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Xbox Live Applications

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Something I have been meaning to write about for a bit is the new Xbox apps. So far, in Canada, there is Roger’s on demand, Real Sports, Crackle, TMZ and a UFC application you can install. I could be missing some as well, but that is what we have  installed plus Netflix.

Netflix gets the most use here at the house, followed by the Roger’s on Demand app, the others, not so much use. I do have a Roger’s cell phone which allows me to get more the programs you would get without the application. There are programs from various channels like CBC, CityTV and Treehouse (always a hit with the 2yr old).

For these applications to work, you need Xbox Gold, which is kind of a kick but considering you might pay $80.00/month for cable, I guess it is bit of a deal.

Palo Alto User Identification

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I am in the final phase of staging our Palo Alto 5050 in the office. We are planning to deploy this unit as both an edge and datacentre firewall.

It’s a pretty nifty device. Before even implementing it, we have been able to use it in what’s called TAP mode to look at what kind of traffic is traversing our network. It’s very surprising to see what is chewing up bandwidth. The biggest surprise for me was iCloud. I couldn’t believe the gigs of data being transferred back and forth from Apple.

One of the caveats I have found so far with setting it up is when you setup your captive portal to pick up guest users. We created both a guest account for truly guest users but also give the end user a chance to authenticate using AD credentials on the captive portal for more access.  Your authentication has to be local database first before your LDAP lookup in the AD. Otherwise it tries to authenticate in AD first, then gives up without checking the local database.