This week I actually relaxed a little; it’s been hot, and it’s also been a hot minute since I haven’t had a ton on my plate!

Networks

This week I pulled out my raspberry pi‘s [I have a model B+, and a Zero], and I was thinking about projects that I could use them for. I remembered using SSH to set up a previous project, so I wanted to revisit that, and see if I could get a better understanding before I jumped into something. I spent some time looking at a couple of different tools used for network connections: Telnet, and SSH.

Telnet isn’t typically used for much of anything anymore, it seems, because it sends all data completely unencrypted. It is, however, really useful for checking which ports are open and accessible quickly, and with minimal setup required. Windows requires that you enable it before you can use it, either through the control panel or the command line. Most telnet servers exist now for nostalgia’s sake, but some may still be accessed by older systems- though there are fewer and fewer of these cases all the time. [Is it a little like the fax machine of the internet?? …Maybe.] telnet.org has a very cool list of resources that you can still access via telnet, including weather information, and a Star Wars film that you can watch on your command line!

SSH (Secure Shell) is a lot safer- all data is transferred encrypted. Computerphile has a good, short video that I enjoyed that explained the encryption. This Traversy Media video went a bit more in depth and showed a pretty thorough example of the kind of situation when you would use SSH, and setting it up.

Next

I have my computer to myself aaaaaaaaall week, next week, so I’ll be setting up a project on at least one of my raspberry pi’s. I’m still looking at different options, but I’m restricted in that I don’t want to buy any extra hardware [and the case that I used for a previous project has yet to turn up since the last move- or was it the one before that??…]