The Aerie
So this latest client is a tough nut to crack.
Unlike the other clients I've been at, these guys actually seem to have their network reasonably secure. At least secure from wasting productivity, or letting users out of the network. Attempts to access innocuous popular blogs, or even Wikipedia, run into a content filter. Forget about accessing my server over an SSH session. And as it turns out, my T-Mobile cell phone service is legendary in its awfulness here. So how to escape?
Well as it turns out, if I go through rabbit-ear-TV-antenna circumlocutions with my cell phone, I can occasionally get two bars of coverage. So I got it connected to a weak signal, and then tried for the umpteenth time to get the thing working to link my laptop to the Internet.
For a miracle, I actually got it working! It was dog-slow, but I managed to open a connection into my server, I managed to send my wife an IM, and I managed to check my e-mail remotely. All over my cell phone! Now I'll never need to be Internet-less again... as if that's a good thing.
So I've got that tiny thread connecting me to the outside world, what else? Well, my client also filters a lot of web pages... including the well-known proxy sites. Fortunately, I have my own webserver, so I did a little research and found a very simple proxy program: I put my web page request into it, and it pulls the restricted site itself, and then redirects it to my web browser. Voila! I can now browse restricted web pages at work - until such time as they somehow detect what I'm doing and restrict my own system.
Finally, streaming audio: I like to start my day with the Stephanie Miller radio show, but unfortunately the local AM station that carries it is powered by one of those little light bulbs in the nose of the patient in the "Operation" game. It's impossible to pick up the signal if there are thunderstorms, concrete barriers, steel walls, gypsum board, cardboard, rice paper, humidity, or air between you and the broadcast antenna. So, as I did in Germany, I listen over streaming audio over my cell phone. Of course that introduces an additional restriction: I can't both use the cell phone to connect my laptop AND also listen to streaming audio. I have to choose one or the other.
Nevertheless it all works out, and I am pretty much connected to the Real World again, despite being imprisoned inside the client networks. The only thing left to do is to figure out how to set up an https server so that my proxy can connect to other secure websites.
Tomorrow I review something wonderful... Torchwood!
Posted by Albatross at February 22, 2007 10:29 AM | TrackBack