WARNING: this is a rant node, you've been warned
While I was off at
college this year, my
familial unit decided it was time to move beyond
dial up internet access. They wired up the house with
Cat 5 and networked all the
windoze boxen (we've accumulated 4 or 5 over the years) to a new
Windows NT server. The NT server runs a
proxy server and
NAT between the home network and the
DSL modem. The problem is the proxy is
Microsoft proxy, not a standard
SOCKS 4 or
SOCKS 5. As usual, MS has defined a new "
standard" and neglected to tell anyone else about it. All the client computers have to run a
special MS proxy client to access
the internet. MS doesn't make proxy clients for any OS that ends in an "X", so my
linux box is
SOL.
Even from this
win98 box, I can't get anything but
http through. No
ftp, no
ICQ, no
#everything, and no
email. Ugh. Maybe my dad will get sick enough of
rebooting the server every time his printer disappears from the network to let me put a
real OS on. (
OpenBSD, I think, cause he's paranoid about security)