In order for someone to use your wireless Internet connection he needs to obtain an IP address from your router, and the router keeps a record of all the IP addresses of computers currently connected in the DHCP table. so, if someone is indeed connected to your wireless router, then it should show in the DHCP table.

to check the DHCP table on a Linksys router do this. Type the IP address of the router in the browser. if you don’t know what IP address the router is using, check the documentation of the router. login and click on the Status tab:

the click on the Local Network, and then click on the DHCP Clients Table:

on the DHCP table you should be able to see the computers currently connected to your wireless router. 

on a Verizon wireless router is even easier to see who is connected to wireless access point. when you login to the router, click on My Network tab and there you should be able to see who is using the router.

I hope this helps you find out who is leeching your wireless Internet connection, if you want further help on this matter, please use the comment section below.

cheers,

Correcting this problem is easy. from Windows 7, click on the Start button and type “ncpa.cpl” on the search field. the network connections window will come up. Right-click your VPN connection and go to Properties:

then, click on the Networking tab, and and select Internet Protocol version 4 (TCP/IP ) and click on Properties

then on the Internet Protocol Properties, click on the Advanced tab:

then uncheck Use default gateway on remote network

click on OK, and then close out of all the VPN windows open. now VPN should not be your default Internet connection when connected to VPN.

Home Internet providers give you a modem for your Internet connection when you sign up with them. most of those modems act as routers as well with DHCP and DNS functionalities built-in. so theoretically, when two computers or more connect to your home router, those computers are part of your network, and you can access the resources on those computers if you have the proper credentials to do so. for example, if you have a desktop connected to your router, and want to access the files on that desktop from another computer connected to the same router, you would do this. get the name or IP address of the desktop computer and then from the other computer  go to the RUN command and type the name or IP address of the desktop like this. \\ipaddressorcomputername\c$ that will map the entire C drive of the desktop.

if for any reason you cannot get to the end computer, make sure both computer are on the same workgroup. by default all windows computers are part of a workgroup called “workgroup” so check if both are on the same network. to do that, on windows 7, right-click the computer icon on the desktop, and go to properties, you should be able to to see to what network the computer belongs to:

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On windows XP you need to click on the computer name tab to see the network the computer belongs to.

the most important thing that you need to know is that computers by default are interconnected, it does not matter if you set them or not, computers are very social in nature. that’s why is very important to secure your wireless router, so intruders cannot gain access to your private network. because once they connect to your wireless access point, they are basically on the same network as you, and from there on, there is nothing that can prevent them from gaining access to your computer, or pulling information off from it.

Changing the Default DHCP subnet in Verizon DSL modem is very easy. login to the router using the default URL http://192.168.1.1 once you get to the logon screen, type the username and password you chose when setting up the router. if you have not setup a password for the router, use the default.

once you’re logged in, click on the My Network tab then click on Network Connections:

Then click on the LAN action mark:

then on the private LAN window change the Modem IP address from the default to any  other IP address you would like to use. I personally chose 192.168.10.1 and then change the DHCP start address to the same IP subnet as the above, then enter the end IP address you want for your DHCP server. if you have just a few computers on your network, a small range like 10 addresses will suffice.

click on Apply, and the router will restart. after it comes back, you should see the changes reflected on your wireless devices.

1. Windows 7 Network Installation
2. Installing Ubuntu Server 10.10
3. Clonezilla Server Installation

taking off from what I left on post # 3, now is time to image our first computer disk. to open the Clonezilla wizard, type this command on the command line in Ubuntu:

sudo /opt/drbl/sbin/dcs

the Clonezilla Wizard should come up. say OK on the default selected option

on the next screen select “Clonezilla-start Start_clonezilla_mode “:

Choose the “Beginner mode” on the next screen:

choose “save disk  Clone computer disk ( s ) and save “:

Next you will need to decide if you want to input the image device name now on the server, or if you want to get prompted from the client machine to enter that info. I would rather do it now:

on the next screen, input the name for the saved image you want to use:

on the next screen, choose the disk type you want to use. for SATA PATA or SCSI drives choose SDA drive type:

what do you want the client machine to do when the imaging process finishes. choose to power off the machine:

in Clonezilla, you can choose to split the imaged disks if those disks are too big. normally a brand new computer disks are not used up that much, but if for a remote reason your hard drive is humongous choose to split it when it reaches 1 TB of size:

click continue on any other option that come up. now your Clonezilla server should be ready to image your first computer:

cool, now we have Clonezilla server waiting for the computer booting from PXE to get imaged. on the next post we will do that.

to avoid this chaos, is better to remind users to change their password ahead of time via email. so the first thing you need to do is check who are those users that haven’t changed their password for awhile, and probably remind those people first. there is a very efficient and simple script I found on this website http://www.rlmueller.net/ to do that beautifully. download the script from here

remove the .txt extension at the end of the file, and change the path of the drive where you want to save the report on line 37 in the script:

If (Wscript.Arguments.Count < 1) Then
Wscript.Echo “Arguments <expirepass.text> required. For example:” & vbCrLf _
& “cscript PwdLastChanged.vbs c:\passwd\expiredpass.txt”
Wscript.Quit(0)
End If

after you do that, execute the file from the run command by typing this command:

cscript c:\passwd\getpassword.vbs “c:\filename\Report.txt

you should get a nice report of all the accounts in AD. it looks crappy, because it grabs all LDAP details, but you can import that data into Excel and divide the fields, and remove the stuff you don’t need. the report should also include the dates when was the last time your AD users changed their password.

there it is. if you need more help on your password change policy setup, let me know.

Now, if there is no DNS servers available to translate website names to IP addresses, your browser will display an error saying that the web page was not found. and this is what I been getting a lot lately. I knew almost immediately the problem was DNS, but I started blaming my cheap Netgear wireless router for the problem, but it puzzled me why I could get to websites using the IP address but not the name. I was getting suspicious, so I did a short search on Google regarding the issue, and found the problem to be common among Comcast users. but still I was not convinced why Comcast would have that issue, then a few days later it was all over the news that Comcast Internet service was disrupted because of DNS issues.. oh boy said I, these people finally found out what I been having for awhile.

But to be honest, I been using Comcast services for about 10 years and never have had mayor issues with them, and this DNS problem can be solved easily without getting downgraded 10 years behind by using a Verizon DSL connection, because that’s  the only alternate service currently available in my area. my solution is to use other DNS servers rather than the ones provided by Comcast automatically. there are many free DNS services, the most famous are opendns.org and Google. I would choose the latter when it comes to trust.

Google DNS server IP addresses are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and you can enter them on your computer or your router. I  recommend using these DNS IP addresses at the router level, in that way you don’t change any settings on the computer.

In the following tutorial I will show you how I changed the DNS IP addresses on the Netgear router I have, but most home routers follow the same  procedure so this should give you an idea on how to do it on your router as well.

open your browser, and type the IP address of your router. mine is 192.168.1.1 ( default ) if you don’t know the IP address of your router, open the command prompt, and type “ipconfig” normally the “gateway” IP address is the IP address of your router.

the login window should come up.

type the username and password. if you haven’t entered any username and password for the router, check the documentation for the default username and password.

Once inside the router web page, click on “Basic Settings” and under the Domain Name Server (DNS) Address option, select Choose These DNS Servers and type the Google numbers as listed above. one as primary and the other as secondary.

Once you have entered the Google DNS numbers, click on Apply. that will disconnect your Internet connection ( if you are connected to the router ) to update the new DNS servers.

that should fix your Comcast DNS problem.

What do you need to setup a home network?

basically to setup a small network you need a router, or a switch, a DHCP server, a DNS server, two or more Ethernet cables, and two or more computers. if you already have a broadband router like a Linksys  router, then the router already has DHCP or DNS services built-in. if you don’t have a router, and only have a switch or hub, then you will need a DHCP server to assign IP addresses automatically, otherwise you need to add IP addresses manually to devices you want to connect to the network.

Setting up the Network

If you already have a broadband router, then grab a RJ45 cable and plug it in the network port on the computer, then plug it in a LAN port on the router.

Some Linksys routers have four LAN ports, and one WAN port. make sure you connect the cable going to the computers on the LAN ports, and connect the Internet cable from the Internet modem on the WAN port. Once you have the computers hooked up, login to your router and make sure DHCP is enabled. by default the DHCP server is enabled on most home routers. setup a DHCP scope according to the many devices you will be connecting to the network.

from the window on the picture above you can enable the DHCP server, set the IP address range, and number of addresses you want to make available for devices to connect to the network. from here you can also set the DNS IP address, and WINS. normally all these addresses are the same as your router IP address.

at this point all the computers connected to the router should have Internet connection, if that’s not the case, then review your setup.

Joining the Computers to the same network

To join a computer to your workgroup right-click on My Computer icon on your desktop or Start menu, and go to Properties then click on the Computer Name tab and click on the Change button. then join the computer to your chosen workgroup.

restart each computer you join to the network, and then try to ping each of the computers you add to the network to make sure they can see each other. to test share folders are accessible through the network share a folder on a computer, and try to access it from another computer on the network. if you can get to the folder, then your network is working, if not, then you need to go back and recheck what went wrong.

now you can install printers, share folders in any computer and access those resources from any other computer on the same network.

The wireless built-in utility in windows 7 is almost the same as on Windows Vista – it only has a few differences. if you notice, on windows vista the start menu has an option “Connect to”

Windows 7 does that have this option, so you will need to go to the control panel in order to access the wireless management tool.

that’s the network and Internet applet in control panel in Windows 7. from here you can configure wireless networks, or the LAN TCP/IP settings. if you click on the applet it will bring the the options for the configuration:

from the window above if you click on Connect to a network option it will bring the wireless access points currently available around you:

from here you can connect to any wireless access point you have access to it. if the wireless is security-enable it will ask for the security key:

and that’s all you basically have to do to connect to your wireless access point.

Setting up the Linksys router with static IP address

login to your router using whatever IP you have setup on the router, and click on the Setup tab. on the Internet Connection Type choose Static IP on the drop down menu:

on the setting fields that come up, enter the appropriate information.

• Internet IP address: Enter your chosen IP address
• Subnet Mask : Enter the subnet mask of your network here
• Gateway : Enter the default gateway here
• Static DNS : Enter at least 2 DNS server IP addresses

click on Save Setting underneath and that should make the router use the static IP address instead of the dynamically assigned one.