MRIC News Digest II.2 - January 2005

Although MRIC's motto has been "Fostering Community Through Connectivity" our slogan could be "Build It And They Will Come!"
Through referrals we have more than 220 members with well over 50 people on the waiting list. This success has caused
growth problems which we'd like to address:

* Reliability

MRIC recently lost our first few members due to unreliability. While ISP churn is inevitable, this came as quite a shock
as we had never lost a member (other than to a move). We are currently analyzing what broke down in our installation,
support, or network design process. We expect new infrastructure policies to emerge, especially as new MRIC members tend to
be less technical than our original base with often higher expectations.

We have also decided to waive immediately the Premium service surcharge for those members who have the option of migrating
from 802.11b service to the more reliable but proprietary Canopy or Trango service. We expect to expand this class
of service to more Points of Presences (POPs) in 2005.

MRIC will finish any POP commitments (e.g. unclear if Nightshade is done yet but we think it is) and we are trying to finance
Trango/Canopy upgrades to overloaded POPs. We feel that we need to recoup some of the large POP investments we
made in 2004 by adding backlogged subscribers.

MRIC will continue to have paid contractors (currently we just have one) during business hours but we need help from an accountant to set up a payroll system.
This means getting workman compensation (additional insurance) and other legal infrastructure. We need help to get this worked out.
We do want to have some part-time staff in place in 2005 to supplement a better organized volunteer system (maybe involving two
people on-call 7x24). While trying to remove some of the causes of unreliability, we are also trying to fund the resources for a quicker response.
We have over 50 - 100 people waiting for new service so it's possible we could use this extra income to hire two part-time
contractors.

* Performance

Subscribers may view MRIC's network statistics at any time via stats.mric.coop. If you have a known MRIC MAC address not using
a VPN you won't be asked for a password. Otherwise, contact support@mric.coop from your MRIC-known e-mail account for the
account name and password.

Although we currently have 3 T1 lines, 1 Frame Relay, and 2 ISDN lines for a total of 6.3 Mbps capacity, we have not
succeeded in balancing this load. Subscribers especially in the Coal Creek, Lakeshore, and upper Sugarloaf
areas have been most affected. We assumed we would have cross-connected the north-south networks soon after
we added a second T1 at the Sandy POP. Please accept our sincere apologies for this delay. To remedy this we are adding
a second T1 line at the Pine Glade NOC which should be in operation by mid-November. In addition, we are exploring the
possibility of adding a burstable DS-3 (expandable to 28 times capacity of a 1.54 Mbps T1) by the first quarter of 2005.
[ Editor's note: MRIC added a 4th T1 line in mid-November at the Pine Glade (PG) Network Operations Center (NOC).
In December, MRIC ordered for the PG NOC a DS-3 to replace these 4 T1 lines. A DS-3 can be as much as 28 times larger
than a T1 line! Delivery is not expected until the summer of 2005. Additional T1 lines will be ordered at the new Begole (BG)
NOC as needed.]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&oi=defmore&q=define:DS3

We desperately need your help in clearing your system of viruses, spyware, and excessive peer-to-peer (P2P) usage.
If you have a Windows system, please investigate Spybot Search and Destroy: http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html
Ad-aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

Expect a future newsletter article about considerate P2P usage but for now you can review an internal note at:
http://magnoliaroad.net/old/p2p.html

* Spam

In 2003, an estimated 40% of all e-mail was considered unwanted bulk e-mail. Preliminary estimates for 2004 indicate it could
be 60% of all e-mail now. In 2001 when MRIC was still being formed it was estimated to be only 10%.

MRIC plans to implement real-time blacklisting and greylisting in addition to upgrading to a newer version
of our spam-filtering software spamassassin.

http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/internet/2004/0410121119.asp?O=FPQQ
http://www.spamfilterreview.com/spam-statistics.html
http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/greylist.html
http://www.email-policy.com/Spam-black-lists.htm

Subscribers will still have the ability to whitelist e-mail senders as described in the August 2004 issue
of the MRIC News Digest found on our website www.mric.coop.

* Communication

We have heard that subscribers without dial-up backups cannot get network status updates found at

www.mric.coop/status

so we have to do a better job updating our support voicemail.

When in doubt, do check mric.coop/status from your backup dial-up. If enough members want dial-up service we are open
to adding it. Please consider how often you will actually use something that will cost the co-op up to $10/person per
month in costs. There are free dial-up services available as noted in the August MRIC News Digest (downloadable from
our website www.mric.coop).

We also need to have more concrete schedules regarding POP completions. We have had folks waiting patiently for months
for Janelle, Begole, Thorodin-West, and Nightshade finish dates.

Within the next month, we will have a separate Volunteers meeting. If you have organization skills,
technical skills (especially working with routers), accounting/legal skills, or construction skills please
consider attending. Another announcement will be sent to this members alias announcing this meeting date.
MRIC will trade free service for volunteer help but more importantly you will have the ability to
shape where the co-op goes in 2005.

A special thanks goes out to our many volunteers who install our new subscribers, maintain our network,
and account for our finances. We would be lost without you!

As usual, anyone can send in their suggestions and concerns to bod@mric.coop where all the MRIC Board Members will
see it. Technical requests should continue going to support@mric.coop. Please send any billing questions
to accounting@mric.coop.

Thank you again for your patience and support in this community effort.

At its most basic, a firewall allows you to decide what types of Internet traffic should be allowed into your PC. Other firewalls also let you decide which programs residing on your computer should be permitted to send and receive data online.

Firewalls are usually hardware- or software-based. Microsoft XP computers, for example, come shipped with a simple software firewall that does a good job barring hackers, worms and viruses from locating your computer. But Microsoft's firewall does not allow you to decide which programs on your computer should be allowed access to the Internet. That will change later this year when Microsoft begins shipping upgraded versions of its firewall in new PCs as well as in a package of security updates.

Hardware-based firewalls mask your Internet address to keep unwanted traffic from reaching your PC but do little to prevent "spyware" and other intrusive programs that may be lurking in your machine from phoning home.

Other software-based firewalls, like Zone Labs's Zone Alarm, allow you to block programs from dialing out to the Internet. The trouble is, they generally don't offer much information about just what the program asking for access to the Internet is designed to do.

For example, what computer user without a degree in geek-speak would know what to do when their monitor confronts them with a pop-up message that says: "Do you want to allow 'Hkcmd.exe' to access the Internet?" OK, sure. What's Hkcmd.exe?

Some people might respond with a "yes" because they have no idea what would happen otherwise. Paranoid PC owners might think it's a hacker up to no good. Yet a quick search online reveals that Hkcmd.exe is the name of a benign program installed by Intel Corp. on most Microsoft Windows computers that allows the user to define "hotkeys," keyboard shortcuts that start applications.

Once you know that, you might feel pretty safe with "hkcmd.exe," but what if you get new messages asking about "NAVAPSvc.exe" (a Norton AntiVirus application) or lsass.exe (a Windows program that verifies the validity of users who log on to your computer)?

The best thing to do is be an informed consumer:

* Use Internet search engines to find Web sites that help you distinguish between programs that need Internet access versus impostors that will let hackers leech your Internet connection speed or violate your privacy and security. Start with these two: answersthatwork.com and liutilities.com.

Keep in mind that there are plenty of viruses, worms and Trojan Horses out there that hackers have named in ways that are similar to or the same as legitimate programs. It could be that if you don't pay close enough attention, that permission you give to a strange-sounding program could be an open invitation to a hack.

* We've said it before (and before that) and we'll say it again: Use and maintain current antivirus software. It can usually root out fake programs based on the actions they try to perform, regardless of how those programs are named. Here are links to several brands:

Free software firewalls:
Zone Alarm
Agnitum's Outpost
Tiny Software

Other software firewall vendors:
Norton Personal Firewall
Norton for Macintosh
Black Ice Defender Firewall
Deerfield Personal Firewall
Sygate Personal Firewall 5.0

* Stay abreast of the latest software security fixes released by Microsoft Corp. The company releases them on a monthly basis.

* Get on the e-mail lists released by US-CERT, the public-private partnership supervised by the Department of Homeland Security. US-CERT makes virus alerts, FAQs and general Internet status reports for techies as well as the professed computer illiterate.

As always, total security online is a goal, not a reality. There is always a chance that even the best-protected computer could fall prey to a sophisticated enough attack. Knowing some of the basic ways to use your firewall is one of the elementary ways to minimize the chances of that happening.

III.2 Accessing Free Webmail Accounts
              Contributor: Greg Ching

All MRIC subscribers are eligible for e-mail accounts. They are typically read using your favorite IMAP4 or POP3 mail client (Outlook, Mozilla, Thunderbird, Eudora,
Mac OS X mail client, etcetera). However, you can also access your e-mail from other than your normal computer. Folks with MRIC e-mail accounts can follow the "Log into
Web Mail" link from the MRIC home page to try this out.

Webmail allows you to check your e-mail from any web browser in the world. There may be times you want to use another e-mail account to reduce the possibility of identity
theft or decrease spam coming to your regular MRIC e-mail address. Some MRIC subscribers have been blocked by AOL (Compuserve included). Using
another mail account allows you to continue sending e-mail to those AOL accounts. Hotmail has the most restrictions but it's a great place for listing an e-mail address when
you don't ever want to check it (e.g. getting a free sample at a store but they want your e-mail address).

All these webmail providers will provide more disk space or other features if you are willing to pay them a monthly fee. The comparison below is only for the free version which is more than adequate for occasional usage (on-line purchases, travel, conferences):

Hotmail (free 2 MB, virus checking, spam filtering)
http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/dasp/ua_info.asp?&_lang=EN&country=US

   * Your Hotmail account becomes inactive if you do not sign in for 30
     days, or within the first 10 days after signing up for an account.
     Once an account becomes inactive, all messages, folders, and
     contacts are deleted, but the account name is still reserved.

     If the account stays inactive for an additional 90 days, it is
     permanently deleted.

   * You can send messages up to 1 megabyte (MB) each, including
     attachments.
   * Your Hotmail account has 2 MB of storage space. Incoming messages
     that will put your account over the 2 MB limit are returned to the
     sender.
   * McAfee VirusScan automatically scans all files attached to
     incoming and outgoing messages. If a file contains a virus, it
     cannot be attached to a message.
   * You can create up to 10 custom filters to help you organize
     incoming messages.
   * If your account size reaches the 2 MB limit, you cannot send or
     receive messages. Hotmail may delete messages to bring your
     account under 2 MB. After these messages are deleted, they cannot
     be recovered.
   * Messages in the Sent Messages folder that are more than 30 days
     old are deleted.
   * You can send a maximum of 100 messages per day.
   * You can send one message to a maximum of 50 e-mail addresses at
     once. These addresses can be distributed among the To, Cc, and Bcc
     lines, or they can all be on one line.
   * Your Block Sender List and Safe List can contain a maximum of 500
     entries each.

Juno (free 2 MB, spam filtering, virus filtering, 10 hours/month dial-up)
http://www.juno.com/signup/comparison.html
I would recommend this as a free dial-up backup.

Netzero (free 2MB, spam filtering, virus filtering, 10 hours/month dial-up)
http://www.netzero.net/signup/comparison.html
I would recommend this as a free dial-up backup.

Yahoo (free 100MB, spam filtering, no free virus checking)
http://mail.yahoo.com/
This is my recommendation if you are more worried about spam than viruses.

Netscape (free 250MB, virus checking, no spam filtering)
https://my.screenname.aol.com/_cqr/login/login.psp?mcState=initialized&siteId=nscpenusmail&authLev=2
This is my recommendation if you are more worried about viruses than spam.

Google (free 1000MB, spam filtering, virus filtering)
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/about.html
Still in testing mode so limited availability.

Remember you can often have more than one free webmail account even with each provider listed.
If you find yourself using multiple webmail accounts here's one way to consolidate access from
one page (and possibly even on a mobile device).

mail2Web (free unified access, requires mail accounts elsewhere)
http://info.mail2web.com/Customize/index.aspx

III.3 SPAM Statistics
         Contributor: Paul Ganci

Message Count
Spamstats

   Spam Score

Separating the Good from the Bad Emails....

This histogram measures some spam statistics accumulated one night for mric.   Amazingly, 83.3% of the received messages were scored and considered spam. As you can see by the red histogram most of these are clearly spam their scores are so high (there were a few outliers in the 100+ range). The green histogram shows the messages which were legitimate. Note the overlap is actually quite small. If one envisions the tail of the green histogram extending down into the red histogram in the overlap region, one would argue that a spam threshold of ~12 or 13 could be setup where we jettison the message into a quarantine area. The interest in doing this stems from the desire to keep this junk out of peoples' mail boxes. Let members keep their disk quotas for real messages. With a spam score threshold of 12 we would still possibly deliver 3.7% of the junk but with nearly no false positives.....

Email messages scored above 12 will be considered spam and quarantined for seven days, then deleted. Members should contact support@mirc.coop if significant spam messages continue.   If members receive messages falsely tagged as spam, they can whitelist the sender. Go to url: http://www.mric.coop/spam/   for whitelisting instructions.

III.4 HARDWARE & INSTALLS
III.4.1 New Corner Mount
                   Contributor:   Bill Clark

handle-mount

Works great at corners, where the vertical mounting angle can be varied. - 10" length of PVC conduit, ends heated and stepped on (or similar):
Put a plate or wedge under the straight section before forming to force an offset or pitch.

III.4.2 Recent Installs

-New Install: Steve and Mike with the tower at Thor West (TH-W)...

John on Roof _ Begole

     -In process install: John on roof at Begole (in Coal Creek Canyon)...

III.4.3   Recent MRIC Tower Upgrades
                     Contributor: Bill Clark

* A UPS has been added to the LaBelle tower. A larger battery will be installed within a month.

* Sandy NOC and tower improvements:
- An auto-transfer genset with a dedicated propane supply was installed at the Clark's. The genset provides ten-day backup for the Sandy NOC and tower.

-Auto-transfer genset with dedicated propane supply at the Clark's.....

- A W-facing Canopy AP was added to the cluster. This AP serves residents in the Millionaire area.

-Access Point (AP) serving residents in Millionaire area...

Thanks to John Sainsbury and Bill Spencer for funding the added gear. Their generosity will considerably improve service to all connected to the Sandy POP.
- All members W of the the Sandy tower have agreed to convert to Canopy radios. This will allow us to replace the 2.4GHz, omnidirectional
antenna with a sectoral antenna, reducing interference at both ends of 2.4 (BreezeNET) connections.
- A future resident and subscriber intends to fund a N-facing Canopy AP. After this AP is installed, we will replace the often used but rather
poor link to SLFPD Station 2 with a Canopy radio.
- Two servers, a router, and an edge firewall are being added to the Sandy NOC. These will enable a second local DNS service and much faster
incident response. As their main job, these servers will host our administrative data.
- The Sandy-Kelly 2.4GHz backhaul link has been replaced with a 5.2GHz link. This upgrade reduced packet drops from as much as 15% to zero drops over more than 10 million pings.

-Canopy radio with antenna integrated into the plastic-shelled unit....

Interference into the Sandy 2.4GHz FH AP continues to rage. Replacement of the existing omni with a sectoral antenna will help but will not eliminate the problem. Thus MRIC strongly recommends that if you use a BreezeNET radio, that you upgrade to a Canopy (5.2GHz) radio as soon as you can afford it. You will surely be happy with the switch. Interested members should contact bill@clark.com or call 303.449.4878 for more information, for references, or to discuss cost and schedule.

III.5 Content Management Systems
Contributor: Dave Young

Looking for an open source content management system? Some suggestions include: OpenCms Project: http://www.opencms.org/opencms/en/, Mambo: http://www.mamboserver.com/, and OpensourceCMS: http://www.opensourcecms.com/ .

III.6 Security Corner

I recommend that anyone with a Windows system, no matter how sure you are that you are clean, run one or more of these tools. I think you'll
be surprised.

Spybot Search and Destroy: http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html
Ad-aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

Those two are the major ones. Here is a link to a site with links to several others. Beware: some of them are shareware and want $$.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/

When Googling for spyware detection and removal sites and software, use caution! Sometimes a site that claims to be for spyware removal will
actually install spyware. Often such software can only be removed in "Safe Mode".

I could not think of a better group to inform....! I have organized a FIRST Robotics (www.usfirst.org) team for Nederland High School. We are entered into a regional competition at DU on March 24-26. An initial meeting with interested kids, faculty, and people was held last month. If anybody is interested in mentoring the students, or if you know of anybody who might like to mentor the students, please contact me.

FIRST, which stands for, "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology", is a non-profit founded by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the www.segway.com, and 150 other cool inventions. One of FIRST's programs is an annual high school robotics competition running for 12 years now, with about 900 high schools and over 20,000 students competing nationally last year.

Nederland Middle/High School was selected to receive a NASA grant worth $6K that will cover the entrance fees to the regional FIRST robotics competition (in Denver) and the robot parts kit. -WAAHOO!!! (For anybody who is not familiar with this program, the primary website is www.usfirst.org. It is a 12-year old program, with nearly 1000 high schools competing nationally.) Roughly $4K more will be needed by the end of March, and this will be an annual fee! It will cost at least double if/when we get good enough to travel to the National Robotics Championships. For this year, NASA is offering several grants specifically for FIRST, and then there is a TECH21 grant through BVSD's Impact on Education (www.impactoneducation.corg) that I have a very good feeling about and that would sustain us for 3 more years. After that we'll need corporate sponsorships and/or get this program added to the school district's budget, which happens quite a bit believe it or not, based on the value.

This is how it works; in January the competition is announced, and the robot kits are sent out to all schools at the same time. Teams then have six weeks to build their robots. The competition objectives and robot parts kits are different each year, so there is a lot of engineering, machining, fabricating, strategy, programming, testing, etc. that are each critical aspects. Through this program FIRST has had such a profound effect on kids and communities it is completely inspiring to me, and I am personally very excited about spending time getting something going for Nederland area kids!

NASA pays FIRST Robotics directly, so we can concentrate on building a competitive robot instead of doing a lot of fundraising! We will still likely need to raise a little more money for miscellaneous pieces and parts, but this is a HUGE opportunity for our students, and if we do this right it should become a
sustainable and effective part of the education provided to them! I can't think of a better way to spend my time than spearheading this program, and I am very excited to do so! Some of you have already committed your support, and it is sincerely appreciated!

Critical to success, we need to find community mentors and engineers who can volunteer a minimal amount of time between now and January, and then a bunch more time between January and March. Furthermore, it is not just about building a robot-there are PR aspects, finance, fundraising, logistics, website, CAD, 3D animation, etc., so if kids or adults are interested in helping in an area not seemingly tied to robot building that is great as well. I have already received some software related to the competition, which include Autodesk's latest versions of Inventor and 3D Studio Max. The support for the FIRST Robotics program is astounding, as indicated by NASA's, Autodesk's, and many other organizations' generosity. Some people have voiced concern over the cost, but when you take the $6K x 33 teams signed up for the regional event you get ~$200K, but the regional competition costs $500K to put on, so there are a lot of sponsors making up the difference.

The upcoming deadlines are as follows: on January 8th there is a kick-off event in Denver, where the robot kits will be distributed, and the scoring methods for this competition will be unveiled. We will then have 6 weeks to strategize, design, and build the robot, which needs to be shipped by February 22nd. Then, -on to the regional competition in Denver (3/24/05-3/26/05)!

I'm interested in your feedback on ways to obtain financial goals, mentoring volunteers or other suggestions. Pease contact me at: 303-642-1198 (phone) or via email: scott@diamondrf.com. -Jump in and join us!
.