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What happened to Digital Equipment Corporation?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing June 20, 2017October 3, 20181980s, 1990s, altavista, amiga, apple, commodore, compaq, computer security, d-link, DEC, Digital Equipment Corporation, Digital Research, firewall, hp, IBM, intel, lexmark, linksys, macintosh, netgear, PIP, spam, syntax, unix, windows nt, x86

Digital Equipment Corporation was perhaps the second most important computer company in history, behind IBM. Its minicomputers challenged IBM, and, indeed, Unix first ran on a DEC PDP-7. DEC’s Alpha CPU was one of the few chips to make Intel nervous for its x86 line. It created the first really good Internet search engine. In a just and perfect world, DEC would still be dominating. Instead, it faded away in the 1990s. What happened to Digital Equipment Corporation, or DEC?

There’s a short answer and a long answer.

D-Link vs TP-Link

Dave Farquhar Servers and Networking January 5, 2017August 3, 20171990s, d-link, FCC, linksys, TL

If you’re looking for the pros and cons of D-Link vs TP-Link, I have experience with both and I’m glad to share it.

D-Link is a well established brand. Founded in 1986, it started doing business as D-Link in 1994. It’s been around a long time. If you’ve been involved with computers for any length of time, you’ve probably heard of it.

I don’t blame you if you’ve never heard of TP-Link. They were founded in 1996 but if you were buying their stuff before 2005, you’re well ahead of me.

DD-WRT compatible routers

Dave Farquhar DD-WRT November 1, 2016July 15, 2017d-link, linksys, TL, wrt54g

It’s not as easy to find DD-WRT compatible routers as it should be. Or maybe I should say it’s not as easy to find out if a particular router is compatible with DD-WRT as it could be. Here’s the trick.

TP-Link TL-SG1008D vs TP-Link TL-SG108

Dave Farquhar Servers and Networking September 16, 2016January 29, 2018d-link, debian, intel, link speed, linksys, red hat, TL

TP-Link has two inexpensive 8-port switches aimed at the consumer market: the TP-Link TL-SG1008D and TP-Link TL-SG108. If you’re wondering about TP-Link TL-SG1008D vs TP-Link TL-SG108, I can sum it up pretty easily.

Who you’re asking for makes a big difference. If you’re asking for yourself, you probably want the TL-SG108. If you’re asking for a friend, the TL-SG1008D may be worth considering. Read on to see why.

Cyber security podcasts I listen to

Dave Farquhar security March 24, 2016June 13, 2017Australia, CISO, d-link, isc, Liquid Matrix, podcast

Yesterday, after reading a post in which I cautioned about a popular security podcast, someone asked me what cyber security podcasts I do listen to. I wrote this up a long time ago and never posted it for some reason, so now I’m correcting the oversight. Here’s my collection of the best of the best security podcasts.

These are the security podcasts I’ve been listening to for several years now and continue to recommend. Security podcasts are a good way to keep in touch with current issues, and also a good way to get continuing education.

When DD-WRT doesn’t work with Charter

Dave Farquhar DD-WRT, Servers and Networking January 11, 2016April 9, 2017d-link, dell, linksys, WAN, wrt54g

I set up a DD-WRT router on Charter’s Spectrum broadband, and had a hard time getting it to work. It wouldn’t pull an IP address on the WAN side, or it would pull a 192.168 address rather than a Charter public address.

Here’s what I had to do to fix it.

TP-Link TL-WR840n vs TL-WR841n

Dave Farquhar Servers and Networking January 4, 2016July 16, 2017belkin, d-link, netgear, TL

If you need an inexpensive DD-WRT compatible router, TP-Link is probably your best choice. But there are some big differences when you compare the TL-WR840n vs the TL-WR841n.

I’ve been running the TL-WR841n for more than two years, so I’m familiar with it. I’ve considered supplementing it with a secondary router, and the TL-WR840n was one I looked at.

What to do when your router isn’t in the DD-WRT router database

Dave Farquhar DD-WRT, Servers and Networking May 22, 2015August 14, 2016d-link, DDWRT, TL, tp link

If you have a router and want to run DD-WRT on it, but can’t find the router in the router database, you may have learned the hard way that the router database is a couple of years out of date.

But not all hope is lost. Here’s how to find a build, if one exists.

How to open a D-Link GDS-2205 5-port gigabit switch

Dave Farquhar Hardware January 16, 2014January 6, 2014Blade, capacitor, capacitors, d-link, philips

I have a D-Link GDS-2205 switch that I picked up cheaply. It turned out it was cheap because it didn’t work. But I thought I’d try to open it and look for bulging capacitors, since that’s a common problem with low-end network equipment.

Opening these boxes is tricky, but not impossible.

Another day, another router backdoor

Dave Farquhar security January 3, 2014December 5, 2015Ars Technica, cissp, d-link, dd wrt, Exploitation, linksys, malware, netgear

Ars Technica dropped this bombshell toward the end of the day yesterday: A backdoor in Linksys and Netgear (and possibly other) routers. The exploit works on a weird port, so it’s not remotely exploitable, nor is someone going to drop it with some crafty Javascript like the recent D-Link backdoor, but it’s not out of the question at all for malware to do a pivot attack. Here’s how it would work: Once a computer is infected, it could attack the router and infect it too, so that once someone disinfects their computer, the router could re-infect the computer at a later date. A router is a great place to hide, because nobody looks at it, and they have ample storage on them to exploit..

What can you do about it? Read more

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