IT Professionals

DST 2007 – Are You Ready?

Posted by on Mar 5, 2007 | 27 Comments

Today I received a friendly reminder that come the 11th of this month, I had better make sure that my Pocket PC was ready for the change to the way we experience Daylight Savings Time here in the US.

In years past, our Pocket PCs would simply update themselves for the time change as needed, no problem there. Unfortunately however, my mobile was on Cingular’s list of affected devices that required the installation of a corrective patch.

Oh no, I use Linux and the Cingular tute is only available for ActiveSync on Windows.

When I first gazed on this tute explaining the method to be used to install the DST2007 patch, I was curious as to whether a boot into Windows was going to be needed? After looking closer, I found out that by using this method,those of us on Ubuntu can easily get the required patch to our Pocket PCs easily and quickly, with no fuss whatsoever.

Is your mobile phone ready for the change?

So again, is your phone ready for the change? If you have not received any text messages, alerts on your last bill or anything like that, then I would be extra sure by visiting your carrier’s website in case any details were slipping through. Cingular (now AT&T) was kind enough to text me a message. With any luck, your carrier did the same for you.

  • Jesse Phelps

    Also, if you go to windows mobile site from your phone (http://www.windowsmobile.com) it automatically forwards you to mobile site and will let you download and install the patch directly to your phone with no PC intervention!

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1155064355 John T Mcf Mood

    Any ideas on network monitors for those of us ‘stubborn’ PC-aholics? I know Mac, I can do Mac, I even own one, but I stubbornly refuse to use it. My father’s nickname was even Mac. But alas, I am a PC.

    • http://chris.pirillo.com/ Chris Pirillo

      Difficult to say. There’s a lot of junk Windows software out there claiming to be something they’re not. Every tool I found seemed to be so esoteric and beyond difficult for an average human being to use.

  • Anonymous

    “The next step: finding a tool to better help me monitor specific device data usage on my home network. Maybe the NetUse Traffic Monitor tool will get there soon?”

    The problem is that while SNMP can (theoretically) provide that sort of information, I’m not sure that Apple’s MIB, and the device itself will support that sort of information.

    Here’s the problem:
    SNMP is providing information about each interface on the Airport (physical or virtual I believe).
    This is limited to the bytes going in/out on the interface (and some other info on the interface itself).

    What it DOESN’T do is decode the packets and see who the talker is.
    In a business environment, that is what network Probes are for (disclaimer, I work for a company that makes network monitoring appliances :) ).

    If you have only one device plugged into each interface, all well and good, easy to figure out. If you have multiple devices plugged into a Hub/Switch, and then the hub plugged into the interface, then the most the SNMP of the Airport will be able to do is narrow the problem down to that Hub/Switch. If the Switch supports SNMP (used to be less likely on consumer switches, but hey, look at Apple :) ), then you can try looking at its interface information, etc.

    With a small-ish network, what you did is probably the easiest approach (keep unplugging till the network traffic drops). With a larger network (or if you’re so inclined), the alternative is to look at the network traffic itself directly. There is a free tool out there called WireShark ( http://www.wireshark.org , formerly Ethereal if that means anything). This is a full (and free) network capture/decode suite that supports multiple platforms (including OSX and Windows natively).

    Once you have the network set up to allow you to capture the traffic (an exercise I won’t go into here because it depends on how your network is set up, what resources you have available, etc.), you can use WireShark to capture a sample of your network traffic, and then with a few easy clicks see a traffic breakdown from the capture, either by Conversation, or by End Point (it has quite a few other features that recommend it over Packet Peeper, but Packet Peeper looks very simple if you just want to capture some packets and look inside, so it sounds like it lives up to its name).

    • http://chris.pirillo.com/ Chris Pirillo

      Yeah, Wireshark didn’t come near to what I was looking for. ;) There’s a reason I didn’t recommend it. It’s beyond difficult to interpret any data that comes through it. Powerful, yes. Friendly, hell-to-the-no.

      • Anonymous

        I’ll concede getting the trace is more challenging, and I will certainly concede that I wouldn’t recommend Wireshark for the Faint of Heart, but if you can get a trace and load it into Wireshark, clicking on “Statistics -> Conversations” or “Statistics -> Endpoints” gives you exactly what you wanted (a list of devices and how much they sending onto the network), so I’m not sure I agree with it being “beyond difficult to interpret any data that comes through”. :)

        The trickier part personally is how to get a capture of your network’s in/out bound traffic. :)

        • http://chris.pirillo.com/ Chris Pirillo

          That does help a tiny bit, but doesn’t come close to being interpretable.

          • Anonymous

            Click on the “IPv4″ tab in either Conversations or Statistics and it will give you a list by their IPv4 address.

            I just checked, and by default it gives you the Ethernet Address.

            Looking at the Endpoints screen of the version I have:
            - There is a row of tabs across the top to select What address type to look at.
            The columns from left to right are:
            Address, Packets, Bytes, Tx Packets, Tx Bytes, Rx Packets, Rx Bytes
            (where Tx= Transmitted, and Rx= Received)

            I don’t get the interpretation problem (really, not trying to pick a fight, just trying to help).

            I’ll admit (and have repeatedly :) ) that Wireshark has a lot going on, can be confusing, and for simpler tasks an easier to use packet capture software is great, but Wireshark is Professional level software (and is in use in IT departments at thousands of companies around the globe).

            I get your frustration with it though, I really do.

            I feel equally frustrated and annoyed when I open up Photoshop or GarageBand and try to do what I think should be easy things.

          • Troy Shimkus

            Thanks for your info, When I first looked at Wireshark, I was a little overwhelmed. I’m an IT guy, but not too heavy on the networking side. I’m trying to figure out where on my home network things are going on. Every now and then my network seems to just grind to a halt, and I don’t know what causes it, so I’m hoping this will help. Your explanation here makes Wireshark much more usable.

    • http://chris.pirillo.com/ Chris Pirillo

      Yeah, Wireshark didn’t come near to what I was looking for. ;) There’s a reason I didn’t recommend it. It’s beyond difficult to interpret any data that comes through it. Powerful, yes. Friendly, hell-to-the-no.

    • http://chris.pirillo.com/ Chris Pirillo

      From the comment thread on https://plus.google.com/107234826207633309420/posts/Z5FeoZwCkK3 – I just learned about a MUCH better alternative to the unwieldy Wireshark: http://www.baurhome.net/software/downloads/ (Eavesdrop). It’s a must for Mac users who want to see traffic patterns on their local machine. Still no word for full-on home network monitoring, though (and don’t mention Wireshark again *wink*).

      • Anonymous

        “(and don’t mention Wireshark again *wink*).”
        Wouldn’t even think of it, an easy to use tool, that people feel comfortable with, and that does what they want is definitely a Good Thing. :)

        • http://chris.pirillo.com/ Chris Pirillo

          But it’s not an easy tool – it’s unintelligible. It crams too much information down your throat – which is awesome if THAT is what you want. I don’t want that. I want something that simply shows me which devices on my network (according to their human-readable DHCP name) are sending data out to the Internet at any given time. Wireshark, again, does NOT do that. ;)

          • Anonymous

            Umm … the “Easy Tool” I was referring to Eavesdrop. :)

          • http://chris.pirillo.com/ Chris Pirillo

            My bad. ;) I appreciate the assistance, though!

  • http://frasercain.com Fraser Cain

    That sounds like a huge business opportunity. Here in Canada there are some serious restrictions on bandwidth. You could imagine that parents would want to be able to monitor their network usage to see if the kids are running huge bandwidth. Reach out to your network of programmers and get something built Chris.

  • Jim Simon

    Reading through all your postings about your ordeal seriously has me worried about the immediate future of cloud computing and the growing trend of ISP’s capping their bandwidth. I understand your issue at present is with Comcast but just like Verizon capping their mobile data plans when they saw AT&T wasn’t losing subscribers over capped plans, all the other ISP’s will be capping theirs too. Leaving the average consumer stuck in the fast fading present.

    What do you see the next 3 years of the internet bandwidth issues looking like?

  • Jim Simon

    Reading through all your postings about your ordeal seriously has me worried about the immediate future of cloud computing and the growing trend of ISP’s capping their bandwidth. I understand your issue at present is with Comcast but just like Verizon capping their mobile data plans when they saw AT&T wasn’t losing subscribers over capped plans, all the other ISP’s will be capping theirs too. Leaving the average consumer stuck in the fast fading present.

    What do you see the next 3 years of the internet bandwidth issues looking like?

    • http://chris.pirillo.com/ Chris Pirillo

      What do I see them looking like? One word: frightening.

  • http://www.bsitko.com Bill Szczytko

    I thought SNMP tools was for the PC crowd. Didn’t realize MAC users used that stuff. HA!!!

    • http://chris.pirillo.com/ Chris Pirillo

      Mac users are geekier than you think – we just expect a design ethos to come along with our tools. ;)

      • http://www.bsitko.com Bill Szczytko

        Hard to disagree with you from a design standpoint. PC was never meant to be beautiful. Honestly I have to ask you … why did you switch from Business to Home with Comcast? For the $? I’m disappointed in you sir…

        • http://chris.pirillo.com/ Chris Pirillo

          Comcast 105/10 – Business is $369.95 vs Residential at $100 on a two-year special. You do the math – and it doesn’t add up.

          I’m not asking for unlimited – I’m just asking for the caps to rise accordingly. I’m paying more for more speed, I should also see a higher cap that’s in line with the download bandwidth (in this case, twice as much as the 50/10 product, so I should have a 500GB cap and would likely fall within that without hassle).

          If, as Comcast contends, I’m a 1% edge case – then there shouldn’t be an issue. Right? Right.

  • http://twitter.com/no_substitute Kim Nilsson

    I was just about to suggest nTop. I’ve used it before and it too delivers lots of information, but some of the graphs and lists actually ARE humanly readable :-) http://www.ntop.org/overview.html

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=515784343 Arne Quanbeck

    Sad to say it, but I’m glad to have Clearwire. I got throttled last week after watching a few movies and updating a Windows Vista machine twice, but at least my bill won’t go up. Even in throttled mode it was fine for surfing, just streaming was broken.

  • Denis Paley

    I know how it feels to have a data cap on my internet services .The only internet I can access except dial-up where I live is through satellite service. I’m using a commercial
    account and my data cap is 525 MB/day. This service costs over $125.00/month.