welcome to the internet acceleration appliance blog
Living in rural Brittany, France I have been struggling to get the best throughput from my 512Kbs ADSL connection.
Now, with a working and replicable solution to this problem, I have decided to publish the details of what I have done so that others can do the same.
All this solution takes is an old PC, some free open source software and a couple of hours of not too hard work.
For people who aren't confident in doing this themselves, I am happy to build and install one of these devices anywhere in Brittany, France - please feel free to contact me to discuss details or take a look at the order page.
Alternatively, I can supply these appliances by mail order anywhere in France.
As well as detailing my solution, I have also written some very basic general Linux/Networking guides - basically stuff that I learned whilst getting the Internet Acceleration Appliance working.
www.iaafiles.com
Any files used for building and maintaining the Internet Accelerator Appliance are hosted at http://www.iaafiles.com
On that site you will also find more information (and varieties) of the preseeded (automated) installation method.
If you are interested, please pop over and take a look.
Some system monitoring tools - 27th October 2009
Now that the Internet Acceleration Appliance is happily chugging away, speeding up our internet (and filtering out undesirable content), I decided that it would be good to be able to monitor what it was doing.
I decided to look at some of the system monitoring tools that were available for Linux servers.
An Automated IAA Build - 26th October 2009
In order to ensure a consistent server build (for support purposes), and to make things easier for myself, I have implemented a preseeded build where only a minimal number of interactions are required in order to end up with a working server.
Building a simple Debian Server - 19th October 2009
The purpose of this article is to detail how I built the base server (using Debian Linux) upon which I installed the software that turned that box into an Internet Acceleration Appliance. I don't intend it to be a comprehensive quide to installing a Linux server - it's just an explanation of how I choose to do it.
Installing pdnsd - a caching DNS server - 19th October 2009
Now that we have built a simple debain server (see Building a simple Debian Server) it is time to put it to some useful work.
But first, what is DNS?
Imagine, if you will, that you want to send a letter to your friend Joe Bloggs. If you were just to address that letter to Joe Bloggs, it would almost certainly never arrive.
Installing Squid - a caching proxy server - 19th October 2009
With a working caching DNS server (see Installing pdnsd - a caching DNS server) it makes sense to allow it to cacge HTTP objects as well.
That sounds like a job for squid.
Using hosts to filter web content - 19th October 2009
Now that we have built a simple debian server , installed pdnsd on it and installed squid on it , it is time to look at some sort of content filtering to ensure that our precious bandwidth isn't wasted.
As well as filtering out malware and blocking adverts, I was also keen to remove adult content. Whilst my thirteen year old stepson probably won't go anywhere he shouldn't, at that age peer pressure is very strong - well, let's just say... "Better safe than sorry."
.bashrc aliases to make Linux easier - 19th October 2009
Whilst it can be quite frightening for someone not used to the command line (and how many people have started their computing lives after DOS was replaced by Windows 95?), the Linux command line can be made much less scary.
This is done through creating aliases (alternative commands) that work the way you do rather than the way your Linux server wants you to.
Basic Linux commands - 19th October 2009
Whilst most modern Linux distributions come packaged with a graphic desktop which makes them as easy to use (easier in my humble opinion), as anything that Microsoft ever produced, the Internet Acceleration Appliance intentionally comes without one and has to be managed by the command line.
This need not be quite as frightening as many people first expect but, it should help to have a little list of some of the more common and useful commands.
A shameless advertisment
Although I enjoy sharing the result of my hard work with others, I do need to pay the bills so, here follows a shameless advertisment for myself!
Should you require IT Support in Brittany, France please take a look at www.KeithEckstein.com
Likewise, for website design (and I guess you don't even need to live in France), please visit www.BrittanyWebsites.com
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