[ELECTRON] Electron Club, excess bandwidth and computers

[Martin McGrath]

Hi everyone,

I've spent quite some time here over the last couple of days investigating
potential causes of bandwidth excess problem.

There are two machines currently connected to the router in the club room.

1. Compaq 5221, AMD K6 380Mhz, 320MB RAM. Running Windows XP, missing lots
of patches, no Antivirus software installed.
2. Ubuntu based machine, reasonable spec CPU, 512MB RAM. Running an
unsupported (ergo unpatched) version of Ubuntu.

In the interests of security please don't operate a Windows PC without anti
virus software installed, it's just common sense.
Please user Firefox as your default web browser.

The XP machine had no application software other than uTorrent (a bit
torrent client) and CClean installed.
This machine is terribly slow, I've earmarked a machine to replace it which
is significantly faster and we have more RAM in the cupboard which I can
fit.

Do we really need a Windows machine in the club? I'd like feedback on this
please.
A linux machine is just as easy to use for everything this machine could
have been used for, and far easier to maintain.

The XP machine passed a full system virus scan and three rootkit scans.

I plan to upgrade the Ubuntu machine to a version of the operating system
which is at least supported. If anyone has data they'd like backed up please
do so, or let me know where and what it is and I'll do it for you.

The room still has it's WIFI point, at the moment secured with WPA-PSK, the
details for which are on the poster on the right as you enter the room.
I plan on investigating this more at a later date.
I disabled the WIFI point on the modem running in the comms room. There was
no point in us having two.

I'm not convinced that anyone would waste time cracking the WPA passphrase,
given that there are two other open access points in the area.

I plan on documenting and laminating some notes about EC kit, the network,
the computers etc. I'll get round to this once I've fixed up the systems in
question.

Snail mail has arrived for the following people, I've left it in a neat pile
on the table:

Mitch Miller
Glasgow Social centre limited (two items)
Robert Hamilton
Jonathan Agnew (two items)

When I arrived yesterday the place was a bit of a mess. There were chairs
all over the place, some rubbish on the table, an old mug of what I assume
was coffee and papers scattered over the desks.

I've done a little tidying but I've got other things I need to be doing at
the moment.
The room is a space for all of us, please tidy up before leaving.

Have a nice Christmas and a safe New Year.

Thanks

Martin
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