TCP / IP Lab

Work: Information Security, Netadmin, Unix Sysadmin

Email:

GPG/PGP key: 0xD1AE6740

Location: Calif. 

My lab at home is a 7 foot Chatsworth rack with a couple of Sun Sparc boxes, router/firewall/wifi device with EVDO failover, DSL modem, printer, hub, etc. (no picture yet). Here is a picture of my various monitors and keybords. I use a KVM for testing and screwing around with the Linux/Windows/whatever boxes you see at the bottom right under the desk and for the laptop when it visits In the early days of my lab the rack was full of old Cisco 25xx series routers and even some old CSU/DSUs with crossover cables and hubs/switches in various topologies as needed. For a while there was a even a pair of modems hooked up to separate phone lines for testing dial-on-demand-routing for one of the Cisco certifications I was studying for at the time. I also worked with firewalls like IP Chains, IP Tables, Cisco's Pix and another vendor that I won't mention because I don't like it. Later I got into Linux, BSD Unix, and most recently, Solaris Unix. Over the years I've played around with various Open Source software and OSes.

Occasionally I get into something kind of exotic for a little bit such as the strange new Layer 2 protocol that came with Microsoft Vista when it first came out a couple of years ago: LLDP. Learning how something works by messing around with it in a lab environment can be really fascinating...if you can find the time.  I really like text-to-speech programs. I use them with cron jobs on my various Unix and Mac computers to remind me of all kinds of stuff. I think the best is from Cepstral. But there is a more technically oriented one from Scotland called Festival. I also do shell scripting and have enjoyed a bit of Perl programming, which is a lot more complex and difficult.

In the last couple of years I've also gotten into ham radio. I'm on VHF/UHF, which is where beginners have to start. But I want to get onto so-called HF, also known as shortwave. I can't yet feel comfortable spending the money on an HF transmitter, but I have put a lot of time into learning the basics of morse code, also known as CW. These days I'm all about web stuff, such as Drupal, which is what this site is built with. People I am not: This UK photographer (though I did major in photography in college). This actor. This Scottish theater director (though my ancestors were Glaswegian.) This Hereford, England music fan. This guy from New Mexico and Portland, Oregon. This U.K. theater guy on Facebook.(why so many actors and so many UK people?)