a bowling shirt and swilling a couple of beers and pretzels before going home and undressing into your dirty ripped underwear. Hey I say to each his own.

2. I am not the idiot who in 2007 said that I hated the SC awards and that anyone can buy the SC awards with a sponsorship.  I am the idiot who said that about the InfoSec Products Guide award by the folks at Silicon Valley Communications.  In contrast I have always said nice things about the SC awards. I actually have a lot of respect for them.  Also for the record, StillSecure has never been a sponsor of the SC Magazine awards. I have seen sponsors who did not win awards as well.  So looks like you got that one wrong Julie, but it happens.

3. “Networld” magazine didn’t give me the boot within 3 months.  They never had the chance, as I never wrote for “networld, network world or any other magazine. Maybe you have me confused with Mike Rothman or Mitchell Ashley, who do and did write for Network World. But let me assure you that I do try and think before I write.

4. Regarding what medication pills I take and does my hair make it obvious I ran away from a mental hospital. I don’t take any medication, maybe I should.  Better living through chemistry you know ;-)  As to my hair, what can I say.  At this stage I am happy I have any hair at all.  My wife always says when I get my haircut it looks like a Buzz Lightyear style, but no one ever mentioned a mental hospital look to it.  In any event sorry it doesn’t appeal to you.

So who is this troll Julie Peterson?  Could it be Richard Stiennon in drag?  Maybe his wife striking out?  Maybe another one of my fans?  Who knows, but these sort of comments keep me juiced about blogging and remind me of how much fun I have doing it.  Thanks again Julie!

First, let me disclose something - my frantic efforts with the Paint allow me to proudly proclaim: I am a certified, trusted "Good Guy":

Good guys, let me tell you, do not need any controls placed on them; they are "trusted." Don't you have to trust somebody? Why not trust a sysadmin, for example?

So, what about controls? Ah, glad that you asked! "Controls" are for the bad guys; they are in place to prevent the bad guys from doing "an unspeakable evil" (tm) :-) on you. On the other hand, good guys are doing "the right thing" every time - why monitor them? It goes without saying that nobody ever moves between these groups, especially, not from "good guys" to "bad guys."

As I am rambling about this, many of my security-minded readers are wondering "what is Anton up to? Isn't it kind of OBVIOUS that controls are for everybody?" Controls know no good/bad! For example, a network control, say a NIPS, will block malicious web access due to a typo in a URL (by - gasp! - a good guy) or due to determined malicious hacking.

I think a few of my readers have watched one too many "Batman" movies and have acquired the dark side of the "IT hero" mentality." How about getting an "IT employee" mentality? If your boss is an idiot (and Terry's managers definitely seem pretty far gone in that direction...), than your "heroic duty" is to let them impale themselves on a sword of their idiocy, not to commit crimes (even if cybercrimes) to prevent that idiocy. Really, go find another job if you do not like the environment; good admins are needed in many places. For example, if your boss insists on posting all VPN passwords for all users publicly out of his sheer and unfathomable stupidity, it is your duty to tell him that it is "a very bad idea" - and not to change all passwords and not let him see it. "Doing you job" despite your boss and despite the law just doesn't work...

In other words, I want a banker making policy decisions at a bank, not a sysadmin. If a banker makes a wrong decision, his will suffer. If he is an idiot, he will most likely make the wrong decision. However, it is NOT the admin's decision to make - he does not "own" the business.  BTW, the fact that it is a city, not a bank, and it is taxpayer funded, does not change it.

Am I "anti-admin" for saying that admins should not run the business?  Am I "anti-admin" for saying controls (at least logging/auditing) on administrator activities are needed?  You call it "anti-admin", I call it common sense!!  Pray tell me, what makes admins float above accountability, control and  IT governance?

Please also read what Randy Smith said about this issue; a lot of good thoughts that I agree with.

Now I would like to respond to specific comments from my readers:

"What rankles your readers is how blithely you imply this problem has a simple or effective solution. It doesn't, all the processes or tools you advocate can do is speed up the time it takes to detect the lock-out, but not actually prevent it - i.e. they are ineffective at tackling the primary problem."

That is correct; the rogue admin problem has NO simple solution. You might prevent some (few, really) things, you might log some of them and then figure what happened, but there is no simple solution (it goes without saying that "just trust them" is NOT a solution...)

"We all know companies run without sane risk management all the time and are rarely held accountable in America. What makes you think anyone is "screwed"?"

Well, this is a good point; maybe I let my idealistic side take over. But, come on, just the fact that bad IT governance is somewhat common, doesn't make it right!

"Now ask yourself who is "screwed" by one person at a small company having all access and no accountability on a network. That's how I run my home network. Big deal."

Nobody is. I addressed it here. The risk is acceptable for smaller environments, usually. I don't have an overseeing body set up to control my home passwords :-)

"You seem to forget that sometimes the management just has to trust somebody. "

Addressed above.

"Chuvakin, you're a tool. Given the recent idiocy of the releasing of the VPN names and codes, it obviously shows that any sort of detest that Childs had against his superiors at the city were justified."

The fact that his bosses are idiots (which seems fairly well established!) does not make him right!

Bad boss + admin out of control =/= right :-)

"This is not a private organization. His superiors don't own the company and are NOT entitled to the data. We are, the taxpayers. And as a California taxpayer I fully support someone with the paranoia and technical skill of Terry Childs over a group of bureaucrats who release secure information to the public."

Properly evaluating this statement requires a law degree. Thus, no comment. Bureaucrats suck, but rogue admins are not a solution to that. Really!

"The guy was doing his job and doing it incredibly well, and keeping it out of the hands of those who, given their most recent choices, would bring potential disaster to the city."

He was NOT, unless crime is part of his job :-) Also, see comments on "IT heroes" above. If your boss is an idiot AND you don't like it, quit.

"Anton Chuvakin seems to think that all admins should be kept underneath management's boot at all times. [...]  Managers can't and don't understand what we do, and thus eventually come to the conclusion that we can't be trusted with our own knowledge. [...] Perhaps it's human nature to fear what you don't know or understand -- and that's why management can develop a fear of their own employees."

You say 'fear of employees', I say "insider risk management." You say "trust employees", I say "trust but [be able to] verify (=log)"

"his blog leads the casual reader to infer that their businesses are in danger of being hijacked by disgruntled Sys Admins and that isn’t the case." (from here)

Eh, not all businesses, but some businesses - definitely (hmm, see Terry Childs story or other published insider attack cases, all the way back to Omega Engineering case and maybe all the way back to ancient history)

"I despise people like Terry Childs, but despise Chicken Little’s like Anton Chuvakin even more." (from here)

You say  I am 'chicken little', I say "if your boss ignores insider risk management, he is stupid and deserves his business to fail."  I also add "if you think admins are 'above the law', you have a good chance of 'turning rogue' yourself AND then ending in jail."

Finally, this and my other posts about the case are inspired by on the media reporting; I possess no "insider knowledge" on this case  whatsoever.

Possibly related posts:

• "On Doomsaying (Terry Childs case)"
• "So ... Am I? Maybe I Am!"

Jardin notes that Virgin is thinking about what gets cached on planes. I would note that the idea of onboard media and caching servers is a great one, because it means that passengers could ostensibly stream or purchase downloadable digital content; and that whenever an airplane lands, its servers could automatically suck in at 802.11n speeds from a gate-mounted access point all the latest data to cache, including video.

On the cost of fuel to carry the Wi-Fi gear--probably a total of 200 pounds of dead weight and drag, based on information that Aircell and others have been giving out--I may have been close tot the mark when I suggested it was $50 for a cross country flight a few days ago.

The excellent Scott McCartney, author of The Middle Seat column in The Wall Street Journal, ran down the numbers on 10-June, and he says LAX-JFK costs about $500 per passenger when all the costs are figured out. But that includes all fuel divided by average passenger count: that is, the weight of the plane, everything in it, and its drag are all contributors.

That means that an added couple of passengers due to the availability of Wi-Fi; their willingness or the overall willingness to pay slightly more for the flight (which would be even fuller if more people want on); and the airlines' cut of a dozen or sessions per flight could clearly outweigh the gas cost.

I had a long crappy day as anyone who might follow my Twitter may have seen. I was wallowing in my own discontent when I met up with Myrcurial for lunch today. The cheshire grin on his face was something to behold. As it turns out, the weasel had been sitting on a rather significant announcement (for the last month) that he alluded to in his earlier posting today.

Myrcurial will be speaking at Last Hope! Very cool brother! His talk entitled, “From a Black Hat to a Black Suit” will be a must see for any propeller heads that have aspirations for a corner office one day.

From the talk summary:

You want it all. You can see the brass ring and you want to jump for it. But you’re scared. You don’t want to put on a suit and watch your soul shrivel like the spot price on RAM. There is another way.In this session, you will learn: why you want to do this to yourself, how to get the first job (which will suck), how to turn the first job into the next job (while still having fun), how to get the top job (sooner than you thought you could), and how to do it all without feeling like a corporate whore. You want to hack the planet? You’ve got to start somewhere.

I’ll be the smart ass in the back crackin wise.

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