Which ISP sucks least?

Look at this sad network performance.

C:\>ping -n 10 24.82.128.1

Pinging 24.82.128.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=159ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=349ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=36ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=533ms TTL=254
Reply from 24.82.128.1: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=254

Ping statistics for 24.82.128.1:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 28ms, Maximum = 533ms, Average = 139ms

Is it just me or are the major cable and DSL providers in the Vancouver area ripping us off? This has been going on for a week now, with the worst performance during prime time. A shaw support tech informed me this area needs to be “segmented”. In otherwords the company has oversold its infrastructure.

If someone wrote a small background program that monitored the performance of critical services such as my next hop router and my ISP’s DNS and sent that back to a central site I’d gladly run it. It would be nice to know which ISP sucks the least. The anadoctal evidence available now isn’t good enough. I heard some calls for community based monitoring of ISPs as use of deep packet inspection and throttling by providers has increased, but I don’t see much action.

Bandwidth monitoring and accounting with OpenBSD and pf

I’m sure this isn’t the only way to do it. Add this rule to pf.conf:

table <usage> const { 192.168.1.1 }
pass on $ext_if from any to <usage> label "accounting"

To see stats: pfctl -vv -t usage -T show
To clear stats: pfctl -t usage -T zero

OpenBSD gets layer 7 load balancing

Just when I thought it was impossible to make a good HTTP load balancer with OpenBSD I noticed hoststated.

This avoids the problem of losing the client IP address by giving you a mechanism for manipulating HTTP headers. Now we won’t be needing more expensive solutions.

Don’t be cheap with RAM for your servers

Don’t put non-ECC RAM into a SunFire X2100. I was having problems with the network mysteriously failing under OpenBSD. On linux I experienced random panics. My advice, use the correct memory.

Dealing with ISOs in Vista

Vista can’t natively write ISOs to disc. I always used to use Fireburner on XP but that doesn’t seem to work on Vista because I can’t see where to disable Vista’s built in burning app. After some searching I found the solution: ISO recorder. Here’s some good stuff on how to write iso files to cd and how to mount iso files in Vista.

WinZip frustration

So I’m backing up my laptop by zipping up my user directory and copying it over to another box. After more than 20 gigs of archive have been created I run out of disk space. What does WinZip do? It aborts! Would it be so much to ask for it to prompt me to abort or retry so I can free up some space and not have to wait forever to do this all over again? While I’m on the subject, backing up my windows boxes is annoying. What is the best software to backup windows?