Byte by Bite

by Marv Dealy

“We went to the Fox site (and the news group) … hundreds of emails asking for help [but] no response from Mozilla. We uninstalled and reinstalled and it worked. We then tried to download the latest version [and again got the] “can’t find server” so we put the old one back on and it worked for a day or so then same message.”

“Some say it is Norton; went to their site and no one over there is addressing it. Today we turned off the firewall – we have Firefox 1.5 and the firewall is 2004. I like Firefox but not this week – the wife wants to go back to Internet Explorer. Do like your part of the paper! Thanks for any help.”

Well Steve, we’ve got to get this under control so you can get back to building your wonderful railroad (buffs will want to check out his web at http://members.bigvalley.net/norma/index.html -- there’s a whole lot of HOin’ going on).

I wandered over to Mr. Google’s house and searched for the phrase “firefox norton firewall” and the first listing (from the forums at Mozilla.org) addressed, I believe, the issues you describe. Titled “How to configure Norton Internet Security,” the posting walks you through step by step settings for NIS 2005. The post assures us that the settings for earlier versions, such as your 2004, are similar enough that these directions should help to get you through the steps. The post also notes that after updating NIS your security settings might have defaulted to factory settings that prevent you from seeing the Internet.

See if this doesn’t work for you before going back to Internet Explorer, by now a five or six year-old program fraught with the dangers of flapping open barn doors in the security area. I use the same version of Firefox as you and your wife and don’t use NIS, as I work behind routers that provide firewall security. I’ve seen any number of computers with problems caused by NIS trying to be helpful, but you can’t rule out the firewall in Windows, either, as it could have reset itself and be part of the problem as well. Check your setting at Start then Control Panel, and choose Security Center. If you’re behind a firewall in a router, you can turn off the Windows firewall.

It’s handy if you make a log of these types of changes; when something goes wrong in the future (and it will) look at your log and undue what you just changed, and see if it doesn’t fix the problem.

And a word to Norma about the soon to be released Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3: return of the somethingorothers – Microsoft is releasing its third stab at an update for Internet Explorer 7, and says it expects a fouth to be forthcoming at about the same time it finally releases its upgrade to Windows, now called Vista.

I thought they’d call it Horizon, as the release seems to always be just over the, well, you know. They might have also opted to call it Rainbow, again for obvious reasons. The new IE7 finally offers tabbed browsing, which allows you to have multiple web pages open in a browser, and gives the ability to click back and forth between the pages by using the tabs at the top of the browser window. Tabbed browsing is something that Firefox users have enjoyed for sometime now.

On to an email from Donald W. Smith, Computer Science Instructor, Columbia College, who writes: “Marv and staff: I sent the following in January after you published an article

promoting (almost advertising!) for satellite internet. I would love to hear your follow-up on this issue, since at the time, you were planning on dumping your T-1 line and connecting through a satellite vendor. Thanks, Don”

Well, Don, I don’t think that what some call my staff bear any responsibility for what I say in this column. If you’re referring to the staff of the newspaper, you need to address those comments to the Editor, but I digress.

Don went on to attach a letter he’d written to comments@uniondemocrat.com, not an email that I can open. If you want to email me write to newsroom@uniondemocrat.com, and the good folks there forward it on to me.

In any event, Don’s January letter quite correctly pointed out some of the problems with satellites, principally latency – the extra time it takes to get a signal into space and back versus the time to just send it over a plain old telephone wire. That latency means that if you want to play a tank game online, your guy will get hit multiple times before you get off one shot.

Don also went on to say in rebuttal to my arguments in favor of satellite as an option to connect to the Internet: “I predict that the author of this piece will eat his words of praise for the satellite internet service provider he mentions in his piece. Satellite has been the ‘snake-oil’ of the industry for years, and I predict he’ll go crawling back to the phone company for the T-1 line.”

“I recently spent a few hours helping a friend with a wireless laptop (not satellite) work out how to connect at a wireless hotspot, and at home to. It should be easy, but the games her satellite equipment use forced me to try devious means (tricks that maybe three people in this county understand) to get both to work when she wanted them to.”

Don goes on at length (I’ll paraphrase from here on) about how T-1 has been around for years and that there must have been something wrong with my line. Duh.

After 15 months of giving the phone company dozens if not more than a hundred opportunities to get their act together and get my T-1 to quit hopping like a Mexican jumping bean, I pulled the plug. We now have two DSLs feeding our network with better than 5MB each, which is of course far faster than the 1.5MB the T-1 contract guaranteed 99.9% of the time.

Yes, we also installed a WildBlue satellite system and used it successfully to feed our network. Yes, the latency presented some problems, which we rectified by feeding some of the network through a then-slow SDSL line. We opted recently to add a second DSL line, and “divide” the network with some computers going through one DSL, and others through the second, to divide the work load. The kindly installed from the phone company asked why our first DSL line hadn’t been turned up yet. To our surprise, it was not long before the 416 cap was lifted, and we saw 5MB down in a Speakeasy.net test.

Needless to say an aggregate 10MB through DSL is a lot better than 1.5MB through a satellite. But if you can’t get DSL – and according to varying reports more than ½ of the county can’t – satellite may be your only solution other than barb-wire-fed dial-up.

Read on for one happy satellite user’s opinion: “Hey Marv. I'm e-mailing you right now with my fabulous wireless Internet connection courtesy of WildBlue. The dealer in Oakdale (Prime Direc at 209/848-9200 or 209/848-2600) charged me about $350 for equipment and installation.”

“The installer was here for two or three hours and did a great job hooking up my old Windows 98 PC to our new satellite dish. After he left, I installed a Linksys router (which I bought at Staples for about $70), and now we have wireless Internet in every room of our house.”

“I have two Macintosh computers and they both pick up the wireless signal perfectly. Hooray! This is the biggest thing to happen in Buck Meadows since the 49er Restaurant opened last year (unless you count that small wildfire we had here last February).”

“Thank you for all your help with the Blackberry Inn Wireless Project!”

Ann Marie & John Kleinfelter