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Road Runner: Dial Access in OS X - How to

Posted at June 27, 2008 8:58 pm | In Research | By Ben Woodruff

I’ve blogged twice before about my frustrations with Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner Dial Access (here and here).

Reading those posts I’ve found it’s not very clear on how exactly how to accomplish connecting to the Road Runner network via dial-up using an OS X system (namely 10.5 Leopard).

I decided that the best way to explain how to do this is with a video.

Video: Dial Access in OS X ZIP (25.6MB) [Compressed - Recommended] Video: Dial Access in OS X MP4 (30.2MB)

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Research Papers: Topic Summaries

Posted at March 17, 2008 2:35 pm | In Research | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: NAT, Networking, OSPF, Research, RIP, Security, Technology

I’ve attached some of the research that I’ve done for my Advanced Networking Security class. Included are topic summaries on NAT, OSPF, and RIP.

Topic Summary: Network Address Translation
Topic Summary: Open Shortest Path First Routing
Topic Summary: Routing Information Protocol

If you notice any errors (especially in citations - I want to give credit where credit is due) send me a message or leave a comment.

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Use DenyHosts to Allow More Secure SSH Access

Posted at February 7, 2008 4:40 pm | In Research | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Networking, Research, Security

The FLOSS project DenyHosts is designed to make it safer to allow SSH access to hosts. The basic idea behind it is that when there are X number of unsuccessful login attempts from an IP/host it will block that host from connecting via SSH.
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Western Digital My Book = Corrupt?

Posted at February 4, 2008 10:28 am | In Research | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Annoyances, Apple/Mac, Backup, Data Recovery, Hard Drive, Research, Technology

Last Saturday I wanted to take my My Book external hard drive (400GB) to work, to share some files with a co-worker. It was plugged into my AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBSn non-gig version) via the USB port. I normally have that and a printer plugged into a hub which then plugs into the base station.

So Saturday I did what I thought I was supposed to do in order to unplug the drive: hit eject on my machine, and then just to make sure, logged in using the AirPort Utility and clicked “Disconnect All Users” on the drive. So I unplugged it and drove it to Avon.

When I get there my co-worker plugs it in: it doesn’t mount. I didn’t think anything of it. He is running OS X on non-Mac hardware (hackintosh). I figured it was just his machine. So I plug it into my MacBook Pro: still doesn’t mount.
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Re: Bugzilla

Posted at August 29, 2007 10:03 pm | In Research | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Annoyances, Research, Technology, Work

Update: Had a meeting today with the powers that be and it was decided that I could use our “VM Box” (an XP machine that is running VMWare Server) to setup a Linux virtual machine and install Bugzilla. They seemed unconvinced that it would work for us.
Well… they’re right.

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VoIP

Posted at March 29, 2007 11:09 pm | In Research | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Annoyances, Apple/Mac, Technology, Work

I don’t see the point.
Does everything have to be digital?

Anyway, I’ve been trying to setup a softphone on my laptop to login to our allworx VoIP system at work. I tried iSoftPhone, with no luck. I finally found X-lite (free), which has both a Windows and Mac version. That works perfectly. Well, almost. It’s good for a softphone anyway. I may have to buy it’s big brother, eyeBeam though, as X-lite doesn’t allow you to transfer calls…. which is a problem.
I just wish they had an educational discount or something.

I’m also looking into getting a bluetooth headset to use with my MacBook. I have a Logitech USB headset which I love to death, but it is a pain to carry around (even though it’s their “notebook” version). I’m looking at the Plantronics Explorer 320, mainly because it’s cheap and still got pretty good reviews.

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Road Runner Dial Access Fix

Posted at December 24, 2006 6:44 pm | In Research | By Ben Woodruff

Tags: Annoyances, Apple/Mac, Research, RoadRunner, Time Warner

I’ve been having trouble using Road Runner’s dial access for the past few months.
They’ve always claimed that it has been a problem on my end, and that because of that, they couldn’t do anything about it.
As I’ve posted before, I recently purchased a MacBook Pro (Macintel). Their dialer didn’t work on that. Totally different machine, 100% different software, different operating system, etc. This time they blamed it on the fact that it has a USB modem.
I’ll explain in this post how I got the dial access to work under OS X with Apple’s USB modem, WITHOUT even having their dialer installed.
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