In library environments, we often have a need to limit Internet access on certain computers. One example would be for a dedicated card catalog computer where we do not want patrons using the machine for anything else. In this example, we have a certain computer that will only be allowed to access a card catalog …
Category: Uncategorized
Aug 01
Mikrotik VLAN Trunk and Unifi AP
Suppose we have an access point capable of multiple SSID and VLAN. We want to set up an open hotspot for public access on one channel, and a secured channel for staff. For this exercise, we will use a Ubiquiti Unifi AP and set up two WLANs. The first WLAN will be called “Public” and …
Jul 20
Own a Kindle?
Do you own a Kindle or have patrons that do and are frustrated that it isn’t compatible with the 3M Cloud Library through the State Library of Kansas? Please let Amazon know that compatibility with the 3M Cloud Library is important to you by visiting your Kindle’s customer service page and using the “contact us” …
Jul 20
Mikrotik Firewall Basic Settings
Out of the box, the RouterOS firewall is pretty lean on rules. The default configuration may have as few as four rules in place, three for accepting traffic (icmp, connected, and related traffic) and one for blocking all other inbound traffic. Depending on how you have configured your Internet access (static IP, PPPoE, etc.), the …
Jul 16
Mikrotik Policy-Based Routing
One of the more interesting features within the RouterOS mangle (packet marking) facility is the ability to mark packets in the pre-routing chain. With this option, we can perform what is called policy-based routing. Suppose we have two WAN (Internet) connections that our LAN clients could potentially use, and that we wish to split the usage such …
Jul 13
Basic RouterOS Traffic Queueing
In this post, we will look at a basic traffic queuing configuration. Our example network will be comprised of two subnets, one for wired computers (staff and patron) and one for wireless computers (accessed via a wireless AP plugged into port 5). Our wired computers will all be within the 192.168.88.0/24 network on port2, and …
Jul 13
RouterOS Basic Setup
Many of the smaller Mikrotik routers (450G, 750GL, etc.) will have a default configuration applied out of the box. This usually consists of a LAN subnet of 192.168.88.0/24, a DHCP server running on the LAN segment, and port 1 set to receive a WAN IP via DHCP. If your computer is already set to get it’s …
Jul 06
Need Help Understanding Some of the New Features in Facebook Pages?
If your library has a Facebook Page I highly recommend checking out Facebook’s Page course. Facebook created this course to help with some of the recent changes to Facebook Pages. The course is all web-based and should take about 30 – 45 minutes …
Jun 28
Summer Reading Blog
We have heard great stories about what all of you are doing for Summer Reading and can’t wait to see! Please share your plans, pictures, videos, fun activities, good eats, etc on the SWKLS Summer Reading Blog. The blog is located at: http://swklsreads.mykansaslibrary.org. You can also get to it by going to www.swkls.org and then going to Resources & Services | Summer Reading | …
Jun 27
Summer Newsletter
The Summer Newsletter is finished and you should be receiving one in the mail here in the next few days. Here are some of the featured topics in this edition: Information about Rosie Cutrer, our Summer Reading storyteller How one library partnered with the community to make READ posters What is happening at libraries across …