Sysadmin: Multiple ISP firewall – The setup

After suffering broadband trouble for the past 9 months, including interruptions that lasted a few days, I decided to get an additional line installed by a different ISP. I could have bought one of these multi-WAN devices but decided against it for a couple of reasons: I like a challenge and I wanted to achieve... » read more

Thank you spammers…

I’ve been tired of spam on my websites. The few hundreds messages spammers leave everyday are a bit of a nuisance. Now though, I’ve decided to make them work harder to get their messages ignored. Last week, reCAPTCHA came online. It’s an effort inspired by none other than Luis Von Ahn, so you know it’s... » read more

China Telecom blocking email access?

security01.pngFor months, every time more than a handful of connections were made between my ex-employer's office in Shanghai and their email server in Hong Kong, the latter would become unreachable, not just for email but for web access as well. The strange thing was that access to the rest of the Internet would be untouched.
This prompted me to experiment with ways to circumvent the ISP's port blocking restrictions.
The fight was on!