I've known about Squid for years, but only recently got an excuse to play around with it. I commented about the stupidity of someone blocking IP addresses on a firewall to prevent people from wasting time on non-work websites, and before I knew it I was setting up a new Squid server. I think my comment was something about "the wrong tool for the job". I didn't know enough about Squid to know if it was the right tool, but after some research I was confident it could meet the needs of this client, and at the right price.

As I got started, I was struck by the depth of the configuration file. I admit I got a little lost in it. I finally managed to configure a basic installation for user access control (I disabled caching due to the age/speed of the server). Now that I've configured a few servers, I'm liking squid more and more. We're planning some new installations, this time more for caching purposes than access control, so I'll get to put that aspect of Squid's features to the test as well. I have to say I'm not a big fan of seafood, but I really do like Squid!

Posted by ra in computerish at 21:39 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I've been dealing with a lot of Cisco routers lately. We've put in several 2811's and a 2851 recently, and I've had to reconfigure some older 1700 series routers. I'm not cisco certified or anything, but I'm fairly comfortable with IOS just because I've been thrown in to make changes on routers so many times. I've heard rumors about web interfaces or gui tools for configuring IOS, but I've never seen them. The CLI is pretty easy to use once you get acquainted with it, and I like it pretty well. I've used way too many GUI's that just got in the way and made things difficult, or outright removed functionality.

The bad thing about Cisco is of course the cost. For the price of the 2851 and WIC cards for 6 T1's you could buy a small car, new. Alas we've tried to look into other vendors, like Juniper, but can't seem to get anyone to return our calls. Oh well; we'll stay with Cisco for now.

Posted by ra in computerish at 19:14 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

After my last energy-related post, I bought a cool little device that allows me to measure power consumption of everyday electrical devices. I've been testing various computers, appliances and electronics that I have or have access to, in order to discover just how power hungry they are.

Some of the surprises included my Pentium 4 file server which uses only about 40 W, a dual processor Pentium III server which uses a whopping 175 W, and a small stereo system which uses about 22 W in standby mode! Just how much power do you need to watch for a button press from the remote control?!

Interesting statistics after the jump.

Posted by ra in other geeky stuff at 01:40 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)