I’ve been away for a week due to work abroad

And had the chance to be in one of the largest server farms I’ve ever been to. Could not take pictures, though.

We were connected to a proxied and limited network, inside the organization, with a limited set of allowed web sites. It was terrible. Then I’ve figured that if I purchase wireless network connection (which was available), I can use my laptop as a router, running NAT on this connection, while still being physically connected to the internal network. Security hole? Sure is, but not mine 🙂

So I’ve connected that way using PCMCIA wireless card (for some reason my internal Orinoco_PCI card refused to talk to that wireless network. I should try to find time to diagnose this issue). So I’ve had a configuration as follows:

1) wlan0 (PCMCIA wifi via ndiswrapper) – Internet

2) eth2 (First wired network card) connected to the internal LAN, and used as GW for one of my team

3) eth1 (Orinoco_PCI wifi card) in ad-hoc mode, acting as GW for another one of my team, who sat just far enough so I could not throw him a cable.

It worked, and worked fine.

Regarding other issues, I’ve noticed that my laptop was at its top, but felt it was hardly enough. For example – I used SkyPE. When in a voice call, my CPU went up to a stable 80-85% utilization. It is high. It means that if I do anything else, I get choppy sound (which I did get). It was good we’ve had such a long unused time at the customer’s place. Lots of waiting you can pass while in a voice call, and for free.

Well, it was educative. I’ve learned some additional things of how things work on a very large-scale environments, with the cons and pros of it. Was fun.