[Saturday: 5 miles, some walking]
At my “day job” we are just in the final report stages of a security assessment project. A consultant company came in and did various things to test our system security and then wrote a report about it. There was some back-and-forth about the report, including some editing errors and such. But it all got worked out eventually and now we are starting in on the list of recommendations.
These guys recommended some changes in the configuration of our Cisco network switches. You should know that I’m not a big networking guy. I can usually get things done. But the simpler the better. We bought these Cisco switches shortly after I moved to Mississippi so I never really did anything with them except set them up as if they were old fashioned dumb switches.
Ah! But the security guys pointed out that they have all sorts of features including a web browser administrative interface. Yuck. So we need to try to get some of this tied down a little better.
Here comes a problem: I don’t know how to do any of this stuff, and the two switches we have are in “production” mode where I can’t just jump in and start fooling around with them.
What to do?
As you know, my home project these days is the transmitter shack I’m building. Eventually that shack is going to be on our internet (all radio stations have to have an internet connection for the emergency broadcasting system thing). I had a smart idea. I went to Ebay and bought two of these same switches that we are using at the office. I got them for less that $50 each. And I happen to have some fiber optic adapters which work in these switches from a previous auction purchase. I’m going to work with these things to figure out some of our needs at the office. And then I’ll put them to use as the link between the house and the transmitter shack. (I will have to dig a trench and put in a fiber optic cable between the two buildings, eventually.)