Tonight I installed dnsmasq as a caching DNS forwarder on our home network (under a VM, no less). Additionally, I changed our primary DNS servers to those hosted by OpenDNS. To double-check that things were working, I figured I’d whip up a quick script to make a bunch of DNS requests and give an average time. First round, I faced the OpenDNS server against Cox’s own. I’d never really benchmarked the Cox DNS servers, so this was quite enlightening:

andrew@ubuntu-server-vm:~$ php ./dns_bench.php dothedrew.net 208.67.222.222
Average response time: 27.53
andrew@ubuntu-server-vm:~$ php ./dns_bench.php dothedrew.net 68.105.28.11
Average response time: 158.58

This only serves to strengthen my belief that all cable ISPs are run by pharmacists.

To satisfy morbid curiosity, here are the results against the local dnsmasq daemon:

andrew@ubuntu-server-vm:~$ php ./dns_bench.php dothedrew.net 127.0.0.1
Average response time: 0.21

That’s only about, oh, a 755x improvement. Hopefully that’ll sufficiently speed things up.

After discovering that, if left up to Vonage, the D-Link VTA-VD device I just purchased off eBay would be useless, I became determined to get it working.

Turns out, my initial idea of cloning the MAC address from my old Vonage adapter was amateur (at best): while this changes the MAC address that the adapter uses for Ethernet communication, it must still report the old address to Vonage when it’s being provisioned. Long story short, changing the MAC address had no effect whatsoever.

I did, however, discover that the VTAs apparently run an embedded flavor of Linux (cool!) with an SSH daemon installed and running by default (cooler!). Unfortunately, it uses a different account than the web interface (bummer). A glimmer of hope was the instructions for unlocking various SIP devices, include the D-Link VTAs. But I was shutdown yet again: the manufacturers have apparently gotten smarter and started patching up the security holes that people have been hacking into.

Now it’s down to the wire. Wireshark, that is. I used Microsoft’s bundled ICS to become a gateway on my wired NIC, which is attached to the VTA via a cross-over cable. Then I started sniffing traffic. It looks like the VTA now has DNS server addresses hard-coded into the firmware, removing the easy way to rewrite DNS requests. ARP spoofing? But it’s definitely making a request for an XML provisioning file, which I was also able to download. Unfortunately, it’s encrypted.

Maybe this is more trouble than it’s worth.

I’ve had Vonage for just about three years now. Over the past year or so, our phone line has probably been down more than its been up (the miracle of technology). I’m not ready to blame that on Vonage, however, since the adapter itself appears to be on its last leg. While trying to reconfigure it a few weeks ago, I realized that the integrated switch (it’s a combined router/switch/VTA device) was no longer working. I also noticed that the device was inordinately hot, so I’ve chalked it all up to hardware problems initiated by overheating.

In the hopes of salvaging our home phone, I ordered a used VTA device from eBay. I didn’t think twice about it; it’s definitely not the first piece of technology that I’ve acquired second hand, let alone from eBay, and I’ve had very few problems with any of it.

Of course, I made the assumption that Vonage would allow me to activate a used device. That was apparently not only a naive assumption, but also a fatal one.

As chronicled in various parts and pieces here, here, here, and probably many other places, Vonage apparently refuses to reassociate the MAC addresses of their VTAs (unless, of course, it’s been “reconditioned” by them).

Did I just buy a paper-weight? I’d be more than aggravated.

Obviously, as most of us know, this is purely an artificial limitation imposed by Vonage. Why? Are they worried about people recording the MAC address, selling the device, and then cloning it to steal calls? Do they get a little bonus for selling new devices? I have no idea.

The worst part, however, might not be their refusal to reuse a device. I could live with that, had only I know before I spent money on something that’s (currently) useless. But even with a bit of searching, I can’t find a single warning from Vonage on the dangers of buying used. I can describe this as nothing short of irresponsible, almost criminal.

So the moral of the story is, and I’d say this in big bold, emblazoned letters if I thought that it would somehow get it more exposure across the interwebs: whatever you do, don’t use Vonage. Erm, I mean, don’t buy a used Vonage device.

Like the good deviant I one day hope to be, I’m currently in the process of attempting to clone the MAC address of my previous adapter on the new one. The device supports twiddling with the MAC address, but, once I changed it, has been unaccessible (at least from work via the various SSH tunnels I have going). Yet if I delete it’s DHCP lease from the router it immediately reacquires one, so I’m thinking it’s caught up in some endless reboot cycle after attempting contacting Vonage. I’m going to keep digging.

This post tells the humorous story of how a regular consumer hacked his neighbor’s wireless AP, then proceeded to lock his neighbor out of it with a new password, MAC filter, & c. Only to discover that his neighbor had, in fact, retaliated by hacking his wireless AP. Or something like that.

Use your Wii-mote to create a multi-touch system.