BSSID in Windows XP using Powershell

Note: If you don't know what BSSID is, you mostly need to know that it's the MAC address of the Access Point you're connected to.

Have you ever tried to get the BSSID in Windows XP? It's kind of difficult to do it, specially when all the Google results end up showing things with netsh wlan command. netsh wlan is part of a newer version than the one in Windows XP. It comes in Windows Vista and above. However that's the fastest way to find out which BSSID you're using.

Terminal Services Gateway

We were looking for some solution where we can centralize every RDP session coming from outside (especially for vendor access), and we ended up with 2 choices: Citrix or Terminal Services Gateway (now known as Remote Desktop Services Gateway). Considering we already have licenses for Terminal Services, we are taking the latter. If you don't know what it is, here's a brief explanation.

Windows Server Terminal Services uses Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to enable the connections from clients to the terminal server, which uses port 3389. If you need to access a terminal server from outside the internal network (intranet), you have two options for doing so. You can either enable port 3389 through your firewall to specific servers (which isn’t a good idea), or, more commonly, clients connect to the corporate network via VPN, which can then enable the RDP session in a secure manner.

UDP reference

You have to remember diferences between TCP and UDP. Here's a quick definition of UDP:

UDP is the User Datagram Protocol. It is used to send individual packets across an IP network, in an unreliable fashion. This means that successful, error-free delivery of a message is not guaranteed.

So remember that UDP is not reliable but it's fast! Examples of protocols that use UDP are TFTP, DNS (it can use TCP too!), DHCP, SNMP, RCP, NFS.

If you're really interested in its standard and how it's defined, you should definitely read the RCF doc here:

RFC 768 - User Datagram Protocol


And finally a couple of jokes:

"A UDP packet walks into a bar, no one acknowledges him.
A TCP packet walks into a bar twice because no one acknowledged him the first time."

"The best thing about UDP jokes is i don’t care if you get it or not."

Understanding Spanning Tree Protocol

If you ever studied CCNA, I bet you had troubles understanding Spanning Tree Protocol (IEEE 802.1D). I know I did! Here's an explanation of it so you can clear your doubts.

1 - Basic concepts

Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is a OSI layer 2 protocol (Data Link).

Its function is to deal with loops presence due to redundant links existence. This protocol grants switches the ability to enable or disable automatically the connection links guaranteeing a loop-free topology.