[sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting notes for Monday April 16th 2018

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):

> A few minutes later Aaron C. came in and had several items including a
> modem Siemens SpeedStream 4100 ADSL+ which he has kindly loaned me.

Definitely generous of Aaron -- but I'll repeat what I said about your
now-security-compromised Netgear:  The Siemens SpeedStream 4100 is _not_
an ADSL modem.  It is an ADSL modem _and_ also does:

o  routing, including RIP version 1 & 2, Spanning Tree Protocol, IGMP
   Multicast, NAT, port forwarding, DHCP client and server, DDNS,
   uPnP, and 802.1d transparent bridging
o  PPPoE and PPPoA
o  IPsec, L2TP, and PPTP VPN client functions
o  stateful firewalling with claimed DoS/DDoS protection, some sort of IDS,
   domain/URL and IP blocking, packet filtering, etc.
o  SNMPv2, NTP
o  Built-in administrative Web server

(Specs doesn't say anyting about it having WAP functionality.)

If it had been _just_ an ADSL router, it would have had none of those
other things built in.   As a reminder, the reason you got into trouble 
with your Netgear is that it _too_ had all of those sorts of extra
functions, badly implemented with an embedded proprietary Linux
distribution that you (apparently) did not maintain, exposed to attack
from the public Internet.

As I said, getting a similar replacement 'ADSL modem' [sic] would IMO 
be just making the same mistake twice.


> A discussion ensued of which routers could use Open-Wrt or DD-Wrt
> software or other efforts to replace the firmware of the routers with a
> more secure version of Linux.

Here's a pretty important question, Bobbie:  Why are you seeking a
router at all?  What are you doing that necessitates one?

It's pretty much always a mistake to seek solutions before you
understand what problem you're trying to solve, and why.


> Don't let Earth Day on the 22nd of April slip by without attention!

Also, there's the annual combination John Muir birthday and Earth Day
celebration (free with free parking) the day before, Saturday the 21st,
at the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez.
https://www.nps.gov/jomu/planyourvisit/event-details.htm?event=E5645F52-1DD8-B71B-0B4C0D82EC896EE5