[dba-Tech] List

[Jim Lawrence]

Hi All:

I have been working on a cross network communications project for the last couple of weeks and learned more about products, protocols and related standards than I ever wanted to know. If you are very knowledgeable about the protocols SSH/SSL you can jump the following paragraph.

Preamble: SSL and SSH are very similar protocols, in fact they are almost the same, with code and functionality. I have discovered that these two protocols are virtually in all modern secure communications...it is just that their presents has been abstracted away. SSL goes a little beyond SSH in that it will open a secure (fully encrypted) Ethernet tunnel between computers, computers of any type and OS. This allows an extended network that could be anywhere in the world and bridge clients to servers and clients to clients...connection methods are limited only by your imagination and knowledge of these protocols. Most of our remote take-over programs use SSL at their core. Like LogMeIn, Teamviewer, X2Go and a host of other similar applications. Companies like Google, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and many B2B type application like VoiceIP, Microsoft update services, secure IRC apps and a host of remote management systems...

I have been trying to get OpenVPN running from various sites to some sites and ran into so many conflicts. (OpenVPN uses SSL of course.) Aside subject from the above topic, is the addresses and ports used to manage these various applications. For all of those who have played around with addresses and ports, here is the latest list:

http://bit.ly/1L2GEW1

All businesses that have been in business for a while tend to have their own preferences and have configured their applications to use one port or the another with little concern for the industry standards. This has been reflected in their routers, smart switches, spam filters, bridges and firewalls so when trying to install a new application, on a site, using a product like OpenVPN, it can become a nightmare of reconfiguring. The application may be connected for hours at a time, managing, monitoring, and transferring data between remote sites. 

Note that the first 40,000 ports can be a mine-field of conflicts and potential conflicts and I wished I had known about the latest version of the above list. If anyone here remembers the 16 IRQ choices on the old PCs (pre-2000), they will understand the problem with port usage. I have been able to "blue-screen" any Windows 7 computer with impunity...apparently application port conflict can be fatal to certain desktop PCs. That said ,I have not tested all Windows products so this issue may be that of only related to one Windows version but my Windows 10 has been giving a very good imitation of instability but it is not consistent and I may have inadvertently introduced other unrelated issues. As I am no longer working for a company the has Microsoft phone support, it is difficult to discover causes and solutions. The last time I did use Microsoft support, it took about two weeks to resolve a problem. Their tech staff earned every penny of the $365 charge. ;-)

Jim