Recent flakiness -- but for a good cause

We're using an older model IBM Wireless Gateway that is no longer supported. Generally, this isn't a problem; however, I've found two conditions which tend to lead to intermittent network problems that require a reboot of the gateway (hence temporary inaccessibility of coastalpacifica.com):

1. Heavy VPN usage. Like most companies these days, my employer only allows VPN access to the corporate network -- and sometimes, I just need to log on from home.

(Ok, there are a few back doors for those in-the-know; but in general, in order to use Microsoft Outlook and other such tools, VPN is the only way in.)

2. Using the excellent distributed crawler Grub (available at http://www.grub.org).

For some reason, our old gateway just doesn't handle large numbers of http connect/get/disconnect cycles very well, which is the hallmark of grub. Fortunately, the rate of crawling is completely configurable.

In case you're interested, the concept behind grub is simple: donate some of your spare bandwidth and cpu cycles, and help improve web search (kind of like seti@home).

wisenut.com has incorporated this unique technology to some extent, but much cooler stuff is coming soon. I really think running grub is for a good cause.

Anyway, that's the latest from the paradise some of us call Pacifica, California...