Akamai is the world leader when it comes down to global content distribution. You can see pictures of their NOC.

See Akamai's Network Operations Command Center

From Akamai's unique vantage point of over 18,000 servers in 69 countries, we can not only see and manage our customers' networks, but also observe overall Internet activity. This insight helps our customers monitor e-business solution effectiveness, simplify e-business infrastructure management, and unleash the competitive advantage of superior information flow.

Now I have seen multiple NOC's and worked in a view as well. Adnd I have a couple of questions: why isnt there a movie on the mainscreen like every NOC has? Where is the pizza? And most of all, at what screens do the operators play Doom?

One of the best researches I have seen on Skype, the disadvantages and how to block it. Great Stuff and must read if you are into routing, security or VOIP in general.

skype needle.

Yesterday I did a portscan on an environment with NMAP. They owner of the sites complained to my (excellent) ISP and they... disconnected my IP addresses. I could only access the inetrnet through a proxy server since they thought my system was infected with a Windows trojan.

The downtime of Willy today wasnt caused by my lack of sysadmin skills, my girlfriend desire to turn of the power to do some work on the house, but due to my ISP.

I will never use NMAP again. Bad NMAP! Bad!

I havent spend much time finishing my PVR. But I did replace an old 10Mb hub and 11Mb accesspoint with a new b/g linksys accesspoint. No problems there, couple of minutes. The Windows install disk sucked camels ass though. The problem was that I use 10.0.1.0/24 inside where the default IP of the AP box was 192.168.1.1. As I said, couple of minutes.

I wanted to change the old AP (Asus 802.11b) to a client so it's ethernet can wire my PVR box. That want as trivial and didnt work out, will take a look at it later. However, I have now a full 100Mb switched network at home (wheee1) instead of an old 10Mb half duplex. And the new AccessPoint has both G and B and I was surpissed to find that my new laptop did G as well. So my internal network is once again up to speed with my internet connection. I have 4 Mb down so my fixed and wireless ethernet were becomming the slowerparts of my internetwork connection.

NewsForge has an article about Asterisk on OpenWrt

Asterisk is free software that lets you create a fully functional, easily customizable, private branch exchange (PBX). Businesses like Asterisk because they can save money by using it, and because it is open source, they can add functionality to it easily and inexpensively. Asterisk is also becoming popular with home office users -- so much so that it spawned a new project called Asterisk@Home, which released its 1.0 version last year. Now there's even a version of Asterisk that runs on OpenWrt, a Linux distribution designed to run on your wireless router (see "OpenWrt nears prime time"). I found it to be worthwhile, but I wouldn't depend on it for my home office.

. When I have finished my PVR (havent spend time at it for the last week), I'll be looking out for Asterisk, an opensource kickass VOIP gateway. And quess what kind of router I recently bought? Indeed! I'll be running my little VOIP * server within 12 month I hope :-)