From: Digest To: "OS/2GenAu Digest" Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 00:00:25 EST-10EDT,10,-1,0,7200,3,-1,0,7200,3600 Subject: [os2genau_digest] No. 1371 Reply-To: X-List-Unsubscribe: www.os2site.com/list/ ************************************************** Thursday 12 October 2006 Number 1371 ************************************************** Subjects for today 1 Telstra's Heart is broken ! : Ed Durrant 2 Re: Telstra's Heart is broken ! : Michael/Gail Peters" **= Email 1 ==========================** Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 20:29:24 +1000 From: Ed Durrant Subject: Telstra's Heart is broken ! Some would say Telstra doesn't have a heart. Some would say it was broken when that American, Sol took the helm, others would say it broke when the government decided to sell it off in a series of fire sales. Actually the Heart I'm referring to here is the heartbeat signal used on Telstra's "Bigpond Cable" network. This network get "maintenance" occasionally and often following this I have to tell my Linksys router to disconnect and reconnect. Occasionally this is not enough and I have to restart the modem as well. On this occasion I did the usual disconnect, wait, connect process and after a while I got the "heartbeat signal not found" pop-up message that usually means I need to restart the modem as well. But as I was preparing to do this, Thunderbird beeped and informed me I had new mail. When I checked I did indeed have Internet connectivity despite the failure message. I put this down to a timing problem - that the link had in fact been made exactly at the same time as the error was being generated. I thought no more about this until now .... In the November Australian Personal Computer magazine in its broadband section, there's an announcement that Telstra have turned off the heartbeat servers and now you only need to connect the router to the cable modem to get access. No more heartbeat (and hence also no more logon) required ! This is good news for people looking to buy a router, they no longer have to check that the router supports the Telstra Heartbeat or if they can download modified code to make it support the heartbeat function. Also if you don't want to use a hardware router at all, and want to use your OS/2 system instead, you can now simply connect it to the modem (or a switch connected to the modem) and you don't need the REXX or Java BPLOGON agents any more. You probably should configure the TCP/IP stack in firewall mode if you don't have a hardware firewall however (a handy utility to configure this feature comes in eCS 2.0 beta2 or can be added) ! Cheers/2 Ed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- **= Email 2 ==========================** Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 21:54:19 +1000 From: "Michael/Gail Peters" Subject: Re: Telstra's Heart is broken ! Ed, Don't be a sophist ; -) tell us how...... I'm staring down the barrell at this : 'Maxon Australia are developing further NextG capable modems. Check out our development blog maxoncdma dot com dot au/3gblog (brand new).' for my (wife's) desktop. Will I need the usual Win gateway and the Win software ( Australian) router Nat32 to enable OS/2? I am onsatellite now and there's no escape....do you offer hope? M. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Durrant" To: Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 8:29 PM Subject: Telstra's Heart is broken ! > Some would say Telstra doesn't have a heart. Some would say it was broken > when that American, Sol took the helm, others would say it broke when the > government decided to sell it off in a series of fire sales. > > Actually the Heart I'm referring to here is the heartbeat signal used on > Telstra's "Bigpond Cable" network. > > This network get "maintenance" occasionally and often following this I > have to tell my Linksys router to disconnect and reconnect. Occasionally > this is not enough and I have to restart the modem as well. On this > occasion I did the usual disconnect, wait, connect process and after a > while I got the "heartbeat signal not found" pop-up message that usually > means I need to restart the modem as well. But as I was preparing to do > this, Thunderbird beeped and informed me I had new mail. When I checked I > did indeed have Internet connectivity despite the failure message. I put > this down to a timing problem - that the link had in fact been made > exactly at the same time as the error was being generated. I thought no > more about this until now .... > > In the November Australian Personal Computer magazine in its broadband > section, there's an announcement that Telstra have turned off the > heartbeat servers and now you only need to connect the router to the cable > modem to get access. No more heartbeat (and hence also no more logon) > required ! > > This is good news for people looking to buy a router, they no longer have > to check that the router supports the Telstra Heartbeat or if they can > download modified code to make it support the heartbeat function. > > Also if you don't want to use a hardware router at all, and want to use > your OS/2 system instead, you can now simply connect it to the modem (or a > switch connected to the modem) and you don't need the REXX or Java BPLOGON > agents any more. You probably should configure the TCP/IP stack in > firewall mode if you don't have a hardware firewall however (a handy > utility to configure this feature comes in eCS 2.0 beta2 or can be added) > ! > > Cheers/2 > > Ed. > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------