These are the following techniques that are typically used, from easiest to hardest.

• Web App Proxy
• Http Proxy
• SSH Tunneling
• VPN

Techniques

Web App Proxy

This is dead easy to setup and use. Step one is to find a working proxy, which is as simple as googling. Just jump on google and search for “web proxy” . These are popular with students at schools with restrictive internet. Here are some that might work for you.

• http://hidemyass.com/
• http://proxy.org/cgi_proxies.shtml
• http://www.kproxy.com/
• http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/
• http://www.phproxy.org/

HTTP Proxy

This is a little bit harder but works with more websites. The first step is to find a proxy, which you can use a site like this to find a proxy address, or just google. Once you have an address you can update your proxy settings in you browser. This site provides a detail guide on setting proxy settings in different browsers.

SSH Tunneling

This works best if you have access to SSH on a remote server outside of Australia. Here is a good tutorial on how to do it.

VPN

Your final option is VPN tunneling. This get’s fairly complex quickly, but basically you create a virtual network and route all your traffic through a remote end point outside of Australia. You could setup your own with software like OpenVPN, or leave the hard work to someone else like this site.

Final Note

So basically if a grade 8 student can break through a filter in place for education Queensland that is more restrictive with a smaller user base, then I’m sure a pedophile could work it out quickly. This filter is not being put in place to protect your children from inappropriate content to start with. Mr Conroy has even stated that high speed sites will not be filter such as YouTube, as the filter can’t work that fast. The filtering works faster than a blink of an eye stat is for a low bandwidth (not video content)  site.  YouTube is exempt from this filtering scheme. Blocking a whole 1000 sites for a mere 125.8 million doesn’t quite seem worth it. 125 could go a long way to setup a new school or hospital. Instead we waste it on this shit.

Also worth noting is that without compromising every single secure site (Banks, PayPal, eBay, Company Documents, ect) the filters will not be able to filter secured traffic, making it easy for these porn sites to evade the filter.

My uncle has kind enough to give me his old GPS unit to me, so Chris and I decided to try out geocaching. We had 5 unsuccessful attempts, followed by a success. It was really fun looking at all of the items and logbook entries. We signed the book and put the cache back and had two more unsuccessful attempts.

ps. This blog post is smallish due to me still learning the DVORAK keyboard layout.

When configured correctly in a network QOS can be a wonderful thing. The ability to prioritize network traffic by it’s importance is crucial in most places that use VoIP systems to ensure that normal network traffic doesn’t kill off telephone calls. QOS can be both difficult to configure and simple depending on what systems you use and is being used in industry around the world.

With VoIP moving to home users now problems occur with keeping calls going when other home users are download or the like. Newer modems support QOS but still suffer from a simple flaw which impacts the usefulness of it. These modems can only control QOS for outgoing packets (uploads) and not incoming, becuase the QOS needs to be done on the ISP switches/routers. This flaw means that if someone packet floods your connection, QOS won’t be able to help your VoIP system.

There isn’t really a simple fix to this, however it would be nice if ISPs had a configuration page or the like to allow you to make simple QOS rules. Some people will want QOS on VoIP IPs/ports and others will want it on other services.

I thought I’d give wordpress a go now since I have a much more stable server to run it on. So far I’m liking the new interface (I know alot of people that previously used wordpress didn’t like it, however I like it compared to the old).

With a bit of tinkering it was pretty simple. A few plugins didn’t play nice, and mod rewrite was a little harder to do on lighttpd than apache, but with the help of another blog I was on my way to a happy start to wordpress.

I’ve used the wordpress blogger import and it has done a wonderful job so far :> Lets see how this goes (I’m still keeping a copy of my blogs in blogger just for history sake)

So I decided to get ADSL 2+, at a discounted price of 50% (<3 parents), and I'm loving. Despite the fact that I had to ring up, and had all sorts of problems in their tech support center, People Telecom ADSL 2+ has been awesome so far. The setup was very quick, however they decided to send us the login details via email, after we had lost our internet. Kinda stupid right?

Since I don't really trust my modem with being able to handle all that many connections, I decided to turn it into a bridge and let my server do all the work. It's pretty awesome, once I got the kernel compiled right, and iptables done, everything works nice a fast now. I am planing on getting a block of 8 IPs from People Telecom, so having setup like this will be good.

Also with the help of Hamzah I got e-mail setup on my server, which is quite a bitch to do usually. After changing from Optus, I can now use port 25 and 80. As another addition I’ve decided to use Lighttd over apache, just for shits and giggles, and it’s pretty damn good.

Now, I really wanted to test out my new Linux router and ADSL 2+, what better way to do it than games. Jack was able to lend me some PayPal monies, and I bought the Valve complete pack, which was 99 USD. It contained all the games I wanted to play, and a few others. (It also contained a few games I pirated and wanted to pay for, since they are awesome, esp. Portal). I would have bought the orange box, but it was missing a few games I wanted.

Other than that, I’m starting the last week of school, so I’m basically just been having a rest from work and school, and just doing things I either enjoy or would like to get done.

Last week I have been messing around with Ekiga 2.8 (or something) calling and video calling people. It was loads of fun and it ran well. The interface however was lacking awesomeness for its day and I was really surprised to see a wicked looking GUI on the Ekiga website. This is where my adventure began.

I first tried the released beta, and after figuring out how to compile (which was clearly stated on the wiki, however the documentation included within the package said the opposite) i attempted to compile, which failed, I then tried the latest snapshots which also failed. I ended up getting a combination of the 15th and 17th snapshots compiled, however it would segfault straight away. I also found out the hard way that there configuration scripts are dumb, and all previous signs of old libraries must be burnt in a fire and that make clean doesn’t actually work.

I then got some other snapshots to compile, although video support would not work, and it was only today when they released the 3.0.1 beta was I able to get video support working.

I’ve included a screenshot of me talking to Hamzah, although his Cam wasn’t included in the screenshot due SDL (from what I gather). Ekiga 3.0.1 seems more stable and nice to use, and feels more skypey. It also ties into libnotify or libsexy (I can’t remember which is which) and does a good job when people are calling you.

Really really nice, and for all you’s wondering my sip is sip:TheSkorm@ekiga.net . ekiga.net provides the best steaks in town, erm, I mean they provide the best STUN service around.

zzap has posted a very in-depth article on why the proposed internet censorship sucks. I agree with zzaps post completely and here are my issues and thoughts with the internet filtering.

ISPs should provide filtering by law to all customers, however, it should be a opt in case not opt out. Filtering customers, destroys privacy, impacts on security and speed and doesn’t work

Filtering cannot stop porn sites from being accessed, and filtering can also trigger false positives.

Filtering provides another place for man in the middle attacks, allowing hackers to gain access to where you go, passwords and usernames by sniffing.

Filtering doesn’t work under encrypted connections making is even more useless.

Filtering all of Australia’s internet, which is already horribly slow, will make it even more slower. This is no way to create a “world class broadband network”.

I love my ISP at the moment, because I know that my data gets from one place to another without being Fold, Bended, Mutilated or Spindled. Packets get from one place to another without going through http proxies or the like.

I can see this ISP level filtering masking my IP and most likely will cause problems with shared sites, that block by IP.

I would like to apologise for this shittyness of this post. It’s taken me 30 minutes to write this, and I can’t seem to stay focused.

This also goes against the idea’s of the Internet. It wasn’t designed to be destroyed like this.

TheSkorm.net is up for sale for 4 times the amount that Cubestat has estimated, mainly because $1252 is enough to make me change to a different domain name. Cubestat estimated my domain name to $313.17 USD, which I think is an awful lot of money, and I can’t really see anyone buying this domain for more than $20.

I tried it on a few other sites and domains I own, and one of them got $900 USD, which is fairly nice, for such a basic site, with nothing to fancy.

The site is fun to play around with and test out domain names, however it’s estimates are fairly out their IMOH. It’s nice to think that your site is worth that much. Supposably if I were to put ads on here, I would get 0.40$ USD a day, however I know that won’t happen.

Anyway, start saving up to buy this domain if you want it .

“As a key element of its plan for the future, the Australian Government has committed to provide up to $4.7 billion and to consider necessary regulatory changes to facilitate the roll-out of a new open access, high-speed, fibre-based broadband network, providing downlink speeds of at least 12 megabits per second to 98 per cent of Australian homes and businesses.”

I’m all for Australia have a good Broadband network, but I have two problems at the moment. Who will own this network and what about international links.

At the moment I can see Telstra being paid by the government to setup this network, and give them the rights to charge huge amounts of cash for other companies to use it. It’s currently $80 for 25GB on 1.5MBit, which for me seems way to much money, considering the internet isn’t owned or run by them. They are making profit out of others work, correct? (and for your information it costs $150 a gigabyte after you go over your limit)

It’s all great giving every household 12mbit down links, until you realize that, every household with 12mbit will wanna access and download from places off shore. Currently we struggle to provide internet over these links as is, and giving people more bandwidth to use that you don’t have is just bad practice.

There have been many cases where one fiber break offshore have caused our whole national network to run at 5kbs, with epic lag. This problem needs to be fixed up.

That is all.

So, I thought I would try out google documents at school to see how it runs and to show some people it. To my surprise, google documents is blocked. BLOCKED.

I’m seriously, what is google documents going to do to hurt the user, the schools network, peers around or staff. It’s google documents. It’s made to be used in various locations, and is a free replacement for Office.

This is just madness.