March 29, 2006 total eclipse - IT admin's WORST NIGHTMARE

And you get these past the security guards at our building entrances exactly how?

The abbreviation of 'decibels' is 'dB' - the unit of ratio is the 'Bel'. By the way - do pay attention to what they are comparing the antenna to. Or don't you know the difference between an isotropic (dBi) and a half wave dipole (dBd) reference antenna?

FCC regulation 47 CFR 15.247(b)

or would you prefer to believe some rumor that you heard in the same place you get your expert advice on computers? None the less, you would likely violate the Type Certificate that allows the card to be installed. You really should read part 15 - there are some gotchas in it. Have you read the documentation that came with the card - or do you feel that is not relevant. (If you are getting your technical advise from the sales monkeys at CompUSA or equal - that explains why most of it is so totally false.)

Then again, maybe that's not the issue.

Old guy

Seeing as how he's posting from Canada - I suspect not.

Maybe you ought to read Part 15 before you make an even bigger fool of yourself. That defines what you can and can not do, not some idiot at CompUSA who is only interested in selling crap to you whether you need it or not.

Why not?

Cite the specific law that makes it illegal to sell that. California or federal - and show the reference.

Old guy

:Well, there are a number of homemande antenna designs, for both :cell phones and WiFi that might boost the signal enough to work. :Some antenna designs can give as much as a 12db increase in :signal, and you can buy one as Compusa. Of course, I had to :turn on X-No-Archive for this post, or one guy will find me :and tell me it is illegal to use such an antenna, when it is not. One :salesman as Compusa said the the Super Cantenna is perfectly :legal to use on any WiFi card or AP.

And you trust a salesdroid to know the details of the law??

Compusa tends to imply USA which in turn implies FCC regulations.

Within the frequency bands that WiFi is authorized on in the USA, the FCC prohibits the use of any spread spectrum transmitter and antenna combination which has not been certified by the FCC as a specific combination. The FCC has specific regulations requiring that manufacturers use connectors which are not widely available, so as to make it difficult for people to just go ahead and put together combinations anyhow.

For WiFi use, there are also strict regulations that put an upper bound on the transmitting power for unlicensed stations, and put an upper bound on the antenna gain in normal circumstances. The EIRP regulations happen to be written in such a way that you can increase your EIRP indefinitely if you are willing to drop your transmitting power... but there are real practical difficulties in focusing a half-millimetre wide beam being transmitted over hundreds of miles at -50 dB!

In article OOGdnWVngO2KOtPeRVn-gQ, someone who didn't want their name to be permanently associated with this topic wrote:

:X-No-Archive: Yes

:"Walter Roberson" wrote in message

:> Within the frequency bands that WiFi is authorized on in the USA, :> the FCC prohibits the use of any spread spectrum transmitter and :> antenna combination which has not been certified by the FCC as :> a specific combination. The FCC has specific regulations requiring :> that manufacturers use connectors which are not widely available, so :> as to make it difficult for people to just go ahead and put together :> combinations anyhow.

:You must be listening to the idiots on ba.mountain-folk. A Super Cantenna :is legal to use. The Compusa sales person said that if I ever put up a :WiFi network, and used one of these, that is is fully legal in the USA. :They would not seel it if it were not legal. It if were illegal to use, it :would be illegal for them to sell it.

47CFR15.203 Sec. 15.203 Antenna requirement.

An intentional radiator shall be designed to ensure that no antenna other than that furnished by the responsible party shall be used with the device. The use of a permanently attached antenna or of an antenna that uses a unique coupling to the intentional radiator shall be considered sufficient to comply with the provisions of this section. The manufacturer may design the unit so that a broken antenna can be replaced by the user, but the use of a standard antenna jack or electrical connector is prohibited. [...]

47CFR15.204 [Effective Oct 7, 2004]

(c) An intentional radiator may be operated only with the antenna with which it is authorized. If an antenna is marketed with the intentional radiator, it shall be of a type which is authorized with the intentional radiator. An intentional radiator may be authorized with multiple antenna types. (1) The antenna type, as used in this paragraph, refers to antennas that have similar in-band and out-of-band radiation patterns. (2) Compliance testing shall be performed using the highest gain antenna for each type of antenna to be certified with the intentional radiator. During this testing, the intentional radiator shall be operated at its maximum available output power level. (3) Manufacturers shall supply a list of acceptable antenna types with the application for equipment authorization of the intentional radiator. (4) Any antenna that is of the same type and of equal or less directional gain as an antenna that is authorized with the intentional radiator may be marketed with, and used with, that intentional radiator. No retesting of this system configuration is required. The marketing or use of a system configuration that employs an antenna of a different type, or that operates at a higher gain, than the antenna authorized with the intentional radiator is not permitted unless the procedures specified in Sec. 2.1043 of this chapter are followed.

In short, unless the manufacturer tested their equipment with a cantenna with the same radiation pattern [and different cantennas differ noticably in the side emissions!!] then you can't use that cantenna with your device, and you can't use it to exceed the section 247 EIRP limitations.

As for the figure skating coverage they are doing, I think he is doing a test run at a compeittion in Vienna, because on Fs discussion board posts a direct link to live video. If this is eventually to be their video feed, Tiny Personal Firewall, placed on the network server, can stop it. I have outgoing traffic restricted to pots 80 and 443, on the proxy, and that is enough to stop it. Tiny, when put on a network server, has this flexibility that your hardware firewalls do not, so if you want to stop this guy's video streaming, you will need to have Tiny, to effectively block it. If this is this guy's company doing a test run, the stream runs at 339K bandwidth, that would eat up your company bandwidth in a hurry. You better put a Windows box with Tiny on it, on your network, to stop this on the network level.

It appears, as well, that HTTP-only is disallowed, and they will only allow RTSP/MMS, on ports 554 and 1755, so using Tiny and telling it to restrict your HTTP proxy to ports 80 and 443 should do the trick. This guy obviously never thought of what Tiny, and other software based firewall programs can do. Call it s "toy firewall", if you like, but it is the only foolproof way you will be able to shut this guy's stuff down. Windows Media player 10 tunnels through whatever HTTP proxy that IE, or whatever the default broswer, is set to use. So using Tiny, and restricting your HTTP proxy to ports 80 and

443 should do the trick.

This guy has somehow manged to figure out how to keep it from showing up in the firewall. When I turn off the rule blocking ports 1000-5300 on the Socks and RTSP servers, and then connect, it does not show up either in the active processes, or in the logs. If this is the OP's company sending this, they have somehow come up with a way to keep it from showing up in the firewall. AllegroSurf runs both the Socks and RTSP proxies on mynetwork, yet the firewall does not show the connection that AllegroSurf is making to the video feed. If these guys really have found a way to do it without it showing up in the firewall, someone, at this very point in time, may be watching, and your firewall logs wont show anything. It looks as if he, and his engineers, are smarter than anyone gives them credit for.

Sorry, but if you don't do more than just limit outbound to 80/443, then you won't stop it.

Wrong, it's just that you don't have a firewall to show it. If you had even a partial clue about networking you would find it easily.

Well, when I turn the rule for blocking port 80, and ports 1000 to 5300 for the program running the Socks and RTSP proxies, it does stop it.

So, Charles - your toy firewall is as useless as everyone has been telling you? Actually, there is a very simple way around this, but you don't understand networking, so it's beyond you to set it up. Why am I not surprised.

If you are comparing his skills to yours, one would expect a disparity.

Old guy

But, if you had a real firewall, you could leave Port 80 open, port 443 open (outbound) and it could still be blocked - you just don't seem to get the idea that a quality firewall solution can easily block that crap.

Ha. Creative reasons for termination. I can't *wait* until the employee or employees bring a wrongful termination suit against your uninformed, "creative" ass. Expect to hear from either the DFEH and/or DLSE and expect your company to settle out of court, subsequently. Unless of course its in house legal dept wants to pay attys fees for a protracted civ lit suit.

So, you are saying that the instructor taught you to lie?

Hey! Wait a minute! Charles has just said that he took "a" class in business law (just like he took "a" class in microsoft network stuff). He's an _expert_ in this stuff... sorta

Old guy

Been reading this group only a few weeks, but I have an observation:

Old guy: you're fun to have around.

Cheers.

-Russ.

Owl Jolsen wrote: < Snip clueless networking drivel >

One question. If this broadcast system is supposed to bring the networks to a grinding halt, how is anyone supposed to watch the event your broadcasting? Seems to defeat the object of the exercise to me.

And of course the average office clerk has enough computing expertise to install all this 'hacking' software and cover their tracks so they can ....... watch an eclipse.

You really don't expect a troll to notice all the little details, do you?

Old guy

There might be more tests going on. I caught a video feed of Skate America that was pure genius. It kept changing port numbers and addresses like crazy. Based on what this guy kept talking about in the past, it could be them. It if is, the only way to stop it is to block everything from ports 1000 through 9000.

Well, the constantly changing ports and addresses, port blocking is the only feasable way to stop it. With the real-time monitoring in Tiny Personal Fireall (sorry, but your hardware firewalls have not learned this yet), I watched as addresses and ports changed like crazy, that would make anything other than port blocking to be useless. These guys know what they are doing with computers, and port blocking is the only fesable way to stop them.

This is where Tiny has the advantage over a hardware appliance. Firewall rules can be given precedence. I can tell Tiny to block everything from port 1000 to

9000, but if there is something else I want to allow in that range, I can create rule with a higher precdence to allow that specific service, while blocking everything else in the port range. Hardware appliances dont have precedence for rules like Tiny Personal Firewall does. Score another one for software firewalls.