News
Web Changes
Here you will find
information about recent changes to the web site.
20 December 2004
Well .... it's been 9 months since
the site had an update.
28 March 2004
Yes I know .................. the
web site has had another makeover .................
16 November 2003
Changes to the menu style and
colour of all web pages.
New products, services and
general news
Here you will find
information about new products and service that we offer. Also
information about OS updates, etc.
December
2004 - Email Client
We have been performing some testing
of Mozilla Thunderbird. This is a great Email client and works very
well with POP3 or IMAP mail servers. Thunderbird has many features of
Microsoft Outlook, and is free to download and install. It can be
downloaded from
here.
November 2004 - 108Mb/s Wireless
We have seen the 108Mb/s wireless
products on the market for a while now. I have been testing a Netgear
combination, and it looks pretty good. These 108Mb/s units are
starting to come down in price, and their introduction has caused the
54Mb/s units to drop in price also.
August 2004 - White Box Linux
It's been over 6 months since we
introduced White Box Linux, and without a doubt, it has exceeded all
expectations. Updates (security and bug fixes) have been readily
available and we have not experienced any stability issues at all.
27 March 2004 -
Memory prices on the rise
The cost of memory has been on the
rise for the last month or so. SDRAM while not used in current
motherboards is still required for upgrades of older systems. It
would seem that the production of SDRAM is winding back causing the
price to in some cases to exceed the cost of DDR. Indications are
that DDR RAM prices will go through the roof shortly (not sure why)
02 March 2004 -
Wireless hardware
The cost of wireless routers has
continued to drop, and with the number of new notebooks being
purchased with wireless capability, we have seem an increase in the
take up of this technology. For these products (with wireless built
in) the cost to install a wireless router is now not much more than
a 'standard' Internet router.
04 February 2004
- White Box Linux
White Box Enterprise 3.0 has
continued to perform exceptionally well. We have had in running on
more than 8 servers and a gateway for over a month now with no
issues at all.
02 January 2004 -
Linux server base
Well after a lot of investigation
into Linux distributions, we think we have come up with the best
solution. We have decided that White Box Enterprise linux 3.0 is the
way to go. This product is based upon Red Hat Enterprise 3.0 and
should be a stable base for servers well into the future. It has
been fully tested and is ready to go.
23 December 2003 -
Xmas New Year period
We will be providing normal
services over the Xmas Year period up to 11th Jan. 2004. We will be
having a break between 12th Jan. 2004 up to the 18th Jan. 2004.
05 November 2003 -
RedHat - Mandrake
After a few questions regarding
the change from RedHat to Mandrake, I should point out that this
change is with respect to servers only. We are still providing
RedHat 9.0 as a client operating system. Investigations are on-going
to determine if and when RedHat 9.0 will be replaced as a client.
27 October 2003 -
Mandrake 9.2
Mandrake 9.2 has passed our
testing with flying colours ...........
Mandrake has a similar structure to
RedHat and also uses RPM packages. This makes the transition from
RedHat to Mandrake (where needed) much simpler.
02 October 2003 -
D-Day for Cable Providers
The 2nd of October 2003 marks the
end of the Transitional license for cable providers. If you have
cabling work done (network, phone or security), ask to see the cable
guy's license. For this type of work, he/she must hold a valid BCL,
Open or Restricted license.
18 Setpember 2003 -
Linux platform
We have done some extensive
testing with Mandrake 9.1 and must say it looks very good. We
haven't worked with Mandrake for many years now, but see this as an
excellent replacement for the RedHat based servers. Will wait for
the 9.2 release of Mandrake before we finalize this.
12 Setpember 2003 -
54g wireless
There has been a lot of the 54Mbs
wireless products hitting the market, and the pricing seems to be
going down very quickly. We have done installations with both
LynkSys and Netgear 54g products to date, and both are looking very
good. With the pricing as it is for the 54g, I don't see that the
DLink 22Mbs products will be around much longer (good as it is).
25 August 2003 -
RedHat 9.0
The RedHat 9.0 SMB and NFS issue
has not been resolved and in one case we have rolled back to the
previous release. With RedHat looking to continue down the
'commercial release only' path, it may be time to consider a
different Linux release for server/gateway/router implementations.
23 August 2003 - ADSL
services
With some competition in the DSL
service providers area, seems a lot of customers are now opting for
ADSL services. In a lot of cases, the DSL service is not much more
per month than their old dial-up service. This means with the
increased take-up of DSL services, the ADSL Modem/router prices are
on the way down.
20 July 2003 - RedHat
9.0 issues
There have been some issues with a
couple of the RedHat 9.0 installations. Problems around NFS links
and SMB shares. Testing has shown some as yet unexplained
intermittent problems with shares becoming un-available. More
testing to be done.........
03 July 2003 -
Wireless hardware
The past few months have seem the
cost of wireless hardware drop even further. Cable is still a
cheaper alternative, but the gap is getting smaller. 54Mbs products
are now available from most suppliers, and this seems to have caused
the cost of 11Mbs and 22Mbs products drop in price.
23 May 2003 -
VPN Services
It seems that VPN services have
suddenly caught everyone's attention. We have been very busy in this
area of late. So we have included some info on the VPN services we
offer here.
02 May 2003 - RedHat
9.0
Managed to get an early release of
RedHat 9.0. We have fully tested this version and we will install it
for all future production servers.
28 March 2003 -
Wireless
Over the past months, we have seen
the cost of Wireless products drop dramatically. This now makes
Wireless a real alternative for the SOHO and Home customer. See our
new Wireless product page for more
details
18 March 2003 -
LinkSys BEFSR41
After a number of disappointments
using the BEFSR41 with Bigpond cable customers, we have finally
withdrawn the use of this device with Bigpond Cable. We have tried a
number of versions of the firmware, only to find that (in some
cases) it has a
problem with re-connecting after the IP address has been updated.
We will continue to use these units
with Optus cable and ADSL services, as they have performed without
fault here. Just seems to be a Bigpond Cable issue (again).
There has been a huge drop in the price of the
LinkSys BEFSR41 router lately. This router is suitable for Cable (Optus and
Bigpond) and ADSL Internet sharing. As a result of the price decrease, we are
able to offer this service at a reduced price. See
here for the product details. For more
information our contact details are
here.
14 November 2002 - Red Hat 8.0
Testing of Red Hat 8.0 is now successfully
completed. All future installations will now use RH 8.0. At this point there
seems to be no need to upgrade servers that are currently running either RH 7.2
or RH 7.3.
03 November 2002 - Red Hat 8.0
To date we have tested the following functions:
Internet Gateway :- Cable/ADSL and Dial-up access
Domain Controller :- Windows 95, 98, 2000 and Xp clients
Firewall :- iptables
File Server :- Windows clients (W95, W98, W2000 and xp)
DNS Server
DHCP Server
Results have been excellent. We now only need
to test the following before we put 8.0 into production.
Print Server :- Parallel and USB interface
26 October 2002 - Red Hat 8.0
We have taken delivery of Red Hat 8.0 and will
be testing it over the coming weeks.
09 September 2002 - Linksys router
and Bigpond
We have been using Linksys Internet routers for
our Optus cable customers for some time now. These are an excellent product.
Awhile ago, a version of the firmware, to allow login to Bigpond cable, was
released for this product. We have been testing this for some time now and the
results have been great. So this means that we now have another product (along
with the Dlink & Netgear routers) that can
be used with Bigpond cable!
17
August 2002 - New
host
Well we have now moved or web hosting over to
Cosmos.
17
June 2002 - Red Hat
7.3
We have now completed all testing of the Red Hat 7.3
distribution. All functionality below has passed with flying colours:
Internet Gateway :- Cable/ADSL and Dial-up access
Domain Controller :- Windows 95, 98, 2000 and Xp clients
Firewall :- iptables
File Server :- Windows clients (W95, W98, W2000 and xp)
Print Server :- Parallel and USB interface
DNS Server
DHCP Server
All future installations will now use 7.3
02
June 2002 - Red Hat
7.3
We have been very busy during May, and as a
result the progress of testing Red Hat 7.3 has been delayed. To date the
following functionality has been tested to our satisfaction:
Internet Gateway :- Cable/ADSL and Dial-up access
Firewall :- iptables
File Server :- Windows clients
This leaves the following major components
to be tested
Print Server :- Parallel and USB interface
Domain Controller :- Windows 95, 98, 2000 and Xp clients
12
May 2002 - Red Hat
7.3
We have just taken delivery of Red Hat 7.3
and will test this over the coming days. At this point, it is unlikely that we
will retrofit existing servers as Red Hat 7.2 (and the few on Red Hat 7.1) have
been performing without error/down time.
21 April 2002 -
Two new products
With the increased use of Windows XP,
people are more aware of Windows Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) capabilities.
The provision of this feature is now included as one of Net Connection products.
Click here for more details.
With the cost of Internet Routers coming
down, this option has become more popular. This product has also been added to
the Net Connection list of products. Click
here for more details.
25 March 2002 -
Net Connection joins the farm
Net Connection has provided a PC for
exclusive use for the Samba build farm. Samba is an important part of our
production and this is a small way to contribute to the Samba team. More
information about the Samba Build Farm can be found
here.
05 March
2002 - New look to our web site
Well, we have totally changed our web site.
Hope you like it.
11
February 2002 - Samba
- 2.2.3a tested
Samba 2.2.3a has been tested on our PDC,
Backup server and Internet Gateway test beds. No issues resulted and it will be
used in all future servers.
08
February 2002 - New
Samba package - 2.2.3a released
Samba 2.2.3a has been released and we will
test it over the next few days.
31 January 2002 - New Internet Gateway
(for Internet sharing)
Over the last month, we have been developing a
new product. This unit will provide Internet sharing for cable modem, ADSL or
dial-up access, for about half the cost of the standard Low end - base server.
Check
out the details here.
14 January 2002 - Back after the Xmas
break
Well we are back from the Xmas break. Things have
been busy during January ....... busier than expected. Apologies to those who
have experienced minor delays during this period (particularly for installation
services). But now we are back in full force.
27 November 2001 - Red Hat 7.2
The following functionality has been tested successfully with Red Hat 7.2:
Print Server :- Parallel and USB interface
Internet Gateway :- Cable and Dial-up access
Firewall :- iptables
Domain Controller :- Windows 95, 98, 2000 and Xp clients
File Server :- Windows clients
All future servers will be configured with Red
Hat 7.2.
11 November 2001 - Red Hat 7.2
We have just started testing Red Hat 7.2. We
expect to put this into production in about 3-4 weeks from now. To date it is
looking very stable. When it has proved to be up to standard, we will then
implement it with all new server installations.
At this point, we don't expect to retrofit
existing servers that are currently running Red Hat 7.1. This platform (RH 7.1)
has proved to be very reliable and stable.
14 October 2001 - iptables
We have finished our testing of iptables for
firewall implementation and all future gateways will employ iptables. This is a
natural progression towards Red Hat 7.2 which is not expected to include
ipchains support. iptables has also proved to be much easier to maintain when
compared to ipchains.
13 October 2001 - new samba package
(2.2.2)
This is primarily for some bug fixes and the
functionality is similar to the 2.2.1a release. After some recursive tests, it
will be implemented into our server production.
30 September 2001 - Bookcase server
A new server has been introduced to our range.
This is a very small unit which will fit into a home situation much better than
a normal sized PC. Although it is a 'high-end' server, we feel that the size of
this unit will be very appealing to the home network user. Go to the
Products
page for more details and a picture.
15 September 2001 - The last of Red Hat
7.0
All servers previously running Red Hat 7.0 have
now successfully been migrated to Red Hat 7.1. Only a small number of servers
required additional memory. Red Hat 7.1 is proving to be the most stable release
to date.
1 August 2001 - Red Hat 7.1
We have finished testing Red Hat 7.1. All future
servers will now be implemented with Red Hat 7.1. At this point, Internet
gateways will still employ ipchains. We are currently still testing iptables and
expect this to be ready for implementation in about 4 weeks. Existing servers
that currently employ Red Hat 7.0 will be upgraded to Red Hat 7.1 over the
following weeks. While Red Hat 7.0 has been a successful release, all testing
indicates that Red Hat 7.1 is much more stable and efficient. The additional
memory requirements of Red Hat 7.1 is considered a small cost for the additional
stability.
30 July 2001 - Samba 2.2.1a released
This official release supports Windows 2000
logins. It will be included in all production servers from this point.
Send mail to
service@netconnection.com.au with
questions or comments about this web site.
