The Discussion:
Rich kicked things off by expressing frustration trying to find a small digital clock than can easily be moved around the desktop. After we considered the possibility of using a chatbot to write a python based program, Carl suggested using xclock. After installing the x11-apps package, Rich ran xclock and xclock -digital -face “fixed:pixelsize=30” -strftime “%A, %B %-d, %r” -update 1 -padding 30 -fg black -bg lightskyblue, preferring the latter.
We we then went on to television antennas and how to receive the best ota (over the air) signals. It seems that tinkering and experimentation is the best method. Pat suggested checking the Antennas Direct website for information about available channels.
RTTM (RichardTheTechMan) talked about various power settings provided by USB connections. The standards have changed with time for both amperage and voltage. There are new chargers and devices that can autodetect the best settings. He recommends seeing this Android Authority article about USB power delivery.
The Presentation:
Pat opened up a session of the community version of ntopng and gave us a tour. The program runs a webserver so it can be accessed by a browser. It can show graphs for various network conditions such as bandwidth, delays, and errors. It is then possible to zero in on a given host and/or protocol to see more information about live connections. Various filters are available to focus on particular hosts, IP addresses, MAC addresses, and protocols. When he showed the list of connections using the most IP bandwidth, it showed the device running ntopng and his desktop computer were quite busy…not surprising considering all the data being displayed.
We also talked briefly about cli monitors including ntop, iftop, and tcpdump.
Carl then brought up Wireshark to display a packet capture of a network sniff. Following the advice of Chris Greer on YouTube, he changed the display options and preset filters to make it easier to diagnose TCP sessions. Using the filter to find TCP handshakes, Carl found 4 sessions that had been opened. He was then able to display every packet in each session, making it easy to find any problems like long delays, errors, or retransmissions.
Wireshark can be used “live” to view real-time data, or it can examine pcap files previously recorded by ntopng, Wireshark, tcpdump, and similar sources.