Category Archives: News

Another decade has almost gone by. Kootenay Networks has been going steadily forward with minimal clients while I’m the stay at home dad and working on personal projects (Programming Kootnet Network Testers and Kootnet Sensors).

More and more technology is moving to the “cloud” and it has been interesting to see the development of new servers and services, such as NextCloud as an all in one cloud solution for more private in house server deployment or to set up on virtual services like the Amazon Web Services. NextCloud allows for file synchronization, like Dropbox, OneDrive and Apple cloud, and has additional functions like email, calendar, contacts, text/voice/video communication and the ability to edit documents in the web browser (like Microsoft Office 365). It also has a lot of extensions to add additional functionality. Of course, Covid-19 has played a role in our changing technology landscape. Working remotely is now a normal part of many jobs. Chromebook usage has soared for using online video chat programs like Zoom and doing school from home.

It will be interesting to see how technology develops in the next 10 years. Will remote work still be as prevalent after Covid-19? Maybe quantum computers will be a thing, which will drastically change our security landscape, since quantum computers will have very little trouble cracking pretty much every security encryption we have to date.

Stay safe this holiday season and here’s hoping 2021 will be awesome!

Kootenay Networks I.T. has had a good year as most work remains in the area of maintenance and upgrades. Any “disaster” has been more of a minor annoyance thanks to each and every client being prepared already with good backups and redundant hardware. Uptime remains high and downtime remains low.

In other news, I have updated Kootnet Network Testers. If you are a network technician, looking to test network routes between point A and point B or simply test Ethernet cables, this is for you! Install it on 2 Raspberry Pis to create mobile network testers. They run MTR and iPerf to test latency and Throughput between the 2 units. The best part of all, the software is Free and Open Source!
Learn more here: https://github.com/chad-ermacora/rp-network-testers

If you are interested in environmental monitoring you may want to check out the Kootnet Sensors section on the website. ‘Kootnet Sensors’ is a project I have been working on for over a year to monitor, record and visualize environmental sensor data. It is Free Open Source Software that runs on top of a Raspberry Pi computer. Sensors are added to monitor things like heat, pressure, humidity, light and motion. Kootnet Sensors currently supports 13 different sensor types and over 16 different hardware sensors. For work, I use them to monitor heat and humidity levels in server rooms but I actually made them to monitor multiple outdoor locations in order to visualize (graphs over time) how our environment is changing and to keep records for the future.
Learn more here: https://github.com/chad-ermacora/sensor-rp

Apparently my Zeitgeist Movement Link was out of date, and went to a very … not so pleasant site.  I apologize for that.  The link has been updated to its proper location.  If you are wonder what the Zeitgeist Movement is about, it is a movement advocating the humane use of Science and Technology to create a peaceful and sustainable world for everyone.

I have added a section for a project I started a few months back with creating hardware Sensors with Raspberry Pi’s.  This project has been getting me into some new areas of Technology that I pretty much avoided because I wanted to focus on more practical IT learning such as Scripting, Windows Server, Linux, etc.  However, I’m really getting into some of these new areas, such as Programming, soldering (well.. Maybe I don’t ‘Like’ soldering, but I can do it now), web design and even documentation… well more code comments, but documentation will come later in my help files and walkthroughs.   If Interested, check out the page and click the link to my personal Blog where I have been documenting my ideas, progress and changes.

In other business news, I have downsized my Clientele in order to give myself more time for family and personal projects, while maintaining a high work standard for the clients I have kept.  Thanks to Managed Services, this is working very well.

Wishing all the best,

Passwords

Passwords are hard, and they are getting harder with sites that require lots of upper and lower case characters, multiple special characters and a length of at least 8-10.  I am here to tell you there are better ways to make complicated passwords that are still easy to remember.  Most sites will tell you that creating a password that is very random is best, but it doesn’t have to be truly random, in fact, its best if its not!  It only has to be random for others trying to guess.  So what is the magic formula for creating strong yet easy passwords to remember?  Here it is

Pick a sentence that’s specific to you, such as “my dog is a really big pig”.  Nice, that seems odd, but easy to remember however most places don’t allow spaces and this would be easy for a dictionary brute force attack.  So let’s make a few adjustments “MyD0g!s@reallybigp1g”.  See what I did there?  A few capital letters, changed a few letters to special characters that I can remember and BAM!  That’s a very secure password, but should be easier to remember because, hey my dog is a really big pig.

Another good way to create complicated passwords, is to print out a square sheet of random characters, including special, lower and upper case that has at least a 100 or more characters (like a 10×10 grid, but the more the better.  Try to make it use a lot of different weird characters if possible.  Here is a link to a site that can randomly generate it for you.  How it works is, you remember one of the special characters in the top row and one on the far left column, find the character where the 2 meet and start typing every character from that one, up to however long your password needs to be.  There is your password!  Super random, and you even have the password printed out for you and everyone to see, but only you know where your password is in the big mess of characters!

2 Factor Authentication

Security for computers is important, but the general thinking to keep them and your accounts secure, is to create complicated passwords of length, random numbers and symbols.  This does not mesh well with our inability to remember really complicated passwords with symbols and numbers.  This is where 2FA (2 factor authentication) can help.  It adds an extra layer of security, because not only do you need to have a password (that can be a bit easier to remember) to login, but you also need a 2nd, generally physical piece as well.

There are a few options for 2FA.  Google has had a few for awhile now, such as using your phone as the additional authentication method.  They can either send you a code to your phone through SMS that you enter after putting in your username and password or they even have a new method, where you just hit “Allow” on your phone when you login to your google account (and obviously just deny it when it’s not you).  This works really great for blocking people trying to remotely hack into your account, because it’s a practical impossibility to get the 2nd authentication unless they also steal your phone.

Some other decent methods would be the YubiKey, where you have a physical USB “key” that authenticates with a 3rd party server online to verify your identity.  It also has other options as well, as you can use it to login to windows 10 for example.  Just plug the YubiKey into the USB port, and windows will auto log you in (after the initial setup).  Much easier than trying to remember Passwords.

YubiKey 4 & YubiKey 4 Nano

After carful consideration, I have decided to change my travel rate to my usual rate per hour.  The cost of keeping the car on the road, and raising gas costs are a bit much for me, and the fact I'm only making 1/2 my wage while driving on top of having to keep the car going has been a challenge.  I have NO plans to add additional costs on top of my usual rate for travel as many do (rate + $ per km).  

This will take effect on June 1st, 2014.  

Thank you for your understandings!  

My Website has recently lost some changes.  Most things should be back in the next few days.

Here’s a tip that can give you access to webmail and the internet even if your computer will not boot.  Some technical knowledge is nessisary, but even novices can usually make this work.

So you may or may not of heard of Linux, but what you probably don’t know is that you can download a version of it and boot right into it from a CD (to a working desktop where you can access files, internet, music etc) without installing it!  This means you can load to a fully working computer, without touching your exsisting computers files.  Assuming your computer was working just fine, you could load a Linux CD into your computer, reboot and select to boot from CD (some computer do this automatically) and you would be using linux!  To get back to your normal computer operations, just shutdown, remove the CD when it asks, and start the computer again, your now back to your computer like normal!  

This has some very real benifits for a computer that has crashed.  For one, chances are, when your computer crashes, its due to a software problem or a dieing or dead hard drive.  By booting from a linux CD, you can still use your computer for basic operations and even advanced ones for those willing to learn.  Besides being able to access the web, you can also access your computers files!  Imagine you need to send a file you were working on to a co-worker, but your computer just wont boot because you got a nasty virus.  Pop in the linux CD, boot from it and simply double click the HDD icon right on the desktop to get access to all your computer files!  You can then login to your email like gmail or hotmail and send the file off or even tweak it first, then send it (Ubuntu comes with a full office suit)!  Awesome eh?

Think of another situation.  Your computer wont load but its old, so you just purchased a new one.  However there are a few files you want to retrieve, but they are not worth $100+ for data recovery.  Put in the CD and boot, access the hard drive and copy the files you want to a USB stick.  

Linux is a very powerful Operating System and over the years has become very easy to use.  That being said it can do a lot more then just this, and if your interested, I would recommend you play around with it and google search anything you would like to know or issues you run into.  There is a HUGE community out there helping each other out with all things Linux.  If you find you really enjoy Linux, you can also just install it!  Be warned though, if you install it and you want to keep the data on your computer (including your files) then choose the “install side by side with windows”.  This is also refered to as “dual booting” as you can choose to load into windows (or Mac, depending on your computer) or Linux.

There are many different variants or “Distros” of linux to pick from, but one has stood out more then the rest called Ubuntu, and its what I recommend.

In order to get your own CD of Ubuntu, you need to download and burn it on to a cd.  There is a download link and instructions on the page bellow (please read the instructions!).  I recommend you download the 32 bit versions to insure compatibility.  

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

If you have a old computer (pre-2005), you can also try Xubuntu, which is Ubuntu but uses a different desktop interface that requires less resources (aka runs nicer on older computers).  

http://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/

Here is a link to help you boot from CD.

http://www.wikihow.com/Boot-a-Computer-from-a-CD