24/02/2010 21:02:32

Wireshark is an open source network protocol analyzer and quite probably the best
of its kind. If you are a developer working with a lot of networking code, it’s a must have!

It can recognize many standard protocols such as POP3, NTP, Jabber, etc…
Most of the development I do is related to communicating with hardware devices
using TCP/IP. These devices implement their own communication protocol unknown to
Wireshark. While I can still use Wireshark to monitor the raw data, I thought it would
be much better if I could actually tell it what my data is so it can be displayed properly.

24/12/2007 0:12:29

I just moved back to my hometown and it'll take a while before
they activate my ADSL subscription so I'm once again stuck with
mobile internet. The good news is that I get HSDPA this time.

Effective download speed: 230kbps, which isn't to bad all things considered.
Good enough to skim through Google Reader, surf the web and read my mail.

13/08/2007 0:17:07

A serial port... seems so obsolete doesn't it... until you actually need one.
I decided to rearrange and label all the network cables today.

Anyway, I'm here to talk about serial ports, so let's skip right to the part
where I finished labeling the cables and reconnected everything.
We have 3 servers, one which acts as a domain server, another for
telephony and VoIP and finally a server which is responsible for routing
between the various subnets and the internet.

I was able to connect to all of them again, but for some reason I couldn't
connect to our cisco router anymore.

I checked all the cables again until I realized I had to configure a second
IP address on one of the interfaces in the gateway machine (Don't ask me
to explain why, simply put it's the result of a migration).

Nothing big... one problem though... what was the IP of the cisco?
I just couldn't remember and my docs were outdated (Shame on me).

Getting the IP addresses of a cisco router is quite simple:
connect a computer to the serial console interface of the router and read
the running config... problem is... my laptop doesn't have a serial port.

I have a USB to serial converter so I connected it and launched putty.
I had to use putty as Microsoft, for some reason, removed hyperterminal
from Windows Vista. Of course I didn't have a driver for the converter
so I had to take the router and connect it to one of the PC's upstairs.

I booted putty and... omg... that version of putty didn't have serial support.
This is the first time I realized "putty has versions".
I've been using putty for ages now, but I never, ever bothered to check
the version. I simply assumed putty is putty. So for myself and everybody
else who needs to use putty with serial support, get version 0.60 of putty.

Oh and before you laugh at my ignorance...
they don't display the current version number on their download page.