Paul A. Luzzi

September 29, 2010

Some updates on the new vpn-router build. Alot of work spent, but in the end, its the same cutoff just under 8 hours. In fact, its much more dynamic now – sometimes 1 hours, sometimes 6 hours, but never more than 8 hours. Some research shows that the vpnc client can not “re-key” when the vpn concentrators ask for it, so they all stop at 8 hours or less. With that in mind, I just killed the new box, and went back to the old one. It was fine, so no need to mess with it. I’ll probably use the unused box now for Untangle, the standalone network filtering tool that traps all kinds of stuff.

Also found out something interesting tonite. I’ve been messing with my old HP dv9208nr laptop again. Right now its running win7 on it. It was originally taken out of service because wireless stopped working. That was on vista64. I loaded win7 hoping for some better drivers, but no luck there. In fact, alot of HP’s tools (advisor, update, etc) wont work at all. Some will work if I change compatibility mode to vistaSP2 on all the binaries, but what a headache. But the interesting thing is this – after I add, THEN REMOVE some HP software, the wireless comes up. So as an example, I added wireless assistant, rebooted – still no wireless, no surprise there. Remove the HP wireless assistant, and upon reboot – wireless is up and working. Reboot, and its gone again though. But adding and REMOVING AGAIN, of the wireless assistant (or quick touch buttons, or any other of the myriad of hp software) and its back again. Its surely no fix, but I do find it interesting. I’d love to know what the hp software does upon de-install, that causes the wireless card to be recognized again.