Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 3,021 posts.
SSH vs. OpenVPN for Tunneling
Update 28.01.16 I found some sites referring to this post. Below are the common complaints I saw, and my replies:
SSH Tunneling Explained
SSH tunneling transports data streams within an existing SSH session. This post explains different tunneling techniques and features as supported by OpenSSH.
The sound of the dialup, pictured
If you ever connected to the Internet before the 2000s, you probably remember how it sounded. But what do these sounds mean?
Unlocking any car from X brand in most of the world
I've always had a soft spot for this particular car brand. Our family has owned a few of them over the years, and they've served us incredibly well. In 2023, I bought a new four wheel drive/SUV from them, and it was the first time I had
Getting Started with WireGuard
Software developer
How to modify Starlink Mini to run without the built-in WiFi router
The Starlink Mini terminal is designed as a compact, all-in-one solution with an integrated Wi-Fi router. While this design is ideal for typical consumer use, certain applications—such as custom networking setups, embedded installations, or power-constrained environments—may benefit from removing the internal router…
BBR, the new kid on the TCP block
A look at Google's delay-controlled TCP flow control algorithm, called BBR.
What developers should know about TCP
Why do you need to place your servers geographically close to your users? One of the reasons is to achieve lower latencies. That makes a lot of sense when you are sending short bursts of data that should be delivered as quickly as possible. But what about large files, such as videos? Surely there is a latency penalty…
Self-Hosting on the Dark Web
This site is now reachable over Tor as a hidden service, at a .onion address that resolves only inside the Tor network. Tor relays and encrypts your traffic as …
SSH Bastion Host Best Practices
Learn 14 best practices to build and deploy a security-hardened SSH bastion host based on OpenSSH server.
Nginx now supports Websockets
Deliver modern applications with NGINX. Explore high-performance load balancing, API gateways, and web server solutions trusted by top global enterprises.
DigitalOcean VPC
Helping millions of developers easily build, test, manage, and scale applications of any size - faster than ever before.
Show HN: I reverse engineered my cable modem and turned it into an SDR
A few weeks ago I got curious about an old cable modem sitting in my closet, a Motorola MB7220. Initially I was interested in what kind of hardware it had and if it was running Linux. Some quick searching brought me to a thread on a web forum where people were discussing the built in spectrum analyzer feature used for…
SATCOM terminals under attack in Europe: a plausible analysis
------ Update 03/12/2022 Reuters has published new information on this incident, which initially matches the proposed scenario. You can find...
Reasons to turn down the transmit power of your Wi-Fi (2017)
By default almost all WiFi access points transmit at full power (100mW on 2.4GHz). This gives maximum coverage and users see a good signal ("full bars"). However, there are good reasons to turn down the transmit power to a fraction of the maximum.
Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server
Let’s lead with the punchline: the question of what comes after IRC, for Mozilla, is now on my desk.
Hate Your ISP? Maybe You Need Community Fiber
Brian Carver co-authored this post. Between the net neutrality debate and the Comcast/TWC merger, high-speed Internet access is getting more attention than ever. A lot of that attention is negative, and rightly so: Internet access providers, especially certain very large ones, have done a pretty...
There are real reasons for Linux to replace ifconfig, netstat, etc
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
Rapid DHCP: Or, how do Macs get on the network so fast?
One of life's minor annoyances is having to wait on my devices to connect to the network after I wake them from sleep. All too often, I'll open the lid on my …
HTTP/2 Push is dead
One of the hot features that came with HTTP/2 was PUSH frames. The main idea is that if the server can predict what requests a client might want to make, the server can preemptively send request/response pairs to the client and warm its cache.
Excessive load on NTP servers
Since last Tuesday some countries have seen an excessive number of queries to the NTP Pool. After much detective work on nanog (conclusion) and the #NTP IRC channel it was determined to be a buggy Snapchat app update.
Community-Owned Fiber Networks: Value Leaders in America
Our examination of advertised prices shows that community-owned fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks in the United States generally charge less for entry-level broadband service than do competing private providers, and don’t use initial low “teaser” rates that sharply rise months later.
Why you should not trust emails sent from Google
As you might know, Google is running a vulnerability reward program , where they award researchers monetary awards or a place in their Hall of Fame when they responsibly disclose vulnerabilities. With this in mind, I was scooping around on several Google services, including Google Scholar. As I recently started a PhD…
Stupidly Simple DDoS Protocol (SSDP) Generates 100 Gbps DDoS
Last month we shared statistics on some popular reflection attacks. Back then the average SSDP attack size was ~12 Gbps.
Playing battleships over BGP
BGP is the glue of the internet. For a protocol that was produced on two napkins in 1989 it is both amazing and horrifying that it runs almost all of the ISP to ISP interactions and is now a very fundemental part of the internet.