blogs.bit10.net

I have deployed Vyatta to a lot of different locations, however the deployment I did last week was a little different… Yas Island is a naturual island on the coast of the United Arab Emirates of about 2,500 hectares or which 1,700 hectares is being developed. It is to be a $40 billion playground of marinas, shops, theme park, water park, [...]

<rant>  I live in Coventry, which is as near as damnit slap bang in the middle of the UK, and within spitting distance of our second city, Birmingham, given this fact why is it soo damn difficult to get to the UKs biggest airport (Heathrow) on public transport?! Normally when I fly its always easier and quicker to [...]

Prego’s Italian Restaurant, Beach Rotana Hotel, Abu Dhabi, dinner and drinks for three… 666.00 UAD… How scary is that?!

The next major release of Vyatta (VC4 - codename Glendale) is due for final release on 22nd April, and I am soo excited! This release promises to deliver plethora of new features and functionality, including: 1) FusionCLI - A new CLI based around bash that gives simultaneous access to Vyatta configuration and the underlying Linux shell. Woohoo [...]

When you connect to the Internet in China you don’t get the real Internet you get a government controlled version, which limits access to sites that are offensive to/or go against the political views of the Chinese government. This is known as the Golden Shield Project or by its lovable nickname, ‘The Great Firewall of [...]

…is the question I am asking myself right now… I am in Shanghai, a city of some 18 million people, the biggest city in China and in the top 5 largest in the world, the answer should be obvious. However, here I am sat in Starbucks (one of two in this building alone, an one of five that [...]

Or “Congratulations and be prosperous” as Chinese New Year is almost upon us.  However it is also the day not to be buying new shoes as this is considered bad luck amongst some Chinese. The word “shoes” is a homophone for the word “rough” in Cantonese, or “evil” in Mandarin.   So I will resist the [...]

On boys night, when we play cards and drink far too much, we tend to have the timeless classic ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels‘ on in the background. A subject of much debate has been what are the endings to jokes they are telling each other in the car journey, that due to the editing, you [...]

Testing the new blog.  and pimping the volvo blog: http://loveforthevolvo.blogspot.com

So Blizzard must be delighted, WOW finally hits 10 million paying subscribers, is there no stopping it… I find myself wondering why, after the initial excitement, the last expansion (The Burning Crusade) took a lot of shine off the game. The unrelenting need to grind for rep and better items eventually takes its toll and to add [...]

Poor london www.london-eating.co.uk has got stung with an amusing bit of UGC, read it while its still there (warning marginally rude!): http://www.london-eating.co.uk/review-comments/123446.htm

I finally got around to watching the much hyped ‘Jamie’s Fowl Dinners’ which seems to have caused a bit of a ruck as we see our once favourite TV chef trying to shock us into not buying caged chicken. Before i go on lets get my personal buying habits out of the way, I strictly buy [...]

Commenting on:  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/11/att_want_to_block_copyrighted_material_at_network_level/ The solution to all this is very very simple. I want the luxury of being able to download whatever material I want, when I want from where I want in whatever format I want. That as a customer is what I want, and the customer is always right. The only question is what I am [...]

The latest subscription release of Vyatta, 2.3, has seen the addition of clustering capability, which has added greatly to the high availability features of the product. Previously high availability was really limited to VRRP, which was great but had a couple of issues: You couldn’t use VRRP across VIF interfaces, which made high availability for ‘router on [...]

If you are using Vyatta and want to transparently forward traffic at the router level to a separate Squid proxy you will find that the standard firewall configuration in Vyatta just isn’t up to the job (yet!). The workaround is to use the /etc/rc.local file to make IPTables do the job for you, heres how we [...]

We use Linux extensively at bit10, for DNS, front line mail handling, proxying, web hosting, development platforms, you name it we probably do it in Linux or have at least had a good go… Probably the most important job it does for us though is for our firewalling, core network routing and traffic management for both [...]

Talking about: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/blogs/simply-better Andrew has quite rightly identified one of bit10’s recurring problems, people often fail to understand everything we do. Mostly they pigeonhole us into being experts in the thing they use us for… Of course this is entirely our fault, we start by hiding behind ‘Full service digital agency’ who ‘Loves doing digital’, but few [...]

Commenting on: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/19/bt_wind_farms/ In a nutshell BT (which accounts for 0.7% of the UK power usage), is investing £250m in building its own windfarms which it estimates will generate 25% of its power needs, or enough to power a city the size of Coventry) . Firstly good work BT, good to see a corporate taking its responsibility [...]

On the way to work at the moment there are some roadworks in Canley while Coventry City Council adds yet more bus lanes… this has led to a 400m length of dual carriageway (passed the graveyard) that filters down to one lane at the end just before hitting the roundabout with the roadworks. Everyday there is [...]

8pm Thursday evening, relaxing on the sofa with the girlfriend, watching TV, waiting for our Chinese… a knock on the door… I answered to be greated by an ultra-chirpy NPower sales person, now normally I would just tell them to go away, however on this occasion I was feeling a little bit sporting and I always relish the [...]