How-To: Hack Your Router to Manage Network Traffic

Third-party router software has been around for a while, but we can’t help but keep recommending it to users who want to add undocumented features to their home network. Our favorite router firmware package is still Tomato, which we favor for its compatibility with a wide range of router brands and models, user-friendly interface, and powerful feature set. We’ll show you how to upgrade your router’s firmware to the newest version of Tomato and then configure the Quality of Service settings to manage your network traffic.
Install Tomato Firmware

First, you need to make sure your router is supported by Tomato. The Linksys WRT54G-series routers work best, but some Buffalo and Asus routers also work. Check the Tomato FAQ (http://(Reportto Staff)(Report to Staff)(Report to Staff)(Report to Staff)(Report to Staff)(Report to Staff)(Report to Staff)/nrfnY) to see if your router model and version number is supported. Download the latest firmware package (version 1.25 at press time) and extract its files with 7-Zip (7-Zip). Access your router’s administration page with its gateway address (default is 192.168.1.1) and find the Firmware Upgrade section. Choose the firmware .bin file that matches your router and begin the upgrade process. Tomato will automatically transfer your router settings over so you don’t have to reconfigure the basic settings.

Configure Quality of Service

Quality of Service lets you manage the different types of data packets as they are routed around your home network and to your service provider. Internet surfing, gaming, VoIP, and BitTorrent traffic can all be prioritized so you can run web services simultaneously without clogging your bandwidth. There’s no one set of settings that will work for everyone, but we’ll give you the basics for you to get started.
QoS works by classifying network traffic types and then ordering those classes for bandwidth prioritization. First, you have to determine your connection’s maximum uplink bandwidth (since upload traffic is the source of most connection clutter). We used Speedtest.net to find our upload cap, and put that bitrate number under Max Bandwidth.

Next, you’ll have to configure the upper and lower bandwidth bounds for each class of packet. By default, the “Highest” class has a range of 80 to 100 percent. This means that packets ranked in this class will always claim at least 80 percent of your bandwidth. The “Lowest” class, on the other hand, has a range of 2 to 95 percent. This means packets under this class will at most claim 95 percent of your bandwidth, if it’s available. Higher ranked classes should be reserved for services that require steady connections, like gaming and VoIP, while lower priority classes should be reserved for normal web surfing, downloads, and peer to peer networks like BitTorrent.

Under the Classification menu, you’ll have to assign specific services to class rankings. You can identify services based on their network protocol type, port, or packet size. You can even use MAC addresses and local IPs to relegate one user on your home network to a specific prioritization class. This is where trial and error will help, and we recommend that you utilize Tomato’s Graphs feature to show you what effect your configuration has on your current traffic. We also recommend referencing the Tomato wiki for further clarification on all of the firmware’s varied settings.

Kill "Process" from "Command Line"

I'm sure you are familiar with the traditional way to kill or end a process in Windows using Task Manager. This method is effective but not nearly as fun as killing a process in Command Prompt. Additionally, killing processes in Command Prompt provides much more control and the ability to end multiple processes at once. All of this is possible with the TaskKill command. First, let's cover the basics. You can kill a process by the process ID (PID) or by image name (EXE filename).
Open up an Administrative level Command Prompt and run tasklist to see all of the running processes:

C:\>tasklist



In the example above you can see the image name and the PID for each process.

If you want to kill the firefox process run: C:\>Taskkill /IM firefox.exe /F
or
C:\>Taskkill /PID 26356 /F

Quote:

The /f flag is kills the process forcefully. Failure to use the /F flag will result in nothing happening in some cases. One example is whenever I want to kill the explorer.exe process I have to use the /F flag or else the process just does not terminate.

If you have multiple instances of an image open such as multiple firefox.exe processes, running the taskkill /IM firefox.exe command will kill all instances. When you specify the PID only the specific instane of firefox will be terminated.

The real power of taskkill are the filtering options that allow you to use the following variables and operators.

Variables:

Quote:

STATUS IMAGENAME PID SESSION CPUTIME MEMUSAGE USERNAME MODULES SERVICES WINDOWTITLE

Operators:

Quote:

eq (equals) ne (not equal) gt (greater than) lt (less than) ge (greater than or equal) le (less than or equal) "*" is the wildcard.

You can use the variables and operators with the /FI filtering flag. For example, let's say you want to end all processes that have a window title that starts with "Internet":

Quote:

C:\>taskkill /FI "WINDOWTITLE eq Internet*" /F

How about killing all processes running under the Steve account:
C:\>taskkill /FI "USERNAME eq Steve" /F
It is also possible to kill a process running on a remote computer with taskkill. Just run the following to kill notepad.exe on a remote computer called SteveDesktop:

Quote:

C:\>taskkill /S SteveDesktop /U RemoteAccountName /P RemoteAccountPassword /IM notepad.exe /F

To learn more about taskkill run it with the /? command just like any other Windows command.


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Improve Multi-Tasking with Virtual Desktops

Microsoft’s Windows Sysinternals group has released a new virtual desktop utility called Desktops. If you have used virtual desktops on *nix or spaces on OS X you will feel right at home with Sysinternals Desktops.

For those of you that are new to virtual desktops, they are a great way to organizing your work and help you multi-task better. Running Sysinternals Desktops is like having 4 monitors with 4 different desktops that you can have different windows or applications open on.

You can easily switch between the desktops with your mouse or shortcut keys. I like to break up my tasks on different desktops. For example, I have Outlook open on virtual desktop 1 and my web developer apps like Dreamweaver and Photoshop open on desktop 2. When I am switching between different tasks I can just switch my current desktop view instead of minimizing and maximizing windows.

This allows me to quickly switch between tasks without losing my window locations and setups.

After you download Sysinternals Desktops and run it you will see a new icon in the system tray that looks like 4 blocks. If you click on the icon you will see a preview of what you have open on each desktop.





You can also right click on the systray icon and select Options where you can set the various shortcut keys you can use to switch between desktops.






download:

Code:

http://ifile.it/j3v70ra/Desktops.zip

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ADD INFO : FROM CREATOR

Quote:

Introduction Desktops allows you to organize your applications on up to four virtual desktops. Read email on one, browse the web on the second, and do work in your productivity software on the third, without the clutter of the windows you’re not using. After you configure hotkeys for switching desktops, you can create and switch desktops either by clicking on the tray icon to open a desktop preview and switching window, or by using the hotkeys. Using Desktops Unlike other virtual desktop utilities that implement their desktops by showing the windows that are active on a desktop and hiding the rest, Sysinternals Desktops uses a Windows desktop object for each desktop. Application windows are bound to a desktop object when they are created, so Windows maintains the connection between windows and desktops and knows which ones to show when you switch a desktop. That making Sysinternals Desktops very lightweight and free from bugs that the other approach is prone to where their view of active windows becomes inconsistent with the visible windows. Desktops reliance on Windows desktop objects means that it cannot provide some of the functionality of other virtual desktop utilities, however. For example, Windows doesn't provide a way to move a window from one desktop object to another, and because a separate Explorer process must run on each desktop to provide a taskbar and start menu, most tray applications are only visible on the first desktop. Further, there is no way to delete a desktop object, so Desktops does not provide a way to close a desktop, because that would result in orphaned windows and processes. The recommended way to exit Desktops is therefore to logoff.

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Access "Sysinternals" utilities over the web with "command prompt"

The Microsoft acquisition Sysinternals that is famous for their useful Windows utilities has a new site up that allows you to easily access any of their utilities for free over the internet in your command prompt.

This allows you to run any of their utilities without first downloading it to your computer. Just open an administrative level command prompt and type in:

Quote:

\\live.sysinternals.com\tools\toolname.exe

For example if you want to run Autoruns (a great program to see what starts up automatically) type

Quote:

\\live.sysinternals.com\tools\autoruns.exe and hit Enter.

Every Sysinternals utility is available for “live” use.

Available Commands

Quote:

accesschk.exe AccessEnum.exe accvio.EXE ADExplorer.exe ADInsight.exe adrestore.exe Autologon.exe autoruns.exe autorunsc.exe Bginfo.exe Cacheset.exe Clockres.exe Contig.exe ctrl2cap.exe Dbgview.exe DEFRAG.EXE diskext.exe Diskmnt.exe Diskmon.exe DiskView.exe du.exe efsdump.exe Filemon.exe handle.exe hex2dec.exe junction.exe ldmdump.exe Listdlls.exe livekd.exe LoadOrd.exe logonsessions.exe movefile.exe newsid.exe NotMyfault.exe ntfsinfo.exe pagedfrg.exe pendmoves.exe PHYSMEM.EXE pipelist.exe portmon.exe procexp.exe ProcFeatures.exe Procmon.exe psexec.exe psfile.exe psgetsid.exe Psinfo.exe pskill.exe pslist.exe psloggedon.exe psloglist.exe pspasswd.exe psservice.exe psshutdown.exe pssuspend.exe RegDelNull.exe Reghide.exe regjump.exe Regmon.exe RootkitRevealer.exe sdelete.exe ShareEnum.exe ShellRunas.exe sigcheck.exe streams.exe strings.exe sync.exe SysInternalsBluescreen.scr tcpvcon.exe Tcpview.exe Testlimit.exe testlimit64.exe Volumeid.exe whois.exe Winobj.exe ZoomIt.exe

For a “live” list visit

Code:

 live.sysinternals.com - /Tools/

Tip: When you are typing in a command hit the Tab key to automatically fill in the rest of the file name.

Quote:

E.g. type autor and then hit Tab to get autoruns.exe

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watch tv online - more than 2700 channels all over the world for free

watching tv online is one of the tuffest task ....sorry people laugh at me if i say this now.cos i have found the most easiest way to see online Tv with more than 2700 channels.

see the procedure

this procedure for people who are new to firefox and dont know what exactly addons are...

download firefox browser here

then open browser and download this addon click here to download


that's it you are done. it’s Easy & Free!
2780 Live TV Channels sorted by country & category, the TV-FOX allow you to watch thousands of TV channels freely available on the internet. powered by the biggest and most up to date database (Google - Wikipedia - YouTube - Torrent - eBay & Amazon Search engines included).


you have channels listed according to country as well as categorized like


kids TV
entertainment
news check the pic above

after all the procedure completed it will ask you to download plugin
download the plugin from here if the default link is not working
click here to download plugin

Add video from your networked storage into Movie Maker

Windows Live Movie Maker, having started off as a glass hammer, has made significant strides in the areas of functionality and usability. If you haven’t already pushed all the buttons in the new release, I recommend you check out Paul’s thorough review.

While playing around with Movie Maker, I tried to import some video content stored on my HP MediaSmart. Just my luck, it’s not supported. As you can plainly see on the right, Microsoft suggests I copy my content – which could theoretically be gigabytes in size – to my local disk.

Uh. How about no?

Poking around a bit, I noticed Movie Maker has an undocumented override switch... but it comes at a tiny cost: The network share housing your media must may need to allow unfettered Guest access. For those that aren’t trying to hide porn on their MediaSmart servers, this isn’t a big deal. I suspect this is either a temporary code issue revolving around the lack of user impersonation or a security feature. Either case, it’s annoying.

(Update August 21, 2009: Tom Warren mentioned he did not require Guest access. YMMV.)

To run the roadblock, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Movie Maker and add a DWORD value named AllowNetworkFiles. Afterwards, simply double-click it and set its data to either 0 (disabled) or 1 (enabled).

Keyboard cat, inside the new Windows Live Movie Maker, playing me off.

Downloading a browser in E, without a browser, in 3 steps

On October 22nd, the main version of Windows 7 to be sold, in the various EU-participating countries, will be Windows 7 “E”. What is this you ask? Windows 7 “E” is merely Windows 7 sans Internet Explorer, the EU’s OS of choice. Consumers will quickly discover, however, it’s a huge pain in the ass to download a browser of their choice… without a browser.

Mom and Dad will likely get a pre-built machine, by either a popular manufacturer or their kids, so this isn’t a problem for them. Us, on the other hand, are incredibly lazy. We won’t want to bend down and grab one of a million USB fobs. Or put yet another executable on our NAS. Or heaven forbid, waste a CD. We need something clever. This is one such clever.

Step 1 – Launch (and configure) Windows Media Player

Throughout the OS, you’ll find references to Windows Media Player. Click one of them. You’ll be welcomed by a wizard that takes a good five minutes to go through, if you don’t choose the Recommended option.

Step 2 – Search for your browser, using the Windows Media Guide

If it isn’t already on your screen, open the Windows Media Guide. You can do this by clicking the very large Media Guide button in the lower-left corner of Windows Media Player. In the upper-right corner of the Guide, type your browser of choice into the Search box. Purely for example purposes, cough, I typed “Firefox”.

Step 3 – Click an ad, download your browser

Upon completion of your search, you’ll be presented with some advertising. We’ll use this to our advantage to hop outside the cage we’re in. Pick an ad, click it. If it doesn’t take you to the manufacturers site in less than a few clicks, go back and pick a different ad. Eventually you’ll end up at the desired location with the binaries you need trickling down to your desktop.

For those that wish to download Internet Explorer, you can simply type the keyword IE8 or Opera. I’m serious.

Figure 1, 2 -- Windows Media Player being used to search for and download Mozilla Firefox