Today a friend of mine wanted to know how he can check the status and or speed of multiple Network Interfaces/Ports on a device ( Switch, Router, Server, etcc ) using SNMP. Specifically he wanted to know if the Interfaces/Ports are Operationally Up or Down and also if it is Administratively. Then he also wanted to know the speed of the Interfaces/Ports that were Up or Down.

As a Linux user and an telecommuting employee one of my biggest challenges was configuring the VPN Client to connecct to my employer's VPN server so I had access to the Knowledge Base as well as all other Internet services:

Many people use SSH to log in to remote machines, copy files around, and perform general system administration. If you want to increase your productivity with SSH, you can try a tool that lets you run commands on more than one remote machine at the same time.

Many so-called networking classes will start by teaching you to memorize the name of every layer and every protocol contained within this model. Don't do that. Do realize that layers 5 and 6 can be completely ignored, though.

One of the great features included in Linux is the IPtables firewall. Unfortunately, its command-line use is rather complex, and it can be intimidating for even experienced Linux users to configure it. Firestarter is a friendly graphical interface that allows you to configure a software firewall in Linux using the built-in IPtables/IPchains utilities.

OpenWRT is one of the key drivers behind the Wi-Fi revolution. It got its start as an embedded Linux platform for wireless routers, perhaps inspired by (while separate from) the GPL'd Linksys code, and since 2004 it has been managed as an open source project. OpenWRT has proven to be highly versatile and has spawned a number of forks.