What Exactly Is Federation, Anyways?

Federation, the driving name behind decentralized and self-hosted software. But what is ‘federation,’ really? Well, there’s the really complex answer, and the simple answer. The simple answer is that federation is when multiple unrelated instances of a piece of software are capable of communicating and sharing between one another. The long answer, well, if you want to see that, then…

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OTR: Encrypted Instant Messaging

Yes, for once, I have not just some app for secure messaging, this time, it’s a protocol. OTR, or Off-the-Record Messaging, is a protocol for establishing end-to-end encrypted messaging between two participants over a standard instant messaging channel like IRC or XMPP (Jabber). It also allows for deniable authentication, where during the conversation you can be assured that only you two are talking, but after the conversation, there is no way for an outside third party to 100% prove you talked, since it’s theoretically possible for an attacker to have forged the communications record. It’s complicated, but not too hard to wrap your head around.

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QMQP: That Other Mail Transfer Protocol

Everyone (okay, everyone this is relevant to) knows what SMTP is, the standard for mail transfer. It’s even in the name, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, which is how mail servers have been sending mail to other mail servers since… a while. Well, fun fact, there’s another protocol that accomplishes the same goal: QMQP, the Quick Mail Queuing Protocol.

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How DNSBLs Work

Ff you’ve dealt with email for any longer than 5 minutes (as an administrator), you already know it’s a mess. There’s so many security measures, so many checks, so many things to combat bad actors and spam. What if we had some way to have some service publish a list of bad DPs, and mail servers could quickly check that mid-transaction so they can have up-to-date information as to if the in-flight message should actually be accepted or not?

Well, we have exactly that. Enter: the DNS Blacklist.

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How Photographic Film Works

Some of you may know this. Some of you may not. But here’s something interesting: nowadays, cameras are everywhere, as in, just about everyone has one in their pocket. Sure, digital cameras are just counting photons hitting some silicon. But, before that? We had film. Film that recorded photos physically with chemical changes. And, I personally find that the science behind that is rather fascinating.

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WebDAV Explained: Filesystems Over HTTP

So I take it some people reading this are familiar with what I’ll call a ‘remote filesystem protocol’ like NFS, SMB, or AFP. Well, did you know there’s one that’s found use in a few places and you’ve maybe heard of once or twice, and really… well, doesn’t sound like it should make any sense? Welcome to WebDAV. The remote filesystem that runs over HTTP.

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IRC Is an Insanely Simple Protocol

This is where I’d usually make some joke about “if you remember, back in the day…” but… given how Freenode and Libera have been in the news recently for Freenode’s rather hostile takeover (and suicide), You probably know what IRC is. So. IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a really old (as in, 1988) protocol for text-based communications between users on a network. And the cool part is, it’s so simple that it’s almost funny. Like, let’s take a look. You could actually, with only a few minutes of reading, just enter raw IRC protocol lines by hand and have a perfectly valid and functional session.

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Graylog, and the Syslog Protocol, Explained

So if you’ve tried enterprise log management systems, you’ve likely heard of Syslog. If you haven’t, Syslog, is, well, a protocol designed to allow multiple hosts to send their system logs over the network to some other server where they can be analyzed and stored. It’s another one of those weird UDP protocols, and this one is actually stupid simple, even in both of the commonly used forms! Oh, we’ll also cover the one piece of software that I use that handles Syslog — Graylog, which by itself is also really cool.

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TDNET 2.0: the New Homelab (Part 1)

Part 1 of 2

A first for me, this post is going to come in two parts. This one will cover the tech behind everything, and the second will actually be a new network tour. I’ve finally finished one of the biggest, if not the biggest project I’ve undertaken in a while: overhauling pretty much my entire network.

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