Connectivity Day

[justben]

So in theory work likes me to… ya know… work. Ya know, usually at least. Today, however, I’m dubbing “Connectivity Day.” Why?

• IBM corporate is switching the VPN software for (many of) its employees. This means I have to get the new VPN software installed and working on my laptop before tomorrow or else lose access.
• My cell phone reception at

Comments

[starlancer]

I have had extremely good service overall from Vonage. Reliability has approached (not quite equaled, but approached) conventional POTS, as long as Comcast has done their part, which is the vast majority of the time. Very occasionally I will get some odd clicking. I'm not sure what causes it, a bit of packet loss somewhere possibly, but it's pretty rare.

I have the cheaper package of 500 minutes per month. Depending on just how much you plan to use it that might or might not be any good for you. In my case, in over three years now, I have never once gone over 500 minutes in a month, and even if I did I calculated that I'd need to use something over 700 minutes to make the extra per-minute charge exceed the price of the unlimited plan. If all you are going to use it for is conference calls and there are only a few per month that might save a few bucks off the unlimited.

I'm less trusting about leaving my wireless open. I filter by MAC. If a guest wants to connect they just tell me and I go disable filtering until they connect, get their MAC address out of the DHCP client table, add it to the accept list, and re-enable filtering. It takes only a few minutes. My concern has been with driveby connectors or neighbors accessing the 'net and doing illegal things with my public IP, not so much my wired network which, like yours, is pretty well secured from the wireless side.

[justben]

That’s me living on the edge.

Seriously, I’m not too worried about it in this neighborhood. I won’t mind if you say, “I told you so,” if I’m ever shown wrong.

Thanks for the reassurance on Vonage. So far it looks happy. Plugged it in, waited a few minutes, and I have a dialtone. Now to get a proper portable phone….

[starlancer]

Ah, I wasn't suggesting you do likewise, just chatting really. Do what you're comfortable with.Visitors for me are fairly rare except certain OTO members when we hold meetings here, and I've already added their laptop MACs once so I needn't again. If I had frequent and changing visitors I might do it differently.