Quick tips on how to install MP3 compression into media player
Once upon a time I actually made the mistake of paying for a licensed MP3 compressor for Microsoft Media Player. Of course, despite backing up my keys and other licensing encumberments, after I resinstalled windows it was no longer possible to reinstall my MP3 compressor.
Back then LAME had terrible performance and was encumbered by problems of its own, not least a general lack of an ACM driver that worked. Now, things are different. It's easy to get access to a high quality, completely free MP3 encoder for Windows Media Player.
I now use LAME to perform my MP3 compression when extracting my CDs to MP3 to play in the car and so on. However, I don't use Media Player much, as Plextools has offered cddb support for a while now, and there's no longer any benefit to using Media Player.
However, I recently had to install some extraction and compression software for someone who was determined not to have a Plextor CD or DVD drive. In fact, they had decided to use a drive that had just about the most crippled ASPI support I've seen. The latest version of Nero was able to work with it, but almost everything else was unable to discover it, despite various ASPI shennanigans.
Media Player was able to operate the drive, and has the ability to retrieve CD artist/title information, so I suggested it as a CD ripper. Of course, MP3 compression was required, and it took me an age to track down information on how to install the ACM support for LAME - and eventually had to grub through my registry to find it. The data is out there on the net, and even saved on my computer, but it's hard to find amongst all the google noise. To make it a little easier I'm putting that info up here: it's one more chance for people to find a link that's not junk.
It's just a registry hack
First you need to install LAME and the LAME ACM codec. I compile my own, but there's no need, you can download it precompiled from the free-codecs site. This site used to have a bit of a reputation for distributing spyware and trojans, but from my experience it seems ok now. Look at the left side-bar under Audio Codecs. You want the LAME MP3 Encoder. This package includes everything you need, including the ACM codec interface. Let me know if you try to use this link and it turns out to be stale.
Once you've downloaded the package, you need to unzip and install it. The latest version have a .inf file as part of the package, which you can double click to install the codec. There is also installation advice on the free-codecs site.
Now all you have to do is add a few entries to the registry. The easiest way to do this is to cut and paste the following text into your favourite text editor, save it as a .reg file and then double click the file to install the changes. Alternatively, you can type the entries direct into regedit. It's up to you.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Settings\MP3Encoding]
"LowRate"=dword:0001f400
"MediumRate"=dword:0002ee00
"MediumHighRate"=dword:0003e800
"HighRate"=dword:0004e200
"PreferredCodecName"="LAME MP3"
"PreferredCodecPath"="C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\l3codecp.acm"
"HighRateSample"=dword:0000a028
"LowRateSample"=dword:0000a028
"MediumRateSample"=dword:0000a028
"MediumHighRateSample"=dword:0000a028
You will need to edit the value for PreferredCodecPath after you've cut and paste the text into your .reg file. This needs to refer to wherever you have installed your LAMP MP3 ACM file (the .acm file). This is usually system32 within your WINDOWS or WINNT directory, but this might vary depending on your install. I believe the latest version is called LameACM.acm rather than l3codecp.acm, so for most people the path is going to be "C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\LameACM.acm"
You can tweak the available data rates which match to the four qualities available in Media Player. Make sure you edit them in decimal and not hex if you are using regedit directly.
Some people have suggested that you should use the Fraunhoffer codec and a playback rate of 48KHz. This is pointless as the CD source material is only 41KHz to begin with, and LAME supports 41KHz playback just fine. Also, LAME is freeware and Fraunhoffer is not. Why run some dodgy warez'd compressor when you don't need to?
If it's all working properly, then when you go into Media Player's Options, select the Rip Music tab. There's a pull down to choose the format of the compressed data. You should now be able to select LAME MP3 instead of some variety of WMA.
Personally, I prefer VBR compression for my MP3s, as it works fine with all my hardware based players, and with WinAmp etc. It's better quality in the same space, but Media Player's interface doesn't support it directly. As Media Player gets involved with writing out the MP3 header, it probably wouldn't help if you hacked the ACM to make the compressor output VBR data. This isn't a problem with Plextools, which supports LAME specifically and is VBR aware. You can also compress OggVorbis with Plextools, but it's still hard to find hardware players that support it - which is a great pity.
For the same reasons that you are unlikely to be able to write a VBR MP3 from Media Player, you can't use a trick to make it compress OggVorbis or Monkey's either. It's a pity that Microsoft didn't provide a more general interface within Media Player so that we could compress in the formats we want to use and not just the ones they want us to use. Again, this problem is solved by Plextools, and no doubt many other ripping packages too.
Experiences with the Smoothwall Installation: How to Implement a Linux Firewall (part 1)
Some people are still on dialup, or have been sold a cheap broadband modem by their ISP. In either case they may find themselves without a firewall. This is a very bad position to be in, sooner or later a worm will infect a Windows PC connected to the internet like this, even with XP SP2 (with its updated s/w firewall) and all the auto updates turned on. Of course there are other risks, and if you use your machine for filesharing (legitimate or otherwise) you expose yourself to considerably greater risk.
Software firewalls running on your main machine are inherently vulnerable to trojans and things that slip in via email. You should try and run your firewall on a device that is not used for anything else. A dedicated device, be it custom hardware or a PC dedicated to firewalling is always going to be a more secure.
One solution is to purchase a hardware firewall/router, or perhaps a modem/firewall/router that the ISP should probably have recommended in the first place. Pure firewall/router devices are hard to find in the main consumer outlets, but can certainly be obtained by mail order. Around A$70 is the bottom of the price range for firewall/router devices. A complete all-in-one solution such as a ADSL modem with firewall, router, four port switch and wireless access is far from cheap (at around A$150), but probably the best way to go if you don't have any existing kit. However, if you have old PC hardware lying around that you want to make useful again, or just want configurability and choice, an old machine running Linux could be the answer.
Linux has been a viable option for a firewall solution for several years. The creators of distributions have recognised this and make efforts to make setting up a Linux firewall a fairly painless procedure. Red Hat offers a firewall install option that I've used in the past, and there are several Linux distributions that are intended for nothing else. Some install from a single floppy, and others from a CD.
You could try to run Windows on an old PC and run something like ZoneAlarm, but old versions of Windows are vulnerable to attack, and new ones require expensive hardware to run well. On top of that Windows licenses and good firewall applications are far from free. When you throw in the fact that Windows PCs are the main target of attack you have to conclude that Windows is not a good tool for this job and that Linux is by far the better choice for a dedicated firewall.
One popular firewall solution is the smoothwall Linux distribution. This falls into the category of 'security focused' distributions and by default comes with secure default settings and is generall 'hardened' against attack. By reducing the number of components in the distribution, the number of possible vulnerabilities is reduced and the specification of hardware required made as low as possible. Add to which, hardly anyone attacks Linux vulnerabilities right now anyway.
Another possible alternative, which was originally a smoothwall derivative, is IP Cop, but I will write about that at a later date. It is in the process of losing its last vestiges of smoothwall code, and seems headed off in a different direction. I chose not to use it for my first foray into the area of specialised distributions because smoothwall seemed to have a better community forum.
Smoothwall's community seems one of its best strengths. Almost every question you could think of is already answered on the forums, and the greatest problem is the vast body of material already there. There are many 'mods' for smoothwall, and most of the features you could wish added have already been considered.
The distribution can be downloaded with or without the documentation, but I can see no real reason not to download the documented version, as it's not that much larger.
Choosing and Configuring Hardware
Smoothwall seems to run on some pretty low end machines. I'm running it on a 500MHz Pentium II with 1Gb of RAM and 8Gb of drive space, but it will run happily on much less. With the configuration above I see CPU utilisation of below two percent, even with large numbers of active connections and my cable modem running flat out.
After installing and allocating a large buffer area for the web proxy, I had over 6Gb free of the 8Gb drive (which didn't provide a full 8Gb anyway). If you have an old 2Gb SCSI drive (or IDE for that matter) hanging around, it should provide plenty of space.
Clearly, 500MHz is overkill, and if memory is sufficient I believe even a P60 or 486 DX66 would suffice for most tasks. A friend of mine has reported issues with a 166 being slightly strained by heavy loads with large numbers of connections, but I suspect it's more likely due to limited memory than CPU given the usage figures I've been seeing.
I have observed that left to its devices, smoothwall makes use of my entire 1Gb of RAM, so it's a good bet that the more RAM you have the better. You can adequately run with 128Mb. I suspect more RAM aids performance significantly when you have large numbers of connections to your machine, but makes little difference if you don't.
Ethernet Cards
You will usually need at least two ethernet sockets free on your firewall machine: one for the broadband modem and one for the rest of the network. A switch or hub doesn't help you with the basic requirement for at least two ports because you need to pass everything through the firewall. If you do have a switch or hub, it should go on the protected side of the firewall so that your other network machines pass their traffic through the switch, then through the firewall machine, and then, if necessary, through the wall itself to the modem. If that sounds confusing, as long as you plug the modem directly into the firewall machine, all should be well. Put another way, do not plug your modem straight into your switch or hub :)
If you want to use the DMZ facility of smoothwall, you will need a third available ethernet socket on your firewall PC, which might be a bit of a stretch for some people. The DMZ facility is a (stupid slang) 'de-militarized zone', which is to say it has thin firewall protection. The DMZ is for running applications that have problems running through a firewall. Most hardware firewalls offer a DMZ, but not like the smoothwall one. Keep reading and you'll see the difference.
Unfortunately, one thing that ancient PCs rarely seem to have in them is a sufficient number of network interfaces. I was lucky in that I had three spare Intel chipset, PCI ethernet cards lying around. Most people probably don't, and most old PCs had zero ethernet sockets, which is two short of what you need.
Cheap 10/100 Network Interface Cards (NICs) as the jargon aware like to call their ethernet cards, retail for around A$10, but that's a mail order or computer market price. Expect to pay a lot more at popular retail outlets - if you can find anything that isn't an overpriced gigabit card. In any event, $30 isn't too much to spend, but it's a long way from the 'totally free' setup that most people are probably hoping for. The upside to using a modern PC is that it is more likely to have two or more NICs installed as standard, though this is still hardly a given.
Perhaps the best source of cheap NICs, apart the second hand bin at computer markets, is the junk heap of workplace IT departments. In many cases businesses are paying people money to take away old 'useless' PCs, usually 486 or early Pentium machines that have tiny amounts of memory and equally tiny monitors like little goldfish bowls. These machines often contain old 10/100 PCI NICs because they were networked. Often they contain Intel cards, which used to be by far the best. The IT staff may let you take away as many of these machines as you like (use one as the basis for your firewall), or may take the NICs out for you. Whether it's your workplace or a friend's, you can often get this 'scrap' for free. If you aren't so lucky to get something for nothing, the computer markets often have people who deal in this old hardware selling parts and entire machines for very low prices. There will always be junk from corporate upgrade programs.
However, there are some other hardware issues you need to think about before you proceed. If you only have a USB modem, you will need a machine with USB sockets. While many old machines have these, they are typically USB1, which is pretty slow. It's OK if you are on dialup, but chances are you aren't. USB broadband modems are generally a bad thing all around, so if you have one, think about getting something better when an opportunity to upgrade appears. For dialup, USB1 should be quite sufficient. On the up side, if you have a USB modem you will need one less ethernet device.
Once you have sufficient NICs, USB sockets, COM ports or whatever you need installed in your machine to support the setup that you want to use, you are ready to address the software installation.
Installing the Smoothwall
Installation is straightforward. Most of the install documentation is devoted to 'tricky' installs, such as when you don't have a bootable CD drive. It's possible to boot from a floppy and install from CD or from a network device. All the tools to create a boot floppy are included as part of the distribution.
Assuming you have a bootable CD, you simply write the downloaded .iso file to a CD, put it in your target firewall, and boot. You are faced with a set of menus that ask simple questions and in most cases the options are explained to you.
I would suggest that for a home network you use addresses 192.168.1.X and a mask of 255.255.255.0, as so many devices default to values like this. Also, you can add another network on 192.168.2.X if you need to for some reason (something I'll talk about in a later part in this series).
Things can seem a little complicated when you are asked to choose the base configuration, simply because of the jargon used. Smoothwall has a concept of interface 'colours' which are used to refer to interfaces connected to the LAN (GREEN interface), the outside world or WAN (RED interface), and to a DMZ machine or network (orange interface). Unlike IP Cop there is no BLUE interface as yet (which is used specifically for isolating wireless), though there is a mod for it.
You can configure with just a GREEN interface if your internet connection is on a USB port and doesn't come through an ethernet NIC. If you have an ADSL modem or cable modem with an ethernet connection, you need to configure at least GREEN + RED. You can switch ORANGE in and out depending on whether you want a DMZ machine or network. Most people probably don't.
A DMZ machine is a machine that isn't fully firewalled and is used to run services accessible to the outside world. On most hardware firewalls the DMZ machine is left wide open and unprotected. On a few (Billion for example) the DMZ machine is still potentially firewalled and you can control how its accessed.
The smoothwall approach is more like the Billion approach, where the DMZ is still partially firewalled. However, smoothwall firewalls both sidesw of the ORANGE interface, so its communications with GREEN are filtered. The smoothwall ethos favours using a DMZ for anything that communicates with the outside world. Your ORANGE network is considerably isolated from both RED and GREEN interfaces and so even whem compromised attackers can be contained there.
To reiterate: the smoothwall authors suggest you never let outsiders connect to any service on your GREEN network because if that server is compromised, attacks can access your entire GREEN network with no additional effort. This is why the ORANGE net exists: machines in ORANGE are isolated from the GREEN network, so if they are compromised by a worm or other exploit, your entire GREEN network remains safe.
For many home users, the idea of a server machine in a DMZ is a step too far: they don't want their machine to offer any services at all anyway. Such considerations are particularly moot for people who only have one decent computer and just want to firewall it - but for people with a genuine home network it's worth thinking about.
For example, you could have a home network with three or four computers, plus a firewall machine and a DMZ 'server'. The main network is on the GREEN interface, the outside world (via your ADSL modem) on the RED interface and your DMZ server on the ORANGE. You can then explicitly open pinholes in the firewall so that people can connect from GREEN to ORANGE in a controlled way. People on GREEN can still use web browsers and such directly through the firewall, as it allows most outgoing connections.
Some of the options you deal with at installation can easily be changed later through the web interface, while others can not. Overall, the base configuration (GREEN, RED+GREEN or RED+GREEN+ORANGE) is the only thing you need to think about before installing. Even then, if you get it wrong you can change it by logging into the firewall machine as 'setup', which automatically runs the config program.
Most ISPs assign a dynamic IP to the connecting machine. Telstra and Netspace do, while Demon in the UK provide fixed IP addresses. If your ISP didn't give you a fixed IP (and they will most certainly have notified you if they have given you one) then you should configure smoothwall to obtain your IP address via DHCP, and possibly your DNS addresses as well. Smoothwall asks about this pretty clearly and tries to explain it, so you shouldn't have too much trouble.
If you know the addresses of your ISP's DNS (Domain Name Server) you should enter them during the install. Some ISPs recommend that you use DNS IPs returned by DHCP, in which case you should probably try configuring smoothwall to do so. It might not work, in which case you will have to find out the addresses and enter them into the smoothwall setup manually. I've noticed that some ISPs do not handle DHCP DNS assignment as reliably as they should, though Telstra seem fine in that regard.
For ease of use you should probably set your GREEN interface to provide DHCP to your LAN. You will be asked about this, and there are sensible defaults. Just make sure it's turned on. This saves a lot of bother when configuring machines on your network to connect to the smoothwall.
You will be asked about how you connect to the internet, and possibly offered a way to configure your modem. If it's an ordinary dialup modem, or an ISDN modem, then this might be useful. If it's an ADSL modem it may not be, as these are sometimes either pre-configured by the ISP, or through their own web interface. If you have a Telstra cable modem you can ignore it as you have to connect to Telstra in a special way: don't tell me you are surprised?
Install Complete: How to use the Smoothwall
Once you've completed the main install on your smoothwall machine you can probably remove the keyboard and monitor. Everything you need for day-to-day admin of the firewall is accessible via remote web interface, just like most hardware products.
Connect your main machine to the smoothwall's GREEN interface, either directly via a cross-over cable, or via a hub or switch. It may not be obvious which of your NICs ended up configured as GREEN. Just configure your main PC's TCP/IP for the NIC it's using, plug into one of the ports on the firewall, try and connect to the web interface. If you fail, move to the next port and so on until you can connect, it won't do any harm. You can't accidentally connect through RED or ORANGE :)
If you set your GREEN interface on 192.168.1.1, then that's what you need to connect to from your web browser. However, it won't work unless your machine has its TCP/IP network settings set up to match. If you enabled DHCP, then all you need to do is open the connection for the correct NIC on your main machine and bring up the properties. Once there you should see a list of networking components, most likely including Client for Microsoft Networks, File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks, QoS Packet Scheduler, and Internet Protocop (TCP/IP). The last one is the important one: select it and then its properties. If you configured DHCP on the smoothwall all you need to do is set Obtain an IP address automatically and Obtain DNS server address automatically. These are the defaults, so you may not have to do much.
Unlike most hardware products, you can connect to the web interface via a secure connections (using HTTPS and SSL certificates). Type https://192.168.1.1:441 into the address bar of your browser. I think the smoothwall docs suggest you use the name of the smoothwall machine, but that is somewhat fallible, if you use the numeric address there's no chance of a DNS problem.
When you connect, the smoothwall provides an SSL certificate. Your main machine won't recognise this certificate because no authority has signed it, so you will probably want to tell the browser to add the certificate to those your computer recognises for future convenience. Even then, the browser will probably grumble about mismatches in the certificate name. No need to worry about that yet, just click ok and move on.
Once you are connected to the web interface you will see the welcome screen. The menu along the top allows you to access the smoothwall configuration facilities. When you click on one you will see a login popup. Enter a user name of 'admin' and the password you set during installation for smoothwall administration (not the password for your root or setup users).
You should be now properly logged in to the smoothwall web interface and can manage your firewall. In the second part of this series I'll talk a bit more about getting your smoothwall to actually connect to the internet through your modem or other device. (And will probably come back and update this article after I realise all the stuff I missed out).
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Movie Review
I'll be brief because it's likely that nothing I say is actually going to stop you seeing this movie. It starts off magnificently, and at first I was really hooked in. The intial scenes and then the Quidditch Tournament really sweeps you away (as I'm sure is intended).
This is a very long film, and about half way through the story starts to loose its pace. Boredom set in for me somewhere during the lead up to the ball. Things pick up a bit later, but it never really gets back on track properly. At the end which really ought to have been gripping and emotionally moving it fails to maintain interest, and the pacing is awkward. I recall that the book recovered well at the end after a flabby middle third, but the film doesn't manage so well.
Nevertheless, Goblet of Fire is loaded with eye-candy and at times is both impressive and exciting. If you haven't read the books it serves to keeps you up with the story. It's a rather long experience, so be prepared and don't drink a dozen cups of coffee right before going in; it's hard enough to concentrate at the end as it is.
If you've already read the book you will spend a lot of time spotting what's missing from this film. The book was fairly long for a Harry Potter story, and had far too much going on to make a prefect movie, so it doesn't surprise me that there were problems deciding what to keep and what to dump. The problem is that some of what they decided they had to keep does not play so well in the film as it did in the book. I think perhaps they needed to take a bit more license with the material and change the details of things a little more here and there to better preserve the spirit of the book. There were also times when the whole tournament theme started to become overdone.
By sticking to the simplistic sequencing of the book the movie runs into pace problems that prevent it from being the triumph it might have been. It's a pity because it starts so well. Some have said that they might have chosen other scenes from the book, but to my mind the problems are not so much with the scenes chosen as how they are presented.
The ball, in particular, does not seem of interest to the key characters, and little of great importance appears to takes place. There were no problems with the ball in the book, and so we have to wonder whether it was properly handled. In the end they couldn't seem to decide whether to play it straight or for laughs. If they had mixed some of the other missing material from the book into the ball it might have been made more interesting. In the end the ball relies on too many characters that simply aren't developed enough to work in the movie.
I really can't imagine how they are going to get through Order of the Phoenix without problems the same or worse than this movie, as Goblet of Fire is a long book, but short in comparison to its successor. Order of the Phoenix has far too much in it to make just one film and it seems like they will really have a real struggle on their hands with that one. I can imagine that almost the entirety of the character development will be cut as a result.
Xbox 360 Underwhelms
What more need be said? It shouldn't come as a surprise that the early life-cycle software products are nothing more than slightly prettier versions of games that could just as well have been released on the original xbox.
It's fairly likely that most of these products were originally developed on xbox or PS2 and then development switched over to the Xbox 360 once they were able to obtain development kit. The designs of these games remain firmly rooted in the xbox era.
The HD aspect does nothing more than put PC quality graphics on your TV screen. If you have a decent modern graphics card you can almost certainly do this already. nVidia and ATI are quite capable of putting a PC display on a television, but really you're better off on a PC monitor anyway.
The greatest step for 360 so far is the controller. The only problem is that this does not work well for shops, where the wireless controller needs to be chained down and can easily end up with flat batteries. I believe a wired solution may be used in some cases, but this means the consumer can't try out the real wireless controller.
It also seems unlikely that Xbox 360 will have Final Fantasy or GT, which will probably remain Sony only (though this isn't assured). These are key products that will leave many gamers waiting for a PS3. Right now Xbox exclusives we can rely on are Halo and DOA. The former has always been loved in the US, but I'm not sure it will win many sales in Japan. It's going to be a tough battle between the new consoles and very likely that both of them will take several months to get genuine 'next gen' titles onto shelves.
We can bet that rising development costs and the fact that publishers don't really know what makes a good game will result in even more play-it-safe licenses, sequels and suppressed innovation in games, leaving customers ever more jaded.
I for one won't be rushing out to buy a 360 whenever they finally ship in Australia. In fact, I may not buy one at all unless some software I really have to have appears on it. I've seen no sign of this yet.
Myth busters: Australian Broadband
It begins: Telstra can't quite manage to turn on a phone line
Back on the 8th of November, we finally got the keys to our new residence. We have a small Telstra box (for phone) and a big Telstra box (for cable) attached to our house, and obvious cables run from these, underneath the house, to various rooms where phone and cable points are visible - helpfully labelled 'Telstra'. What's more, the previous residents seemed to have had a Telstra phone.
We had already contacted Telstra to arrange a phone line. (See Telstra's Level Playing Field). Telstra informed us that the line would be working the very next day. However, there was a minor quirk: our phone number would not have the usual code for the area because the local exchange was full and we would be on a new exchange. Seeing as it was to be a new exchange, I did wonder if it would have DSL2 provision: after all, why build new exchanges that are already out of date? Telstra also offered us BigPond internet via ADSL repeatedly, some might say almost determinedly. We kept refusing as we intended to tranfer our Netspace account.
The next day the phone wasn't working. We contacted Telstra again to ask what was going on. At first they claimed that the problem was with our phone. We informed them that we had tried three different phones, one brand new. Given this information, they offered to investigate the problem, ominously assuring us that we would have to pay a large callout bill if the fault was found to be with 'your equipment'. An engineer would be sent out the 'next day' and we were assured that he would fix the problem immediately. Naturally, I laughed. They offered us BigPond again. Refusing this was becoming a reflex action.
Of course, on that 'next day' the phone still wasn't working. If Telstra send someone out we never saw him, but we weren't required to as apparently he didn't need access to the premises.
Again we phoned Telstra, and again they promised to resolve the problem 'the next day'. By this point the same old excuses were getting really comical. Suffice to say that by the 13th (remember we called them on the 8th) we finally got a working phone line - or so we thought...
Transferring Netspace Broadband
I checked broadband availability on the Netspace and Telstra sites, and they both declared our number was good for A/DSL service.
Our DSL provider was Netspace. We phoned them up to ask how long it would take for them to change our DSL service from the old address to the new one. They said it would take five to ten days, but then mumbled that it might be as few as three. Yes, I really mean DSL, not ADSL, we had a 512/512 symmetric service from Netspace, which is rather useful. I would take it over 1500/256 every time. We also asked about availability on our number, as they had previously been told by Telstra that our number wasn't a Telstra number at all. This time everything seemed to be ok.
We couldn't contact Netspace at first as their phone line would ring through to empty hissing silence. Eventually my wife found a number which wasn't one of their main contact numbers, but did work. They were able to put us through to the right people from there, though we never found why the main lines were dead. Crazy people would say it was Telstra killing the phone service of their competitors. This is obviously mad as it implies a level of 'togetherness' and 'joined up thinking' that simply doesn't seem to be present in Telstra.
We asked Netspace if it was possible for them to not stop the old service until the new service was ready to start. They said this was not possible - though I can see no obvious reason why not other than poor organisation and communication processes. We were informed that our broadband service would terminate immediately that we signed off on the transfer through their web page.
We phoned again, and got a different customer services representative. Netspace customer services appear to be in India of course: quite friendly, but often hard to understand, and the phone connection is frequently poor with severe distortion, which makes things worse. (Netspace tech support are clearly in Australia, for the time being at least). The new representative again quoted the five to ten days, with the could be as few as three 'off the record' proviso. However, they informed us that the existing service would not cease for several hours or possibly a day or two.
On the 14th of November, I went to the Netspace website and attempted to transfer my service to the new address. It failed, informing me that DSL service was not available on that number. I again checked their main availability page, and that still said ok. I changed over to IE instead of using Firefox, and was able to complete the transfer: now the applet seemed to think my number was ok for DSL after all. It cost me $140 to move my service, a rather nice little pickup for them doing about ten minutes work on an existing account.
In short: the Netspace website produces wrong results with Firefox, giving no indication that there is a problem with the browser. This is worse than the page not working at all: quite dreadful design and testing.
Telstra's Revenge
A few days later we phoned Netspace to ask what was going on with our broadband transfer. We were informed that this was blocked by Telstra because they had PSTS 'products' on the line already. This was disturbing, as this was a new connection to a new exchange and we most definitely did not have BigPond. What were these mysterious products? Apparently, Netspace could do nothing about this, and we would have to contact Telstra ourselves.
We immediately contacted Telstra. They attempted to sell us BigPond again. Then they told us that they couldn't do anything about PSTS products if we weren't a BigPond customer. Then they decided that it was a BigPond problem anyway and put us through to BigPond customer support.
BigPond customer support attempted to sell us BigPond and then denied any ability to deal with the problem and passed us back to the phone system customer support. After attempting to sell us BigPond again we were able to get them to admit there was something they could do. We were promised that the problem would be resolved in 20 minutes or so, and they would remove the bogus 'services' that had somehow become attached to our line right away: apparently they had given us BigPond DSL even though we weren't BigPond customers. They hadn't given us a login, or billed us for it, they'd just connected it up anyway ... for fun perhaps?
We immediately rang Netspace and informed them of Telstra's '20 minute' resolution. They asked us to call them back in an hour to check if everything was ok.
An hour later we called Netspace who found that the 'products' were still on the line. They said it might be an update issue and they might be gone by tomorrow. We decided to wait.
The next day we called Netspace to ask about our installation. It was still blocked by the Telstra products. Again, we called Telstra. They assured us the products were gone and tried to sell us BigPond (which they had just removed).
We contacted Netspace and informed them that Telstra denied the existence of any products. After much pleading and explaining we were put in contact with a 'tech person' at Netspace who broke the rules by contacting Telstra directly. He was able to discover that the products were still present but that they had just removed them at his request (again against the rules) but the Netspace db probably wouldn't acknowledge this for another day now. He asked us to check back later...
Somewhere during this process I observed an interview with the current CEO of Telstra. At one point he talked about how the employees of Telstra loved it there so much, and how they really wanted the best for the company. He actually claimed that some employees were leaving the company to go elsewhere out of sheer love of the best interests of Telstra. Amazing eh?
The next day we were able to get assurance from Netspace that there was no longer a problem with Telstra blocking the install.
A few days after that, we contacted Netspace again to get an update. Good thing that we did. We were informed that we were stuck because there were no free ports on our exchange (remember that new exchange Telstra put us on) and they expected an install in three days time... This was sweet, as apparently we'd had a port back when we had those bogus 'products' on our line - but now we couldn't have one.
Three days later... We called Netspace. Still no free ports. They advised us to phone Telstra to find out when ports might be available. We did this, now claiming to be interested in BigPond and curious if we could get a port. Telstra said that they had no plans to add extra ports to our exchange until March and that the exchange was currently full: e.g. if we got BigPond ADSL we would be waiting until March for it to activate.
We waited a while and then called back as Netspace customers. The March date rolled out again, but then they mumbled that it might happen earlier, they didn't really know. They had another look and suggested that they might add some ports for Netspace at the end of December or start of January, but didn't know if there would be enough to fulfill everyone's requests.
We had pretty much established that we had no real hope of a DSL or ADSL based broadband service until March, even though we had paid for one, and even though we apparently had a port on the exchange at the point we asked for the service. How 'unfortunate' that port couldn't just be transferred to Netspace. That said, if Netspace are unbundled maybe that would have been impossible anyway.
Return of the BigPond
We couldn't get Optus cable (and believe me I tried) so it looked like Telstra cable based broadband was the only solution available apart from dialup (or ISDN, but the pricing on that is beyond a joke). Telstra's biggest package is a 20Gb cap with a charge of 15 cents a Mb over the cap. This costs about $100 a month and has an install charge of around $250. Go to their site and see the exact prices and options for yourself. You can't 'self install' unless you already own a cable modem, which we didn't. Telsta also have an unlimited cable plan, which is actually a 10Gb cap. After you hit the cap you are shaped to 64Kb. In short this is so far from unlimited that it's ludicrous.
Compare the price of cable on Telstra to DSL on Netspace: we were getting 60Gb for $80 with 64Kb shaped after we hit the cap. So Telstra is $20 more for one third the cap. Nice. For this you get a customer service line that ends up in India and promises you 'tomorrow' the doesn't deliver. This is similar to the Netspace customer service line, which also ends up in India and promises you 'five to ten days' and then doesn't deliver. The difference with Telstra is that they are brave enough to lie big. (I didn't actually ask the operatives if they were in India, but the line quality seemed to indicate that they were).
I phoned up Telstra and signed up for their cable plan. They offered installation two days later and gave me a number to call in event of a problem.
Two days later the sub-contracted installation engineer turned up on time. He was clearly no Telstra employee. He didn't show me any id and had an unmarked van. He also had a bluetooth headset with which he maintained contact with the Borg Collective or something. I never heard him speak to the headset though he wore it constantly. My Borg theories are confirmed.
The engineer fitted an additional cable point where we wanted it and installed a modem. He then installed some very dodgy looking Telstra software for login authentication without really explaining what it was. He then warned us of various 'bugs' with the cable system and under what circumstances to 'contact Telstra immediately'.
The engineer then checked the telephone pit and tidied up a problem with a corroded cable, which wasn't effecting service, but might of. Apart from his connection to the Borg and the wood shavings on the carpet he didn't vacuum up, he was quick and effective. He did a decent job despite (I suspect) being paid on a per install basis. Of course, he wasn't a Telstra employee.
With cable up and running I had only one problem, or so it seemed: the modem had no router, no firewall and connected directly to my wife's computer. Hardly the ideal product to install on naive end users systems. Do Telstra really have the best interests of their clients at heart? Are they serious about network security? It doesn't really seem as if they are.
I noticed that Telstra push a windows based personal firewall product you can license through them. As this runs on your main Windows box it is rather vulnerable. Once a worm or trojan owns your box it owns your entire network because that firewall will quickly be holed. I prefer a hardware firewall solution, as they are a lot harder to hack (though not impossible). I have two DSL modems with routers, firewall and wireless, but the cable makes them useless. Another solution is required.
I'll be talking about my experiences setting up a Linux box as a firewall in the near future.
