Main / LogFriday10

Friday, February 10th

The weekend is close... We can almost see it! Some are making plans for Rome (not me, that will come next weekend), some for Slovenia, some for Trieste. After one week of lab work I'm jumping *any* wagon!

Talking about lab work, here's what we've been seeing today:

Topics Covered

Spectrum Regulation (Struzak)
Use of Channels on 802.11b/g (Flickenberg)
IP Networking: Routing, switching (Short film from Ericsson) and then an explanation by Rob/Thomas
Network Monitoring (Krag)
...more network setup!
and so on

...and some comments

The presentation on spectrum regulation was good to give everyone an idea of how the regulatory mechanisms arised and why, getting to know a bit about the institutions controlling the whole soup of acronyms, frequencies, etc.

Rob did a good, clear and succint presentation on the use of the 2.4-2.495MHz spectrum by 11b/g, and shared some of his knowledge about antennas right before the coffe break...

[C8 H10 N4 O2] reloaded, we saw a video that (yep, it's a small world) I've seen before when working (you guessed it) at Ericsson - great chance to put this update together.

Rob and Thomas gave a presentation on routing, using the network we built the day before as an example. Thomas brought some audience of his own to the class (his girlfriend) and we couldn't but wonder if she was concentrated on the topic out of genuine interest or pure love :)

After that Thomas moved into Kismet (finally, man!), talked about its configuration for Linux (9 devices on the same laptop? Can we see that Mr. Krag?). Ethereal and Airsnort also had their 15 minutes.

The last few hours we've been working (quite hard indeed) on enabling our networks to talk to each other and to the Internet; this involved configuring static routes all the way to the ICTP default gateway, sharing information amongst the groups and coordinating the tests. A good sample of what a challenge managing routing in a network can be!

Links

Spectrum Regulation:
http://www.itu.int/AFRICA2004/media/radio_frequency.html (Some basics)
Channels in 802.11a/b/g:
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/972261 (Basic)
IP Routing:
http://linux-ip.net/html/ (intermediate)
http://www.linuxguruz.com/iptables/howto/2.4routing.html (if you're hardcore enough for this then don't complain it's about 2.4, OK?)
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=169790 (Some troubleshooting info from MS, because you don't run Windows, right? ;)

Bonus Track

Why not sharing my research on the Slovenian nightlife with you? Here's what I've found in the capital that may be interesting:
Orto Bar (I'm going!)
Address: Graboliceva ulica 1
Directions: Just off Smartinska 5 mins walk out of town away from the train station.
Bacchus Centre
Nightclub
Directions: just off of main ljubljana square,also near global club
Metelkova Dance, food, hostel (not bad if you like to drink!)
Address: Metelkova street
Website: http://www.souhostel.com/
Other Contact: http://www.metelkova.org/