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This event has now happened and was a great success. You can read about the results and see videos at http://flakey.info/hesfes05/. More photos at http://psand.net/photos/hesfes05/, and the BristolWireless posting at http://www.bristolwireless.net/wiki/index.php/Hesfes2005. See you all next year.
Psand.net and Bristol Wireless will be providing Information Technology services and training at HesFes 2005; including onsite wired and wireless internet access, multiple free internet terminals for festival users, a festival chat room, and audio streaming of music events and seminars. This page will detail how to make the most of the services provided.
We will be running a workshop on Sunday 15th (2005-05-15) from 1pm to 3pm about connecting to the network and security issues surrounding this. The workshop will take the form of an open discussion led by those providing the network. Any questions about the network will hopefully be answered here.
For those wishing to use the internet connection on to and off the site please read, and respect the bandwidth limitation comments.
For more information on the other things happening at the HesFes 2005 please visit the HesFes website.
There is a chat room enabled now which will run until the end of the event. If the chat room proves popular we will enable another one for the seminar. They will both work in exactly the same way.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) will be the internet standard used for the chat room. In order to connect to the chat room it will be nescessary to use an IRC client, which is a program or application which allows you to communicate with the IRC server and thus the other users connected to it. Many IRC clients can be downloaded from the internet for free (depending on your operating system).
The details to connect are:
Please use the chatrooms considerately. The administrators reserve the right to ban those not following this request. Abusive behaviour will see a permanent ban immediately.
If you do not have an IRC client (application) installed on your computer, you will need to download one and install.
You can download applications for this from the following places (depending on your operating system):
If uncertain there is a review of many different IRC clients for many operating systems here.
This year there will be a marquee with around ten internet access terminals for the use of those attending the festival. These terminals will be running the powerful free operating system Linux, as this allows Bristol Wireless to develop their community network unencumbered by the constraints of corporate licensing.
The system will be run using LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) which is a method of combining a number of older, less capable, computers together with a powerful server machine allowing them all to share the capabilities of the server. The computers will actually be old laptops, without harddrives, donated to the Bristol Wireless project by local companies. There is more information on LTSP here.
We will be collecting donations towards the Bristol Wireless project for their help and support. If you make use of the services, which are free, please consider giving a donation to help the project continue. You can also donate via PayPal on the Bristol Wireless website.
For those with wired laptops, there will be wired access points available in the marquee. Please ensure that you have an ethernet card installed and working, and an ethernet cable in order to connect. Connecting to the network
For those with wireless laptops or PDAs there will be a wireless hotspot in and around the marquee Please ensure that you have a WiFi 802.11b card installed and working prior to connecting. Connecting to the network.
The network will be handing out DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) leases. This means that if your computer is set up for DHCP or to automatically detect the network you should connect without any problems. Your machine should receive a temporary IP address and be happy using this for the duration of each session you are connected.
There will also be a range of static local IP addresses available. Please come and see us at the marquee if you really need this. This IP will then last for the duration of the event.
Please ensure prior to the event that your machine is set up to network correctly, and has the correct drivers installed etc. as it can be very hard downloading drivers if you cannot connect to the network due to lack of drivers!
We are generally helpful but find it very hard doing what we are at the event to do and helping to do personal technical support. Please read the bandwidth limitations.
All web-based email (hotmail.com, yahoo.com etc.) accounts should work as normal either via your own computer connected to the network or using one of the free access terminals.
For those who use SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) for sending on port 25 should work as normal, as should receiving via a standard POP (Post Office Protocol) account.
The internet connection on the HesFes 2005 site will be a limited bandwidth connection. This means that the amount of data in and out of the site is limited to a maximum. If you use the internet connection you are asked to keep you traffic to a minimum, thus allowing the most people to use the network. Large onsite downloading and uploading is to be avoided at all costs. If you do large transfers of data on or offsite you may detriment or stop one of the scheduled online interactive events. Please consider the whole community.
If you need to do a large data transfer in order to stay onsite, please, please come to the marquee so that we may schedule the transfer in "downtime".
Please note that on the Tuesday the Home Education Conference will occur which will be using a large proportion of the on and offsite bandwidth. Internet services may have to be limited during this event.
Don't panic.
We cannot be responsible for the security of any person choosing to connect their own machines to the free network provided, just in the same way that we cannot be responsible for the actions of those so connected. I doubt any of the HesFes attendees will be more interested in Black-hat hacking than enjoying themselves watching 100%, but we must assume they are.
"Plug anything into your computer and you expose yourself to the threats involved."
Dorian Lordsville.
The usual precautions should be taken when connecting to any network, especially wireless networks and the internet. Assume there is someone trying to spy on or corrupt your valuable data.
If you are transmitting sensitive information such as usernames and passwords try to use encryption, for webmail this may well be SSL (Secure Sockets Layer); check for "https://" in browser title bar. If you use a server I recommend using an encryption protocol such as SSH (Secure Shell) this should eliminate most security issues on this front.
If you are worried about sending plaintext emails or files, run an encryption client, such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and encourage those you communicate with to do the same.
If your machine should have a firewall then definately ensure it is installed and working properly. Windows users may wish to turn off any services (shares, print servers etc.) which they do not need running on their machine, and should be aware that any shared directories (unless they disable them) may be visible to anyone who cares to look. If you run Internet Explorer consider installing Firefox (www.mozilla.org) instead.
The entire network will be protected from incoming traffic using one or two Debian GNU/Linux machines as firewalls, meaning that these are the only two computers which are directly exposed to the internet and are configured to be so. All traffic to and from the internet will go via these computers. If you would like more information on these machines please visit the marquee during the event (unless you happen to be THE black-hat hacker).
For the wireless network we could consider using WEP to encrypt wireless traffic, but this will slow the network down considerably, and our hypothetical black-hat hacker has the tools to circumvent this anyway. Come on down to the marquee Black-hat. We've got wired connections.
When you finish with the network, disconnect (remove the network cable or safely shut down wireless). The less time you are on the network the less the window of exposure. Generally this goes for websites which you login to, logout when finished.
The open access computers will be running Linux, which we have found to be remarkably secure and reliable. I advocate anyone who is really interested in security investigate a more secure solution than Microsoft at the least. Part of the reason for providing such a lavish network is to allow HesFes attendees some exposure to the wellspring of fantastic technology that is the Free Software and Open Source community movement. Linux has reached a desktop usability stage now that anyone who does not have a very good reason for using Windows is advised to consider swapping. We will be pleased to offer help and advise on this at the event.
Anyone who is sufficiently paranoid should not connect to any network. The same goes for crossing the road. There is a tradeoff between risk and usability.
On Tuesday 17th May is the HESFES Home Education Conference where many current issues surrounding home education in Europe will be discussed. There will be two guest speakers from outside the UK participating via VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).
