Basic Internet Connection Troubleshooting

This is the slide for Basic Internet Connection Troubleshooting.

Net Connection Troubleshooting

My Network in Baghdad

This is how it looks setting up a network in the middle of the desert.

We have two sat links. The bigger dish connects to an ISP in Austria(2 MBPS) and the smaller dish connects to the US(1.5 MBPS). This is a normal setup, say if one of the link goes down then you have the other link as backup. The thing with satellite links is that they are very very expensive. The link that connects to Austria costs 12,000 USD a month while the link that connects to the US costs 17,000 USD a month. Anyway Uncle Sam is paying for it :) . . . It's noticeable that the sat dish sits on top of a bunker.

This 6 foot trailer is the IT Room/Server Room . . . it contains the modems, routers, servers of the whole camp. It contains two AC units which makes 18 degrees celsius inside while its 47 degrees celsius outside . . .

There's a hole on the lower corner of the trailer in which cables from the whole camp passes through. If you notice the UTP cables just lay down on the ground on a pipe but still not that much protection. What I did was took 2 sand bags from the bunkers and dump it on top of the cables as an added protection. This kind of cabling already exist when we took over this camp:) . . . and that's my excuse. I don't wanna do a recabling again . . . besides it works!

HP Proliant ML350 with HP Data Protector Express as Tape Backup

Cisco Catalyst Switches and iDirect Satellite Modems

We've got 2 server racks. The taller rack contains 2 HP Proliant ML350 servers with Xeon processors, an Untangle box as firewall/gateway and another box for Anti Virus and Windows Update Server. The smaller rack contains Cisco Catalyst switches, another Untangle box and a file server for movies and TV series (right now its around 300 GB of data) . . . What can you do in the middle of the desert? . . . watch movies and downloaded TV series :) . . . We have a projector and loud speakers and that makes our night . . .

OSI Training Tutorial 2

OSI Training Tutorial 1

SoftPerfect Network Scanner

SoftPerfect Network ScannerSoftPerfect Network Scanner is a free multi-threaded IP, NetBIOS and SNMP scanner with a modern interface and several advanced features. It is intended for both system administrators and general users who are interested in computer security. The program pings computers, scans for listening TCP ports and displays which types of resources are shared on the network (including system and hidden).

In addition, it allows you to mount shared folders as network drives, browse them using Windows Explorer, filter the results list and more. SoftPerfect Network Scanner can also check for a user-defined port and report back if one is open. It can also resolve host names and auto-detect your local and external IP range. It supports remote shutdown and Wake-On-LAN. Click here for more information.