NetMcr #6, December 2016

In early December, on Thursday 8th – just before everyone started getting busy with the usual festive celebrations – we were back at 57 Thomas Street for the final NetMcr of 2016.

The crowd at 57 Thomas Street
Despite being a little light, we were delighted with the turn-out for December.

We even found a poor, unsuspecting Network Engineer, enjoying a quiet post-work beer by the window. After hearing about NetMcr and what we had planned, he was more than happy to join us. What are the chances?

The first talk for the evening was about CZ.NIC‘s extremely popular Turris Omnia router, given by familiar face Mike Hughes. Many talks have been given about this device over the years, primarily by CZ.NIC themselves, however Mike was also kind enough to go into some ‘real world’ detail on his experiences of using one as a daily (wireless) router at home.

Mike Hughes presenting on the Turris Omnia
Mike began with a history of how the Turris Omnia came to be.

Despite a few complications on VLAN setup, it sounded like the Turris was serving Mike well. No doubt it’ll cross the minds of those in the room when they’re next considering their home network.

James Blessing continued the evening with the second of our two talks, this one entitled ‘1984 was not a training manual‘. There will be no second-guesses granted as to the topic of his talk – it was of course, a history of the UK Government legislation on surveillance. Specific regard to how past, current & new laws interact with ISPs was given.

James Blessing presenting '1984 is not a training manual'
James’ talk had everyone on the edge of their seats; very pertinent subject matter.

James’ talk was, as expected, a fantastic account of the legislation involved, and we were all particularly grateful to have someone with his breadth of expertise to speak on the topic.

For those interested, here are the slides for the talks, in the order they were presented on the evening:

  1. Tom Hill & Thom Seddon, “Welcome to NetMcr #6” (PDF)
  2. Mike Hughes, “Experiences with the Turris Omnia” (PDF)
  3. James Blessing, “1984 was not a training manual” (PDF pending)