USB to 100BASE-FX Optical Fiber Network Card

2013/05/26 26 Comments

Optical fiber is an intriguing technology, deployed all over the world connecting computer networks with the speed of light (well… almost).

Unfortunately, due to the inherent complexity of fiber network installation and management, optical fiber devices have never found their way in the hands of the user, and are usually deployed only by professionals for things such as backbones, long hauls or really fast interconnections.

Luckily enough, older optical fiber Ethernet components, especially 100MBit ones, are now available as a reasonably low price, so I decided to design a couple of USB to 100BASE-FX network cards just for fun and to learn more about working with optical fibers.

This project contains two complete hardware designs for USB to 100BASE-FX network cards, one with a 1×9 transceiver and one with an SFP slot. Both designs are based on the ASIX AX88772B chip, and fit in a compact Hammond 1551 series box.


https://fabiobaltieri.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/usb100fx-intro-1.jpg


https://fabiobaltieri.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/usb100fx-intro-2.jpg

Also, there are some useful links and information about designing with OF transceivers and SFP modules.

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IPv6 Stateful Firewall with netfilter/ip6tables

2011/11/13 1 Comment

IPv6 is coming!

Ok, that was just a provocation. If you have some interest in networking technologies you’ll know for sure that stable IPv6 implementation are around for many years now but very few providers give the user IPv6 connectivity. You can follow the IPv6 deployment status around the world on this Wikipedia page.

Anyway, for those of you who are lucky enough to have a real IPv6 connection, it’s time to add the “6” to some network utility, and that includes ip6tables!

This script is a stateful firewall for an IPv6 standalone and router installation, which provides the same level of security given by an IPv4 NAT router.

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IPv6 Tunnel Broker on GNU/Linux Routers

2011/10/10 2 Comments

IPv6 connectivity is slowly spreading around the net day after day. Sooner or later you may want to get IPv6 connectivity to your home, as some providers already does with brave users.

If your ISP does not give you native IPv6 connectivity you can still get your own IPv6 access in a number of ways.

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Iptables Stateful Firewall and NAT Routing

2011/09/12 Leave a comment

Network packet filtering! Whether is your home or your company, modern networks have many systems connected. Even a small domestic network can provide connectivity to many devices of different kinds: PCs, laptops, printers, smartphones, game consoles, your neighbor’s laptop (wait… what?!), NASes, media players, TVs…

If you have some basic knowledge in networking, you’ll probably want a way to control all the traffic going through your network, and if you are running a GNU/Linux system, you probably already have what you need… Netfilter!

What you’ll find here are some examples of common Netfilter (iptables) configurations and some scripts I use as a base for my firewalls and network installations.

These are really useful if you need some advanced firewall configuration and you choose to run your own GNU/Linux system as a router instead of a commercial one. Also, these scripts may come in handy if you need to quickly replace a broken router with a spare PC.

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