Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

RIP yi.org?

Friday, September 29th, 2017

My very first host name was a free dynamic host name provided by the good folks behind yi.org. It was a classic story line, kid with his first always-on internet connection (cable, later ADSL) wants to host a web page on the world wide web! This ran well for me for well over a decade… until today.

I don’t even recall how I ended up with this free service, they were one of the first, but probably not the first dynamic host name provider. I suspect I just liked that “yi.org” was many characters shorter than the alternatives.

Unfortunately, as best as I can tell, the site has been shut down. My best guess, based on the snapshots available from archive.org, is that sometime in 2015 it all went away.

Apparently, they have graciously maintained DNS service for the host names that were in their system (I suspect updates have been disabled for a while). I wouldn’t have noticed that the site was gone if the static IP address for my little site finally had to be revised.

Long ago I deprecated that host name in favour of a lotus-land.ca address (of which I have control); however, I still type the shorter “yi.org” address often.

RIP yi.org, and thanks for all the great lookups!

Change a Dialup Connection to 10 digit dialing. Hi Saskatchewan!

Monday, May 13th, 2013

My out of the blue problem today was resolving a dialup issue for a store in Saskatoon. Yes – we do support a few people using old fashioned analog modem connections.

Everything seemed normal, the phone cord connections, the modem was picking up the line, the ISP’s dialup number was answering if dialed on a cell phone, and it was entered correctly in the dialup settings… it was a puzzle. The on-screen error in Windows was a fairly generic 676.

Until the local contact mentioned that Saskatchewan just added a second area codes. The original area code 306 and the new 639. This has required mandatory 10 digit dialing – 10 digit dialing was optional for a year, but as of May 11, it’s mandatory.

The easy way to dial 10 digits in Windows XP is to shim the area code into the phone number box where there used to be just the 7 digits.

The “proper” way to make this change is to go to the dialup connection properties. Select “Use Dialing Rules”. Open the “Dialing Rules” window. Edit your location. Under “Area Code Rules”, add a new rule for area code 306 (for Saskatchewan) and set a new rule for all prefixes to “Include the area code”. Save everything and try it.

Getting the IP Address of a Dialup Modem User

Friday, November 23rd, 2012

Here are a few borrowed screenshots  to illustrate how to get the IP address of a dialup modem user in Windows XP. Yes, believe it or not I do run into dialup connection support once in a while. This is particularly tough to troubleshoot since I don’t have any dial up connections configured on my laptop – I don’t even have a landline at home!

Note: If the user has access to a web browser, visiting a website such as WhatIsMyIP.com is probably easier.

When the dialup modem connection to the user’s ISP has been established, the “two overlapping computers” icon is added near the time at the lower right of the screen.

Right click on it to open a pop up dialog.

XP Dialup Modem Icon

 

Left click on Status.

That opens this window, with the General tab selected.

 

Left click on the Details tab.

The user’s IP address is Client IP address, of course, if you’re reading this, you probably know enough to have guessed that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images modified from:

 

Phew, first blog post in months. It’s crazy how time flies when there’s a lot going on.

Minimizing Data and Voice Costs when Travelling to Europe

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

I’ve recently returned to Vancouver after a trip to Europe – a couple days in Barcelona and a Western Mediterranean cruise on the Carnival Magic.

I try to avoid using Fido’s atrociously priced international roaming for voice and data.

Here’s a rough overview of the system that I’ve pieced together:

  • I carried my iPhone with me and left it on. Technically, I was roaming, but I had no intention of receiving or making phone calls except in emergencies.
  • Data roaming on the cellphone was also off.  I considered buying the roaming data package, but $50 for 10MB of data seemed a bit steep. In hindsight, it’s not a horrific rate if I could somehow make sure only email was being downloaded.
  • Before leaving, I unconditionally forwarded all voice calls to voice mail.  With some cell providers, if you are roaming and you choose not to answer a phone call, the call will route back to your cellphone provider and you are charged roaming rates while someone leaves you a voice mail. I don’t think this currently applies to Fido; however, I wasn’t about to take the chance. Besides, I didn’t want my phone ringing during the middle of the night (I was, after all, in European time zones).
  • I instructed people to text message me if there was anything critical.
  • I have rules in my mailbox to forward emails that are critical (like our web servers being offline) to Fido’s email to SMS address, e.g. 604nnnnnnn@fido.ca.  These are actually active rules at all times, not just when I’m travelling.
  • Of course, the normal voice mail SMS notifications would get sent to me too.
  • With my cellphone on and technically roaming, I would receive the most important messages.  Receiving text messages while roaming is supposed to be free on Fido. I haven’t checked my invoice yet, but I’ve done this successfully for previous trips.
  • Interestingly, modern cruise ships have satellite based cellphone service, so even in the middle of nowhere, I could receive these text messages.
  • Internet access on board the ship is a pricey $0.75 per minute.  This was OK for briefly viewing email, but I wasn’t too comfortable using this too often.
  • On dry land, if I had some time to spare, I would look for WiFi.  At some ports, I stumbled upon Internet cafes.  But, much more common in Europe, as opposed to China, is a WiFi enabled coffee shop. With WiFi, I could download  email for offline review.  Internet cafe pricing was less than a few dollars per hour, which compared to the on-ship pricing, is roughly equivalent to free.
  • For voice calls, on the iPhone I used the 3CXPhone VOIP App with a Voip.ms account to make ridiculously cheap phone calls. I set these up prior to travel. Even while in Vancouver, this combination is useful for making cheap long distance calls on an iPhone while on WiFi – in theory, I can make VOIP calls on 3G; however, it hasn’t worked too well in my limited testing.  There’s either too much lag or too little bandwidth.

All in all, for me, the iPhone was a great tool to have when travelling, even if you don’t plan on paying for pricey roaming voice or data.  This obviously only works if you have similar needs to me – I didn’t really want to be connected, but I did want to know of anything critical.

Also useful for the iPhone was the CityMaps2Go App which had offline maps for nearly every city that I was in – perhaps I’ll post about that separately some day.  Evernote and Dropbox were also useful, but make sure that you use the flagging features to make the files and notes that you need available offline!