Network and General Admin Discussion

I've been doing sysadmin work locally and for others for a very long time, never, until today at least, have I ran into an issue where "killall $ApplicationName" hasn't worked. I've been playing with the Pidgin Instant Messenger, combining it with the 'torsocks' and liking it so far. I was attempting an image transfer and it locked up, I tried using...

Well I've been getting a few blocklists that are failing to update, specifically a few from BlueTack. Anyone else experiencing this problem? I really like the "level 3" lists as well, that's one of the ones that isn't updating.

As I work more and more with PfSense and research more into firewalling with Linux, I can't help but to notice that there are so many options available for QoS. I've learned so far that a significant portion of my connection 15%-30% [depending on my queue's] is wasted and/or not available to my machine when during that moment, I'm the only one using the connection.

I'm currently using the bluetack-3 lists as well as a few others. On my primary machine I have setup iplist using IPblock for the interface making it much easier to allow certain connections as I see fit. Knowing that I'm paranoid in my connectivity; I make it standard practice to block more than I should; later allowing any unnecessary blockages manually. 

Not too long ago I setup pfsense and wrote an article, since then I have accrued a tremendous amount of logs, which I can analyse and tune the network with; I have to say that I am thoroughly impressed. Using Ntop, pftop, and Snort alongside everything else is absolutely amazing. The only downfall I can think of is that I have yet to find a solution that EASILY impliments blocklists and offers automated updating [of the lists]. I'm frantically searching for a solution at the moment.