Nothing is worse than entering repetitive, monotonous commands into a router to accomplish a simple task. By using PHPTelnet we can create a script that will make use of a web form to provision (create pvc or a Private Virtual Circuit) DSL customers in a Cisco router. The script will also write to a log file for security and troubleshooting purposes. This script could be used for many other tasks as well as it is very easy to modify.
NOTE: Depending on your setup, you may need to make modifications to the script.
First, I will focus on the PHP script, and then the web form.
The first part of the script will call in the PHPTelnet.php file. And grab the variables from our web form with the POST method.
require_once "PHPTelnet.php";
$telnet = new PHPTelnet();
$vpi = $_POST['VPI'];
$vci = $_POST['VCI'];
$spd = $_POST['SPD'];
-
require_once "PHPTelnet.php";
-
-
$telnet = new PHPTelnet();
-
-
$vpi = $_POST[‘VPI’];
-
$vci = $_POST[‘VCI’];
-
$spd = $_POST[‘SPD’];
This next section deals with logging the requests to a file named ‘log.txt’. Make sure you manually create the file first.
//Log actions to file
$logfile="log.txt";
$fh = fopen($logfile, 'a') or die("ERROR: can't open file");
$stringData = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']." added ".$vpi."/".$vci." ".date("m-d-y.h:i")."\n";
fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);
-
//Log actions to file
-
$logfile="log.txt";
-
$fh =
fopen($logfile,
‘a’) or
die("<br />ERROR: can’t open file");
-
$stringData =
$_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’].
" added ".
$vpi.
"/".
$vci.
" ".
date("m-d-y.h:i").
"\n";
-
-
Initiate the connection. Make sure to modify the IP address, username, and password.
Read the rest of this entry …
Freenet is a relatively new P2P project in which members act similar to that of a cluster, donating hard drive space and bandwidth. It is similar to the Tor network in the fact that connections are encrypted and re-routed through other members of the network.
“It acts more like an Internet within an Internet.”
What’s different about Freenet is that you also dedicate parts of your hard drive for file storage. What is even more interesting is that you have no control over what is stored in your ‘data store’. Less popular files are deleted to make room for more popular files. The files are encrypted so that you ‘might’ not be held responsible for what lies within your data store.
Freenet is not only for storing files, but also allows you to create Freenet websites called ‘Freesites’. Also usenet, email, and more is possible on the Freenet.
Freenet is open source and runs anywhere Java runs. Windows, Linux, or Mac should work fine. After installing the interface is accessible through a web browser. Remember, Freenet is still in alpha stage so there may be some bugs.
Read more and download at the Free Network Project website.
![[Slashdot]](http://slashdot.org/favicon.ico)
![[Digg]](http://digg.com/favicon.ico)
![[Reddit]](http://reddit.com/favicon.ico)
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif)
![[Facebook]](http://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico)
![[Technorati]](http://technorati.com/favicon.ico)
![[Google]](http://www.google.com/favicon.ico)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.stumbleupon.com/favicon.ico)
Monitoring your website on a shared host is vital to the well being of your existence on the internet. There are several online services that will do this for you in exchange for a small price. While they may be a bit more accurate, I would like to share with you how to use RRDTool to monitor your website’s response time yourself.
image via rrdwiki (didn’t use mine because it hasn’t completed a full cycle yet.)
NOTE: I am using Ubuntu based Linux Mint. This process should be the same on other Debian based distributions. If you are not running a Debian based distribution, you may have to modify some paths to the rrdtool executable. Some of this procedure has been taken from the rrdwiki.
The first step is to install RRDTool:
sudo apt-get install rrdtool
-
sudo apt-get install rrdtool
Read the rest of this entry …
Not the official ntop logo – icon courtesy of Tango Desktop Project
Forget about tools like lsof and netstat for trouble shooting and analyzing network traffic. Ntop blows everything else away. It comes jam packed with a web interface and outputs more data than you can shake a stick at. Ntop analyzes everything about how, where, when, and what your PC is connecting to on the internet.
I am running Linux Mint — installation is a cinch. This procedure should be the same on Ubuntu and other Debian based distributions. Make sure you have the universe repositories enabled.
sudo apt-get install ntop
The above will install ntop, now set a password:
sudo ntop --set-admin-password
Start ntop with the following command:
sudo ntop -u ntop -d -i eth0
Read the rest of this entry …
Dear Vyatta,
During the past couple of months I have been attempting to replace my Cisco 7500 with your routing software. The Vyatta product looked very promising and supported all the protocols and features that I needed including BGP, Bandwidth Management (through the kernel), VRRP, in addition to standard routing with TCP/IP.
I have run into many issues with the Vyatta software. Just to name a few — VRRP limitations, BGP Routing Policy limitations, static routing bugs, not being able to delete static routes and policy configurations, and more.
“I am sad to say, good bye Vyatta”
I am sad to say, good bye Vyatta. I have enjoyed the past two months getting to know you. You have what seems a wonderful team of individuals working towards the better. I would like to send a thanks to the support group and everyone on the mailing list, they were wonderful.
I will continue to support what the Vyatta team is trying to do. Unfortunately, the software is still premature. I, however, am looking forward to the next release so I can give it another try.
I am sure I could force the software to work, but I would hardly be confident with that procedure. That being said — Vyatta cannot replace my Cisco 7500 core router.
Farewell,
Shane
OK, I admit it, I am a BIG geek and proud of it. How do I know this? A good sign is when I start to get the urge to craft my own TCP/IP packets.
Whether you want to test your custom built app, or wreak havoc on the network — packETH allows you to create the perfect Ethernet packets with limitless possiblities through a GUI interface.
By specifying a custom payload, source MAC, destination MAC, source IP, destination IP, you can appear as sending from and to anyone on the network. packETH also allows you to specify how many packets to send up to and infinite amount and speed.
packETH is Linux only and included in Debian based Distributions, and possibly others. Sectools.org has a list of the top 4 packet crafting utilities if packETH doesn’t float your boat or find your lost remote.
You wouldn’t dare to send 4 million broadcast pings originating from an enemy coworker at wire speed, would you?
image by recursion_see_recursion
Port Knocking is a way to open ports on a firewall by attempting to connect to a predefined sequence of closed ports. Once the correct connection attempts are made, the firewall opens the ports to let the source of the connection attempts in through the firewall.
In other words, it is like a combination lock for your firewall/Linux machine.
How is this useful?
There could be several reasons that you would implement port knocking. The best example I can think of is that the system administrator is working on the road, never knowing where he/she would be connecting from.
Usually, I block all ports, except for only network ranges that should connect. Port 80 is a good example, for a web server, where all hosts would be accepted. Port 22, for SSH, would be a good example that I would only allow access from a few, specific addresses. This would be a problem if I worked on the road.
Port knocking would avoid the hassle and allow me to open the firewall from where ever I might be, as long as I knew the sequence of ports to make a connection attempt to.
Ducea.com has written a tutorial if you are interested in implementing port knocking.
Open source, cross platform 
