]]> http://support.cssnw.com/?feed=rss2&p=103 0 http://support.cssnw.com/?p=102 http://support.cssnw.com/?p=102#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2007 23:00:46 +0000 rpoorman http://support.cssnw.com/?p=102 Here is a link to our local speed test

http://support.cssnw.com/speedtest.html

If you are looking for lots of facts and information about bandwidth, check Wikipedia it is an excellent source for information about many of the terms used here.

Within and high quality ISP’s network, each customer has a SNMP managed port. Every SNMP managed port has a set of counters. Two of these counters are in and out octets (bytes of data).

When people refer to speeds they talk in megabits per second (mbps), when they talk in usage or quantity they use megaBytes (MBps). A byte (octet) is made up of 8 bits, this is simplified as when a byte is transmitted over a network there are typically overhead parity bits, and other methods to guarantee delivery that are way beyond the scope of this article, so for simplification we’ll stick with 8 bits in a byte of data.

There are many different types of circuits some are unbalanced like DSL where up and down are not the same, some are bursty like Ethernet and cable which are on demand protocols (shared ethernet with collision management), and some are reliable full duplex protocols like T1 and OCx optical standards (timing based no sharing). Each one is unique in it’s data carrying properties. For example ADSL and cable are typically shared networks with many users, carrier Ethernet is switched and full duplex to provide inexpensive high speed data transfer while providing a high quality of service, and T1/OCx are timing based to guarantee delivery of packets like voice.

Typical ISP circuits (non consumer grade)

Example usage at a sustained 1 megabit per second

1mbps/month=aprox 324 Gigabytes of data

With this information as a basis you can see there are many ways to handle and measure bandwidth, simple comparisons just don’t work, and sales jockeys talking latency, burstability, and quality of service rarely have any idea how it all works. In an effort to simplify comparison and reduce confusion for customers most quality ISP’s utilize one of four typical methods of billing. Circuit size, Usage billing, average throughput, and 95th percentile throughput.

Circuit billing is based on the size of the circuit delivered to a site, regardless of the use within the circuit, if a 1.5Mb T1 is delivered it costs the same up to full utilization regardless of if you are only using .256Mb of the circuit.

Usage billing is a direct method that uses the overall count of bytes in and out for a month. Each month the billing department downloads the counters from the switch ports and adds them up and that is your usage for the month. This method is very simple but at times has issues when counters are reset, or if they roll over. There are overage charges on each additional byte used over your plan.

Average throughput is just that and average of throughput. Typically ISP’s sample counters every 5 minutes, and average the entire usage for a month, some may charge more for daytime use, or lump it all together.

The 95th percentile method is the best of both worlds. This method uses the average throughput, however prior to the average calculation the samples are sorted and the top 5% of the samples are thrown out, what remains is the lowest 95% of the samples. An average is then run on the 95% and you have the 95th percentile. 95th percentile billing has advantages over fixed bandwidth billing. With the 95th percentile method you will not be penalized for occasional spikes of heavy usage. This method is the most widely used larger ISP’s. This allows a customer to purchase a larger circuit (say 100Mb Ethernet), burst up to high data rates, and only pay for a preset average.

Hopefully this information will aid you in your decision to pick an ISP.

On the main page there will be three buttons towards the top of the page as shown above, click on the middle one with two red check marks “Options”.

Once you have clicked the “Options” button, it will take you to Options – General Setting tab. Underneath there there is a list of buttons as shown below.

Click the “MailBox Management” tab, and that will take you to “Options – MailBox Management” page.

From there scroll until you see Automatically Reply To All New Messages. Click Yes button to activate this option, and then you can put a message that will automatically reply to your received email.

Click Save to have your changes applied.

rkhunter identified SVH4 & SVH5 issues. These kits had created a directory /usr/lib/libsh with a utilz directory and a hide script to remove logging information and prevent detection/forensics. While the system is compromised and will need to be rebuilt (they got in via a nagios hack ) it annoyed me that I could not delete the files found. ls-l showed the files as read writable but removal was prevented with “Permission denied” and Operation not allowed. There was limited information on searches completed and most just stated re-install (which is fine but I wanted an answer). Further research led me to the extended attributes provided under the ext2 & ext3 file systems.

What I found was two commands related to these attributes are lsattr and chattr. Using lsattr I found the files to have no attributes, however the directory they were in had the attributes s i and a. using chattr -s -i -a /usr/lib/libsh successfully removed these attributes and allowed removal of the directories!

Another day in the trenches…

Ray

Full Name: enter your name as you would like to see displayed in sent e-mails
E-mail Address: enter your full email address
Incoming Mail Server: enter pop3.pacaccess.com
Account Type: Choose either POP or IMAP. If you’re not sure which to choose, see
Choosing between POP3 and IMAP at the end of this article.
User Name: enter your username
Password: enter your password
Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): enter smtp.pacaccess.com

2. Hit OK. It will verify your information and ask if you want to import mail from another program. If not, click No.
3. If the window shown above did not appear when opening the application, go to the Mail menu and select Preferences.
4. Click Accounts
5. In the Accounts window, click on the + button in the bottom left hand corner of the window
6. Enter the following information

Account Type: Choose either POP or IMAP. If you’re not sure which to choose, see
Choosing between POP3 and IMAP at the end of this article
Description: enter an arbitrary name for your reference (e.g. My-Email)
E-mail Address: enter your username + @pacaccess.com
Full Name: enter your name as you would like to see displayed in sent e-mails
Incoming Mail Server: enter mail.pacacess.com
User Name: enter your username (usually begins with ‘as’)
Password: enter your password
Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): enter smtp.pacaccess.edu

7. Close the window (red x in top left corner) and hit the Save button

SMTP Authentication

In order to send correctly you will also need to enable smtp authentication:

1. Under the Mail menu select Preferences
2. Click Accounts
3. Click Server Settings
4. For Authentication select Password
5. Enter your username and password.
6.Click Ok

Choosing between POP3 or IMAP

POP3 (Post Office Protocol) downloads all of your new e-mail messages from the server to your computer, and store them locally. When the download is complete, the messages are deleted off the server by default. If you choose to leave the messages on the server you will need to make sure that you don’t exceed your disk quota.

POP3 is recommended if you’re a heavy email user and will have more mail than you’re specific quota (student 10MB, staff/faculty 20MB). It’s also recommended if you only read your email from one computer.

IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) leaves your messages on the server. You use an email program to ‘view’ your messages on the server. When using IMAP you need to make sure that you do not exceed your disk quota.

This service is excellent if you need access to all of your mail messages from multiple computers.

This tutorial will help you set up the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client to work with your e-mail account.

To Set Up Your E-mail Account in Mozilla Thunderbird

In Mozilla Thunderbird, select Tools > Account Settings.

Select “Email account” and click Next.

Enter your name and e-mail address.

Select “POP” as the type of incoming server you are using. Your incoming server is pop.zeninternet.com. Click Next.

Enter your e-mail address for the “Incoming User Name,” and “Outgoing User Name.” Click Next.

Enter a name for your e-mail account and click Next.

Verify your account information and click Finish.
In the Account Settings window, select “Outgoing Server” listed below your new account.

Enter “smtp.zeninternet.com” for the “Server Name” and change the “Port” setting to 25.Select “Use name and password” and enter your e-mail address.

Thunderbird will ask you for your password the first time you try to send mail. Click OK.

This tutorial shows you how to set up Microsoft Outlook Express to work with your e-mail account. This tutorial focuses on setting up Microsoft Outlook Express 6, but these settings are similar in other versions of Microsoft Outlook Express. You can set up previous versions of Microsoft Outlook Express by using the settings in this tutorial.

To Set Up Your E-mail Account in Microsoft Outlook Express

In Microsoft Outlook Express, select Tools > Accounts.

Select the “Mail” tab in the Internet Accounts window and click “Add.”

Enter you full name and click Next.

Enter your e-mail address and click Next.

On the E-mail Server Names window, enter your information as follows:

My incoming mail server is a

POP3 server

Incoming mail (POP3, IMAP or HTTP) server

pop.zeninternet.com

Outgoing mail (SMTP) server

smtp.zeninternet.com

Click Next.

Enter your e-mail address for your account name and enter your password. Click Next. Click Finish.

Select the mail account you just created and click “Properties.”

In the Properties window, select the Servers tab.

At the bottom of the window, select “My server requires authentication.”

Select the “Advanced” tab and change the “Outgoing mail (SMTP)” server port number to 25. Click Ok.

1. Go to our website http://www.cssnw.com

2. Click on Customer Login on the left panel

3. Enter your full email address as the account name and your password

4. When the webmail screen comes up, click on the “Options” icon at the top of the page. (looks like a few check boxes)

5. There will be a pop-up window, (you may need to turn off any pop-up blockers you have.

6. Click on Mailbox Management at the top of the page

7. In Forward all new message:

a. check “Yes” on the first button

b. check “no” on the second, (unless someone is going to be checking this mailbox directly)

c. type in the address you’d like the mail forwarded to

Be sure to click save at the bottom of the box.