"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

Saturday 19 September 2009

Bridging between two wireless routers

I recently stepped into the wireless world. I changed Internet provider and I had to send back them the old modem they leased me and buy a new one. I so decided not only to buy a wireless router modem but also an extra wireless router. My idea was to make them connect together and get rid of the wire crawling under the carpet across all the living room (the phone socket and the computer room are quite in the opposite side of my house).

Sunday 13 September 2009

Parental control with Open DNS and Linux

My son is growing up very fast (he's 11) of course he is beginning using Internet. I think the better way for children to use the 'net is together with their parents anyway, better safe than sorry, I decided to activate a content filtering service.
Open DNS offers an excellent free content filtering service. Enabling it it's only matter of subscribing, enabling content filtering options and replacing in your network configuration Open DNS servers in place of those provided by your ISP.


Handling the dynamic IP

Open DNS works its content filtering on IP address basis. In most Internet connection IP addresses are dynamically assigned by ISP and may change every time you connect. This means that Open DNS must be kept updated on your current IP address in order to apply your content filtering preferences. This operation can be automatically executed by a small program installed in the client computer.