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Review of the Morakniv Garberg outdoor knife

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

What is the best outdoor knife?

Those who know me well know that I love the outdoors and I love knives. If I were stranded on an island and could only bring one home comfort, it would be an outdoor knife. Having many outdoor enthusiast readers, I am regularly asked what knife I like best. 

When I first started studying survival skills, I had the misguided belief that the more expensive your equipment, the better it must be. I quickly learned that this wasn't always the case and sometimes even the most basic tool, used correctly, could be a lifesaver. 

Nowhere is this more true than outdoor (camping or survival knives). I say outdoor because my choice for an everyday carry knife is very different. 

Outdoors you say?

I have been camping for 30+ years and have been interested in wilderness survival and native survival skills for the last five years. I have been fortunate enough to have participated in training camps with some of the industries most recognized names in forests hours from the nearest city. 

While camping or during a survival event, a knife could be the difference between life and death. It can help you catch & process food, build shelter, start a fire and much more. In the wild, I can

  • make a natural "sleeping bag" with logs and leaves
  • make utensils and plates from logs
  • use rocks as cookware on a fire

What I can't make in the wild is a knife. Sure you can use a sharp rock, but that won't allow you to batton firewood or perform any of the hundreds of tasks a real sturdy knife can.

Let's be clear, a knife without training won't save your life. But with decent knowledge, a bit of practice and a good knife, you can save your life even in the most treacherous environment. 

What about a multitool?

I carry a Victorinox Swiss Champ with me every day (EDC). I wouldn't leave home without it. I own and carry various dependable leatherman multitools, but in the wild, I want a knife. A multitool just wouldn't be able to take the abuse of real outdoor survival. You try batoning a log with a multitool and see how long it lasts. 

Aren't all survival knives the same?

The answer is No. Just in case you were confused, the answer is no, no and no. Go to any Walmart, and you will find a dozen knives marked as survival knives. Most are garbage, but unless you are an experienced user, you will undoubtedly be overwhelmed with conflicting marketing messages and the sheer number of possible options.

An excellent outdoor knife will:

  • Be a multi-use item but not a multi-tool. You will have to stay away from the specialized products (e.g., blades with hooks to help gut a catch, a tanto point to stab, etc.)
  • Be durable in the field. You need a tool that is designed to last and won't fail you when you need it most. Remember "that which can fail will fail." This is why I stay away from folding knives when looking for the ideal outdoor knife.
  • Be built for survival and hard use. The ideal knife must be full-tang which means the blade's steel runs into the handle. Some knives have a long thick tang in the handle (typically more expensive), while others use a skinnier metal body in the handle (typically less expensive). 
  • Be budget friendly. The more expensive your knife, the less likely you are to use and abuse it. The knife must be "expensive enough" to be well designed and crafted using quality materials, yet cheap enough that you will use it in the wild (you can't cry every time you baton logs with it). 

What characteristics should I look for?

Blade: My preference is the Scandinavian grind (SG). The SG is a wide flat bevel (V) that wind to the end of the blade. There is no secondary bevel. This produces a knife with excellent cut control. It is slightly more fragile than over edges and can be strengthened with a slight secondary bevel. This is a blade edge that is easy to maintain in the field with a single sharpening stone and sharpening requires less skill [compared to other edges]. 

Length: Blade length is a very personal decision, but I have found 4-6" to be the sweet spot. Too short and the knife's usefulness is greatly diminished. Too long and the blade will be difficult to control and will be on your way when hanging on your belt.

Price: As mentioned earlier, it has to be expensive enough to be well built from quality materials. It shouldn't be too expensive causing you to avoid using it in the field. 

What is the best outdoor knife?

If I had to pick one knife right now that I would want in a survival situation, it would be the Morakniv Garberg MultiMount. Anyone interested in camping or survival has probably heard of MoraKniv. The poster child for Mora knives (Mora is a region in Sweden) is Cody Lundin from the Aboriginal Living Skills School and TV personality.

The Garberg meets all of my requires. It is durable, versatile, easy to maintain in the field and affordable. I have used the cheaper $20 Mora knives in the early days, and most of them are still in my collection today and are regularly used.

The MoraKniv Garberg has a simple but comfortable plastic handle which means you have better control and won't have hand pain after extended use. 

It is a full-tang knife, which means it can withstand the abuse of batoning. You can easily baton 3.5-4inch pieces of wood with ease.

The Morakiv Garberg uses 14C28N stainless steel which does not rust, hold's an edge relatively well and is easy to sharpen in the wild with a stone. Surprise surprise it has a Scandinavian grind. 

The back end of the blade has a 90-degree spine so you can use it with magnesium or a feral rod to start a fire. 

The Garberg comes with a nice sheath that works well for righties or lefties. Mora also included Velcro straps that allow you to easily hang the knife on a free or a backpack (Molle attachment). The blade is made from rust-resistant stainless steel but Mora still included drainage holes in the sheath (a nice touch). 

To make a good knife deal even better, Morakniv offers a lifetime warranty that covers defects. As long as you have maintained the knife according to their guidelines and haven't abused the product, Morakniv will fix or replace the product if you have any issues (this is their Knife for Life guarantee).

The price

This is not a sponsored post so I won't link to any specific retailer but you should be able to buy a Morakniv Garberg Multi-Mount (make sure you pick up the multi-mount version) for $70-$80 USD (~$125CAD). Online retailers, you can check out include:

  • USA: Amazon, KnifeCenter, Cutlery USA, MEC, etc.
  • Canada: Adventure Pro Zone, Canadian Outdoor Equipment, Bushcraft Canada, etc
  • Europe: Bushgear UK, Knives, and Tools, Amazon, etc. 

Make sure you shop around because prices can be $10-30 different per site for the same item.

You sure?

I have tested over 50 knives in the last 3 years and conducted hours of research before choosing this knife. I take this type of review seriously and put in the hours, so you don't have to. As I write this (December 2017) The Morakniv Garber multi-mount is the best deal on an outdoor knife available. The offers the biggest band for the buck and has the least negative characteristics. 

Link to Morakniv

Note: This is not a sponsored review. 

Google Home forced me to switch to Spotify

GeneralEdward Kiledjian


Tech titans Google and Amazon chose Christmas 2017 to battle it out for your love and money. These smart speakers are designed to quickly provide access to each company's ecosystem and make your life easier. At least that is the promise. 

I am heavily invested in the Google ecosystem and have been for over ten years. In addition to using their free services, I pay for Google Music, storage, have an android phone (so I buy apps), etc. 

I signed up for the free Google Apps service in 2007 (predecessor to GSuite) when each domain was given 100 free user accounts. This was a great way to provide essential internet services to my family for my kiledjian.com domain (emails, calendar, etc.)

The Google home

These devices can answer questions about science, history and everything in between. Most buyers use these smart speakers as intelligent modern voice-controlled boomboxes. 

I have owned a Google home almost from its original release date and picked up a Google home mini for my bedroom. 

In addition to making money from the sale of these devices, companies like Amazon and Google hope to lock users into the ecosystem. Except...

The Google Home and Google's account issues forced me to move from Google Music to Spotify.

The music problem GSuite accounts

With an individual music subscription, I can only stream to a single device at a time. I can't listen to music on my smartphone in the gym while my kids listen to music at home. 

I tried to upgrade to a family account, only to be told by a support agent that GSuite accounts are not eligible. So if I wanted to enable on-demand commercial-free music on my multiple devices, I needed to move to Spotify, which I begrudgingly did.

Rant

There have always been irritants when using Gsuite (Google Apps) accounts with some Google services. Until now, all of my issues have been irritants for me, but have not affected Google, which may be why they have never solved this issue. 

This is a situation where their complacency has cost them subscription dollars (steady recurring income). I know that only a small minority of Google's millions of users are affected by this issue, but I receive a constant flow of complaints from my readers about it. 

This is the issue when dealing with giant faceless internet companies like Google. No matter how annoying some of their actions may be, there is nothing you can do as a customer. Your only option is to pick up and spend your money elsewhere. 

Was Google, Apple, Facebook & Microsoft traffic redirected to Russia?

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

TL;DR: Internet traffic to and from major tech companies (Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitch, NTT Communications and Riot Games) were redirected through a Russian provider Wednesday. This appears to have been a deliberate hijack and not an error. 

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BGP is a routing and reachability protocol used on internet backbones around the world. It is what allows carriers to find routing information between each other (in simple terms).

2 BGP monitoring services have reported short changes to the routing of key internet giants, and they do not believe this was a mistake. 

BGPMon recorded two three-minute hijacks affecting roughly 80 address blocks.

“One of the interesting things about this incident is the prefixes that were affected are all network prefixes for well known and high traffic internet organizations. The other odd thing is that the Origin AS 39523 (DV-LINK-AS) hasn’t been seen announcing any prefixes for many years (with one exception below), so why does it all of sudden appear and announce prefixes for networks such as Google? ”
— BGPMon

Qrator Labs recorded a two-hour hijack affecting 40 to 80 address blocks.

Qrator dashboard for the offending AS

As mentioned in the BGPMon release, AS39523 is a Russian organization that has been inactive for years. The last time we saw them, they were involved in another BGP "incident" that involved Google.

Luckily most of the traffic that passes through these providers is encrypted at a level that is believed to be currently unbreakable. The concern is that a state-sponsored attacker could have new decryption algorithms that are not yet publicly known and it does means the traffic "could" have been decrypted (however unlikely it remains a possibility). 

How do I test the speed of my VPN service

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

How can you test the speed (performance) of my VPN service provider? I receive this question regularly, and I thought it was about time I wrote an article about it. 

When evaluating internet speed, there are dozens or hundreds of different parameters that can influence your final score. In the world of VPN, these may include:

  • The distance between you and the VPN server - even though most of your traffic is flowing at the speed of light, users have become accustomed to super speedy internet and even the slightest delay is noticed. If I am sitting in Toronto but using a VPN in Switzerland (where privacy laws a much stronger), I should expect a more noticeable slowdown in my internet speed.
  • VPN server capacity - Most internet service providers "over-sell" their service to offer lower prices. If too many of their customers try to log into the same servers at the same time, they will experience noticeable performance reductions (slowdowns) and maybe even dropped connections (which could lead to your private information leaking). I only use VPN providers that show the loads on their servers.

server selection and load information from ProtonVPN

  • Your Internet Service Provider speed (ISP) - Obviously your VPN performance can never exceed the "last mile" performance of your Internet Service Provider. Remember that the speeds plastered on their marketing material are usually indicative speeds and many services see severe performance degradation during peak usage hours (when everyone is trying to stream Netflix or Youtube content). Additionally some regional Internet Service Providers throttle (aka slow down) VPN connections on their home use plans to encourage corporate customers to buy corporate (more expensive) plans. The only time a VPN connection may be faster than your native ISP performance is for controversial protocols like BitTorrent. Some ISPs throttle the performance of BitTorrent and so hiding it inside a VPN may deliver better performance. 

https://www.xplornet.com/legal/usage-traffic-policies/satellite-kah-traffic-management-policy/

  • Device capacity - An often overlooked performance limiter is the ability of your local VPN termination device to compute the required encryption/decryption quickly (most often a PC, laptop, smartphone or tablet). The faster your internet speed, the more processing power your end device will need to "keep up". 

How do I test VPN speed?

The only way to test VPN speed is to use one of the (well designed) speed testing sites. 

SpeedOfMe

SpeedOfMe is a nice light HTML5 speed test service that works on every device (Windows, MAc, iPhone, iPad, Android, Chromebook, etc).

TestMy.Net

What makes TestMy.Net interesting is that use multiple download servers and combine the information to provide one real world statistic. They use IP geolocation to find servers in your terminated area.

TestTest by Ookla

No speed test article would be complete without mentioning Ookla. They are the 800lb gorilla. Just make sure the test server is in your termination city otherwise you will get a false score.

How do I test my VPN to determine if it is leaking?

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

When something leaks, it's usually bad news. A leaking pipe in the kitchen or a leaking radiator. The same principle applies to your VPN. When a poorly designed VPN fails and leaks your data, that's the start of a bad day.

Unfortunately, there is no visible indication that your VPN is leaking.    Obviously, well-designed VPN services do not leak, my favourites being: 

When looking for VPN leaks, we typically evaluate these angles:

  • DNS leaks
  • IP address leaks (IPv4 & IPv6)
  • WebRTC leaks

Below are basic instructions on how to quickly identify VPN leaking. If you are more paranoid or highly technical and demand to use your magical IT skills, you can also inspect the packets using tcpdump or WinDump while running the below tests. 

It's time to start testing

What am I looking for?

Obviously, you connect to your VPN service first, then visit all of these sites. The hope is that none of the information shown should actually be associated with your "real" computer (IP address, DNS server and WebRTC). 

The most significant failure I see with most VPNs is DNS and WebRTC leakage.

If your VPN service provider offers multiple servers, then you should run the tests with the various servers.

If your VPN service provider offers multiple protocols, then you should run the test with each of the protocols.

I have found some VPN providers where it did not leak on one server but leaked on another. Where it did not leak via one protocol but leaked with another. Testing the various combinations is time-consuming but critically important. 

The above test shows that the VPN is protecting my IP and DNS information but in this case was leaking my private 10.x test lab internal IP address (which is obviously bad). When I switched to a new server from the same provider, the leak stopped.

Mobile phone VPN leaks

An August 2016 research paper highlighted the issue of IP leakage on Android smartphones. They discovered that 84% of Android VPN apps leaked the user's "real" IP address.

What is WebRTC and why does it leak?

WebRTC is an API standard that allows voice and video chat without needing to install any plug-ins. It is a cross-platform web browser standard. 

The "trick" to leaking your WebRTC information is to use basic Javascript to send a UDP packet to a Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN) server. That server sends back a packet containing the IP address where the request originated. 

If vulnerable, you will see your internal IP Address in the WebRTC response. 

What is DNS and why does it leak?

The domain name system (DNS) is a special global directory that converts URLs into numeric addresses that the internet can route. If you enter kiledjian.com into your browser from New York, your DNS server will return the numeric routable IP address for my website 104.28.2.40. 

DNS services are typically provided by your internet service provider or company. Anytime you try to access a webpage; you ask that DNS server for the numeric routable IP address of the site and thus your provide (or school or company) have a running list of every website you tried to access. When using a good VPN service, all DNS requests should be routed to their anonymous DNS service thus protecting your browsing information. When your browser sends the request to your ISP DNS anyway, that is called a DNS leak because your privacy is "broken".