Download Squad to the rescue! The popular and useful downloads blog from Weblogs Inc. posted about a utility that can help you monitor your own network.

Wireshark is a free network protocol analyzer that’s available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD and many others. Download Wireshark here.

Wireshark is long since well-known to networking professionals, perhaps under its previous name, “Ethereal.”

In fact, our colleague Sue Fogarty posted about SHARKFEST over at The Network Hub, an event about protocol analysis specifically for developers and users of Wireshark.

Sue says that Vint Cerf wowed ‘em at SHARKFEST. No shock there — the “father of the Internet” is well-known for that sort of thing.

In his post on Download Squad, Ian Dumych also links to a white paper posted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Detecting packet injection: a guide to observing packet spoofing by ISPs. Check in there if you want to learn more about the practice and how monitoring your own connection can help others.

You might remember this fellow — he invented the Web, after all. Sir Tim Berners-Lee offers some thoughts on the issue of Net neutrality in this video.

You can read Lee’s post on Net neutrality, which largely mirrors his statements on camera, over at his blog. You’ll note that the post and video date back to 2006, when the issue first entered a wider conversation online. These days, the U.S. presidential candidates have taken stances on it (Clinton and Obama are both for Net neutrality, McCain opposes it). Accusations of traffic shaping and the uglier-sounding “bandwidth throttling” are flying at ISPs like Comcast, sometimes justified and other times based upon mistaken conclusions.

We’ve asked you before — have you opinions changed? Private networks and corporations have good reason to restrict bandwidth to memory hogs like like IPTV. On-demand streaming of this year’s NCAA basketball tournament caused massive traffic spikes, for instance, resulted in massive traffic spikes. The security risks and bandwidth challenges presented by employee use of P2P networks like Bittorrent are an issue as well.

Once Internet use leaves the office, however, the question remains: Should ISPs be able to institute a two-tiered Internet for private citizens?

Let us know what you think in the comments or by writing in to editor@whatis.com.

Virtualization was top of the mind for IT administrators and media alike last year. 2008 is no different. Just review the much-discussed recent survey, IT priorities in 2008. If a technology can be remotely related to any virtual, you can bet that vendors will do so. “Virtual insanity” isn’t a 90s Jamiroquai tune.
Our job, as always, is to cut through the buzzwords to the meat of what any particular technology is, how it works, who is using it and why it’s important. Read our definitions for server virtualization, application virtualization, file virtualization, virtual machine and paravirtualization to get just a taste of our virtual offerings. We even added Second Life to the database, after it became clear that virtual worlds needed some explanation as well.

If you want the complete virtual file, head over to the complete virtualization taxonomy.

A couple of readers responded to a Word of the Day from last week, virtual networking. One asked for clarification, the other outright disputed the entry. Following is most of our definition for virtual networking, if you missed it (and if you did, make sure to sign up for the Word of the Day newsletter).

Virtual networking is a technology that facilitates the control of one or more remotely located computers or servers over the Internet. Data can be stored and retrieved, software can be run and peripherals can be operated through a Web browser as if the distant hardware were onsite.

Virtual networking facilitates consolidation of diverse services and devices on a single hardware platform called a virtual services switch. The centralization of control reduces the cost and complexity of operating and maintaining hardware and software compared with administering numerous separate devices in widely separated geographical locations. Maintenance personnel and administrators can install device drivers, perform tests and resolve problems on the remote machines from a single location.

It may be necessary to install virtual networking software on the remote computers or servers to take advantage of this technology. Several vendors, including Microsoft and VMware, offer virtual networking software. Some vendors offer comprehensive virtual networking services, allowing business network administrators to outsource labor and resources to the vendor. Virtual networking capability is a standard feature of Windows XP and Vista.

Here’s our reader’s request for clarification:

“Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought accessing something over the Internet is still a physical network. Yes, it isn’t a LAN, but I think it wouldn’t be appropriate to classify as “Virtual Networking”. It is a real network, physical connection, but under the cooperation of the original network (ie a company or home network) , telecommunications provider and possibly an intermediate ISP. It is still all physical and I would think “Virtual” would be an inappropriate classification/definition.” -Justin Snyder

Justin, thanks for writing in. In this sense, the term virtual is used in a more figurative than literal way. In general, virtual simply means the quality of effecting something without actually being that something. All of the various virtualization technologies are a variant of this concept. In server virtualization, one physical server is divided into multiple isolated virtual environments, each of which is masked from the users. Virtual tape makes it possible to save data as if it were being stored on tape although it’s actually be stored on hard disk or on another storage medium. A guest OS is an operating system installed in a virtual machine or disk partition in addition to the host or main OS. In each case, a software layer has been added in lieu of a physical connection.

Virtual networking is much the same. A virtual sevices switch allows the sysadmin to monitor or change configurations remotely — or virtually — instead of going to the location in person. Justin, you’re right — whenever you access something online, it does flow over physical devices at one point or another, even if it’s wireless — but the technologies that underpin much of that traffic are these days, often virtual.

Our other reader strongly disagreed with the idea of virtual networking on a more existential level:

This entry [virtual networking] is specious and should be deleted. Unix workstations and servers have had this capability for at least 15 years. And there is nothing virtual about it. It simply uses a little hardware and OS capability, accessed via the network. Since when did anything and everything involving the network become “virtual”? Is e-commerce going to be renamed “virtual shopping”?

Microsoft and VMware have done nothing more than catch up to 1990’s technology, slap a “virtual” label on it, and pretended as though they invented it. Give us a break. -Brian Herzog

Brian, I agree. Virtual has now been attached to so many products that the term is well on its way to being meaningless. You make a great point, with respect to the historical abilities of Unix gurus far and wide to effect changes through the command line, abilities only now being entrusted to mere mortals using Windows GUIs. That being said, even if Microsoft and VMware are adopting “old” technologies and incorporating them into their offerings, I think the process of networking using this kind of is fairly described as virtual. If I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll hear more from you, our dear readers, on this count.

Thanks for writing in!

Sometime this past summer, future CalTech grad student (and self-styled”disruptive technologist”) Virgil Griffith decided that he wanted to see if he could elevate his personal home page to the top of search results for “Virgil.”

While that dream may or may not come true, there’s no doubt that the “quotes” should now be removed from disruptive technologist, (along with my self-styling). Virgil hasn’t written an epic quite yet but he’s clearly provided a useful tool to journalists and inquisitive netizens alike. Meet WikiScanner.

In two weeks, Griffith created a Web site that matches the IP addresses attached to edits of Wikipedia pages with the IP addresses listed in the publicly accessible whois database for companies and media organizations worldwide.

Using a simple, minimally designed interface consisting of a form, text, dropdowns and hyperlinks, Griffith’s site allows users to first determine what the IP address of an organization is and then plug it into to discover what edits have been made from that IP range.

By providing the means to cross reference who is editing what, Virgil’s code nearly approaches poetry, at least judging by Jimmy Wales, who told the AP that “It is fabulous and I strongly support it.”

It’s not quite fair to say that the effort is all about the Virgil Google bomb, either. According to this Wired article, Griffiths was inspired by the discovery that many Congressional offices were editing their own entries. Wondering what corporations were doing the same thing, he created WikiScanner.

As Griffiths notes wryly in his WikiScanner FAQ, the reaction to the tool’s discoveries has been more or less as expected. The CIA and FBI, Disney, Diebold, Exxon and a rapidly expanding universe of other entitities, large and small, have been editing away. Take a look at Wired’s “list of salacious edits” to see how far the count of “minor public relations disasters” that WikiScanner has enabled — and be aware that any edits that you make to Wikipedia may not be as anonymous as you might think.

It’s been quite a week for wonders of the world. First, the online world got together and voted for seven modern wonders of the world, provoked by the lonely status of the Pyramids as the last remaining example of the ancient wonders. (For those that love these kinds of lists, Wonderclub.com has put together their own indices of global wonders, including ancient, modern and natural versions.)

My eye was drawn, however, to this list of programming languages from Code to Joy, where computer scientist, philosopher and cyberscriber M. Easter has “compiled” his own, “admittedly biased,” list of languages. In chronological order, here are the languages that the digital composer thought were the seven wonders of the coding world:

1. Fortan
2. Lisp
3. Smalltalk
4. C
   
5. Python
6. Java
7. Javascript

Now, no doubt many of you are already grumbling. What about C++, Visual Basic, COBOL, Perl or APL? What about the sexy new kid on the block, Ruby? What about PHP, ubiquitous on the Linux servers that underpin today’s database-driven Internet?

Several comments on Easter’s post have already listed those examples, protesting Easter’s choices, along with .NET, Forth, SKILL, Objective-C, Haskell and others. As usual, everyone has an opinion — especially on a rather subjective subject like this.

Whew! Editing a list like this isn’t easy, of course, and it’s much easier to criticize than create. What do you think? When you look at the history of code, as illustrated in this exceptional diagram of the evolution of programming languages (hat tip to M) which do you think are “wonders of the programming world?”

What would your list look like?

My own line in the sand, in case you were wondering, would (in no particular order) reads follows:

1. Javascript
2. Java
3. C
4. Ruby
5. COBOL
6. Perl
7. Python

Agree? Disagree? Think the whole thing is preposterous? Comment away.

Throughout the years I’ve been writing and editing on WhatIs, I don’t think there’s been another issue that’s cropped up as often or been as gnarly to try to settle as the question of whether a person who attacks computers and networks is a hacker or a cracker.

Just about everyone but the serious geeks uses hacker to mean an attacker but anytime we do we get notes from readers to the effect that a malicious hacker is a cracker and a hacker is just someone with mad computer skills. Furthermore, they feel that we should be upholding proper usage and not letting standards slide. On the other hand, when we’ve used “cracker,” we often get notes asking if we don’t mean “hacker” and suggesting that we might want to think about using the same term everone else does.

I’ll admit I’ve often tried to skirt the issue by using “attacker.” But the time comes when an editor has to take a stand. Especially in the wake of several years of wishy-washy, indeterminate indecision. So. Decision time. Let’s see what everyone else says…

Wikipedia has a fairly extensive entry for hacker. The article starts out by defining a hacker as “a person who illegally breaks into computer and network systems” but links to a better page for hacker definition controversy.

Alpha hacker Eric S. Raymond weighs in authoritatively on the topic in his article, How to become a hacker:

There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren’t. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn’t make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.

The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.

There’s much more in Raymond’s FAQ-style article, including:

The Hacker Attitude

1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.

2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.

3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.

4. Freedom is good.

5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.

On the other hand, you can also find support for the use of hacker as a synonym for cracker. According to wordorigins.org, that usage goes back to the November 20, 1963 issue of The Tech, the M.I.T. student paper, where it was used to refer to breaking into the phone system:

There are those that claim that hacker should not mean someone who maliciously invades computer systems, and that it really means someone proficient in computer use. But this is not the history of the term. Hacking from its beginnings at M.I.T. has always been associated with using technology to subvert institutional systems for personal use. Besides, the meanings of words are determined by usage, not etymology. So if people use hacker to mean someone who breaks into computer systems, that’s what it means.

So, the way I see it, there are a number of fairly compelling arguments for either side, chief among them being:

• Eric Raymond says a hacker is defined by skill and good intention. And everybody loves Eric Raymond.
• The earliest reference to skill-based, non-malicious technology hacking that I could find traces it back to ham radio operators in the fifties, predating the MIT paper cited on wordorigins.
• However, as wordorigins correctly points out, common use is what drives definition. So if people use hacker to mean cracker, eventually that’s what it will mean.
• And yet… cracker is unambiguous. If one uses cracker in this context, people get it. So if we use “hacker” to mean a highly computer-literate geek and “cracker” to mean an attacker of whatever skill level…

Sigh. ‘Round and round and round it goes. I’m just not sure. I’d love some input. What do you think? ~ Ivy Wigmore