I’ve just started my second year at university. My degree is supposed to be three years long, but I’ll stretch it out to three and a half because I failed stuff bigger is better. I’m still doing computing. This year comes one of the units I’ve eagerly anticipated: Algorithms. It’s programming in C, finally, after a year of Java. Also comes a not-so anticipated unit, ICT Project Management. It’s as dull as it sounds.

I’m not really sure why I’m at university. Mostly just because I can’t figure out anything else worth doing. I could go get a job, but having done that before, university seems much easier. I enjoy playing around with computers and programming, but I’m not quite confident that I really want a job as a programmer… I should probably figure that out soonish.

After resigning from Principal Computers again before I left to move to Berlin in July last year (which I ended up not doing, sadly enough), I’m now back there working Saturdays again. And I still jump every time the phone rings. Talk about Pavlov’s dog.

I’ve started playing around with Cisco networking gear again. This time I’ve got a 3550 switch, which strangely enough is more of a 24-port router than a switch. It can do some weird and wonderful things. I can’t wait to do the networking unit at university.

The rest of my server is a different matter though. I’ve added two 512MiB sticks of memory to my server, giving it 1GiB total. Compared to the 128MiB that was in it before, memory is bountiful. Which is a good thing, because I’ve switched to using the Apache webserver (which consumes a bucketload of RAM). I was using Lighttpd before, but setting up PHP support on that proved to be a pain in the neck. I’m sure it can be done, but I don’t have the patience to sit down and do it.

Configuration of the Cisco router was going swimmingly up until the point where I had to set up network address translation and port forwarding. I’m not confident with any of the configuration as far as those aspects go, and I’m unwilling to pull my server offline to test whether ‘it might work’. I’ve basically painted myself into a corner, but I’m confident with a bit of reading I can get it up and running.

In other news, I’ve left my job at Principal Computers. I’m in the middle of a week and a half doing nothing, and next Monday (the 2nd of February) I fly to Berlin (via Melbourne, Hong Kong and London) for 19 days of sightseeing and wintery goodness. When I come back it will be straight into a science degree at the University of Tas. The units I’ve chosen for first semester are Discrete Mathematics with Applications 1, Calculus and Applications 1A, Economics for Business and Programming and Problem Solving. Sounds like fun…

Last night I had prepared for the fun by turning on my server’s serial ports in the BIOS, which I had turned off previously because I never thought I’d have a use for them again. Tonight I had to figure out how to use MAKEDEV to set them up. Hardly difficult, but the documentation (as usual) was completely useless. Luckily Google turned up the right command to use. I used a program called minicom to interact with the router over the serial port.

When I turned on the router, it went through its startup routine, and presented me a dialog asking me if I wanted to go through initial configuration. I selected yes, and so I was asked a series of questions, the answers to which I only just understood (I mostly accepted the defaults, which proved to be a pain later). I was silly enough to use 192.168.1.1 as the router’s IP address, which conflicts with my current router (in theory I’d never need to have them both turned on at the same time).

It was at this stage that I tried to configure a DHCP server, only to find that the firmware on my router was too old to support it (it was released in July 2000). I have a newer firmware image (and one that also supports ADSL interface cards and PPPoE), but that requires twice as much flash memory as my router currently has. So off I went to eBay again. With any luck it should arrive within a couple of weeks. I have a feeling this is going to be a fairly long process.

1. Firstly, I want to learn to configure Cisco routers properly, with the goal of some day in the distant future getting a CCNA qualification.
2. Secondly, I needed to fill some more space in my rack.
3. I wanted a modem/router near my server. At the moment my server is connected to the Internet via a wireless connection to a modem at the other end of the house.

I received the router in the mail yesterday, and I was a bit dissapointed. Unfortunately the front bezel had come off, which was a bit annoying. I can glue it back on though, and it’s only a cosmetic thing anyway. Far more important is that they hadn’t shipped it with rack ears, which is one of three reasons I bought it. I sent an email off, and a set of rack ears is on its way.

To make the router useful, you can add any number of different cards (such as for ISDN, ADSL, T1, and so on). Cisco calls these things WICs, for WAN Interface Card. I had to buy an ADSL one. It cost twice as much as the router did, because the ADSL WIC is still used in production, where the router is end-of-life. I also bought an external 56k dialup modem, so that I can set up a backup Internet service (which hopefully will autotomatically switch over) in case my ADSL line drops out (which it does once every three years, for about an hour).

At the moment I’m still waiting on a console cable to connect the router to my PC for the initial configuration. Once I’ve got that, I’ll get stuck into the configuration, and hopefully not blow anything up too badly…