[Dave Rice]

B-I-L got his ebay account pwned which has made him more security conscious and other extended family members have been making noises, so decided to “renew” my Kaspersky with 10 devices this time. Works out £4 each from Amazon and includes a back and restore app so I can deal with that for them too. The console lets me keep an eye on things and even start off updates and scans remotely.

[Dave Rice]

With W10 a reset is as good as a reinstall, because basically that’s what happens.

Boot able av: clam is very basic. Bit defender sounds great. As does the external caddy approach.

[Dave Rice]

The way I look at it is a Pi only saves you £30 and adds complications. The good thing about the Synology is it pretty much looks after itself.

[Dave Rice]

Has she got through the whole mobility allowance process? Well done if she has, all I hearing about is people having it taken away.

[Dave Rice]

Some people have ridiculous over expectations of things and their own skills.

We’re off to London for 4 days in February as I bagged some cheap train tickets. £8 standard or £20 first class so we thought why not? By the time you’ve bought a coffee and slab of cake most of the £12 difference has gone any way.

I found there’s a first class lounge at Paddington I didn’t know existed. Great, if we get there early on the way home we’ll go there instead of Burger King and get free coffee and a snack. The reviews are full of people moaning that they only do wine 2 days a week now! I’m chuffed to get a coffee, piece of cake and a soft seat ?

[Dave Rice]

Everyone knows what I’m going to say, if you want a server get a Synology. It has an app called Cloud Station that allows you to keep folders in sync between the server and devices. They can be different for each device and you can have multiple folders. You can have multiple devices accessing the same folder.

There are mobile apps for just about everything, including Cloud Station, on both Android and iOS. You don’t need to do any port forwarding in the router as it uses a service called QuickConnect that keeps track of your networks external IP address and does all the connection voodoo for you.

A basic Synology DS115j DiskStation 1-Bay Enclosure is £85 plus whatever size 3.5″ drive you need. A Toshiba P300 1TB is £35. It will download and install Disk Station Manager for you. It will have all the apps needed to run the server, create users, etc. You then choose what extra apps you want (like Cloud Station) from Package Manager List of Packages

Once set up it will automatically update itself and the apps. It’s pretty straightforward to get everything set up and there’s a huge Knowledge Base and loads of You Tube tutorials. There’s a demo version of Disk Station Manager here It’s a virtual session running on a real Synology server.

With Cloud Sync, you can sync and share files with Dropbox and all the other major cloud services. That’s a good way to get all your Dropbox Data on it, then cut the connection and move the data to your new folder structure.

[Dave Rice]

My AP is as high as possible, right in the middle of the house on the top floor landing ceiling. Where we have the thick wall problem to solve this is what we do and it’s worked every time so far. Only in large or awkward shaped buildings do we need more than one. Unfortunately it involves an external Cat 5 cable to the router which is usually beyond DIY as it involves holes through walls.

I’m on my way to Cornwall tomorrow to try and solve this very problem plus distributing a single FTTC connection to multiple buildings. Normally you’d need a central external AP plus 2 devices per building to do this – one end of a wireless bridge plus an internal AP. I’m hoping the new mesh units I’m using will reduce this to a single unit per building. The first test is encouraging. Not only do they provide a link between each other (like a bridge) they also broadcast locally. We installed one at a local farmhouse as part of a CCTV installation. The mesh unit was strapped to the TV aerial on the chimney pot and I found that I could get a cracking signal all around the ground floor. That was a “light bulb” moment.

In Cornwall 2 of the barn conversions are very close to each other. We’ve tried just pointing an AP from one to the other but the walls are too thick. However it’s just a normal tiled roof so I’m hoping the pole mounted mesh unit on the two storey barn 1 (where the FTTC is) will also service single storey barn 2.

We’ll see. I’m taking test kit to cover all eventualities.

[Dave Rice]

This how my network looks now, the only wired devices are in the workshop. With much more emphasis on wireless now I changed my AP for a dual band AC model. 24.Ghz 450 mbps, 5Ghz 867mbps. I also got fed up with the ISP routers so changed for a rock solid Draytek Vigor, but I left the Synology NAS doing the DHCP server role. The UAP generally does a good job of persuading dual band devices to connect to 5Ghz.

 

[Dave Rice]

I have to be honest and say that now my needs can be met by quite modest kit I’ve pretty much lost interest. Maybe a top end ultrabook.

I’m not that much into bling either, so I’d probably end up with a Lenovo Thinkpad 13 rather than an ASUS Zenbook ?

[Dave Rice]

You can get the same unit branded as the Chillblast Micro System for the same price from E-Buyer http://tinyurl.com/ybkb2lfn

That will solve any worries about warranty.

I’ve used similar systems and I wouldn’t expect any overheating problems.

[Dave Rice]

Out of interest I’ve been looking at the practicality of a “no hub” network. With everything turned off and set to 10mbps half duplex someone reckons they got this to work A Passive Ethernet Hub

I think this is a key phrase “So in this mode of operation the hub’s vital task is to enable each adapter to ‘hear’ everything others transmit, but at the same time to prevent each adapter from hearing itself sending data – and falsely detecting collisions.”

All hair shirt stuff ?

Just found a very good explanation of why a UTP network of more than 2 devices won’t work without a hub or switch http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/19505-42-ethernet-hubs 

[Dave Rice]

I look forward to seeing the practical example of a working network using  a Cat 5 cable frankensteined into 10.

In the meantime I’ll put my faith in a switch as the backbone of my network. Think about it. In the world of cost cutting why would a 4 port switch – never mind a hub – be in even the cheapest router when all they had to do was solder some wires together?

Why would the purveyor of a device that actually does just that admit that you cannot expect more than 1 device at a time to work?

Theory is one thing, real world is another. As I said, I look forward to seeing your practical working network based on the theory. Benchmarks absolutely required.

[Dave Rice]

Trust me, you won’t get past 2 devices without a hub or switch when you’re using UTP cables. Even a hub limits you.

I was Network Manager for Royal Mail South Wales & South West for a number of years and still make my living with business networking.

I started in the days of thick Ethernet backbones that looked something like this. The transceivers had great long spikes.

Once we got past 70 / 80 PCs it was out with the thick and in with the first switch. That was considered a major project as switches were the new black magic boxes that needed some sort of esoteric skills. We know now that was all bollocks ?

[Dave Rice]

I have TC on the landline at home. I cannot imagine being without it now.

Luckily I have never suffered from the same issue with my mobile number. I only had a single cold call all of 2017 and can’t remember the one before that. If that changed I would get TC installed.

I’ve found genuine callers have no issue with TC and it’s easy to white list people.

I had the same sort of privacy conversation with my mate coming back from the pub quiz last night. I use Steve’s argument, “they” already know everything about you from your other activities. Don’t like Google reading your emails? Better not send an email to anyone using Google mail servers and apart from gmail.com there’s no way you can tell.

I’ve learned to just accept it, turn everything on and now happily receive smart information from Google. Walk into Schipol airport and it asks if I’d like to download the floor plans and have a look at the eateries. It knows my flight and is just as quick as the airlines app at keeping me updated on times / gates etc. all via pushed messages.

I use Google maps for navigation even though I don’t drive. It is frustrating in the more Germanic countries when the local transport company don’t let Google access their timetables.

[Dave Rice]

No it isn’t a hub.

The splitter is passive just taking 8 wires and turning them into 24 at the other end. A hub is an active device. It is aware of physical layer packets, that is it can detect their start (preamble), an idle line (interpacket gap) and sense a collision which it also propagates by sending a jam signal. The device that sent the packets involved in the collision then knows to resend them. They can also detect physical problems such as jabbering.

Also hubs don’t switch packets, switches do that. A hub just sends all packets out on all ports (except the one it was received on). That’s why switches have memory and hubs don’t. The switch has to keep a table of which device(s) are on what port to know where to switch a packet to.

John, it’s on it’s way.

[Dave Rice]

There is no such thing as an Ethernet splitter that works properly. There can’t be as each device needs at least 4 (and usually these days all 8) wires connected. It could only sort of work with 1 device turned on at a time, certainly not 2 or 3 at the same time.

To turn 1 connection into many you need a hub or a switch. You should be able to find a 4 or 5 port 10/100 switch for under £15 on the high street quite easily. My Tesco store sells them as do Argos. Amazon have loads of them http://tinyurl.com/yc8cu79p

All of them will work, the metal bodied ones are generally better quality. On that basis from Amazon I would get the £13 NETGEAR GS305-100UKS  If you want me to get one to you asap it can be done, just let me know and I’ll tell Mr Amazon via my Prime account ?

Meanwhile tell him to cancel the thing you’ve bought. I’ve looked at the description and it does say at the bottom:

Note:

Please kindly note it can not achieve 2 or above computers online at the same time.

[Dave Rice]

I have the DS216j with 2 x Toshiba P300 3TB 7,200rpm drives. The dual core ARM CPU is the sweet spot for F&P services, indeed anything bar transcoding on the fly. I back it up daily to a mobile USB3 drive and the PCs use it as a target for their local backup software (mostly EaseUS). Lee uses it as a target for some of his Forumite backups.

I use Cloudstation to synchronize files between the Synology and my business computers / laptops and I support several small businesses doing the same thing. Before I moved my business email to an exchange server I used CardDAV to do the same thing with calendars. I use Photo Station for sharing picture albums with family and friends.

Following lots of mucking about with TalkTalk routers I moved the DHCP server duties to the Synology and even though I have now moved to a Draytek I’ve left DHCP there. I have also setup a PPTP VPN and tested it pre Draytek. However Cloud Station does all I currently need in the way of remote access so I’ve not reinstated it.

It can handle up to 150 FPS @ 1080p of IP cameras, but after two you need to buy licences. The Survellance Station software is very good.

There are mobile apps to access just about everything. The key easy access from the internet is to set up Quick Connect.

[Dave Rice]

Router NAS-from-a-USB-drive solutions usually perform well enough for light use and I include home file serving as light usage. But I don’t recall one that allows access from the internet. That brings a whole raft of potential security issues and that leads me right back to the Synology.

Drive redundancy? Well you must have a backup whether you do or you don’t. In a business solution you want continuity of service, in a home scenario I’d say that a few days without access is not going to be a deal breaker. Plus bear in mind that with Synology Hyper backup there is a utility that allows you to explore the backup files from a PC should you need to get hold of some files desperately.

The other solution you could look into is another Pi running Tonido Tippon put me onto Tonido and I did use it for a while, until I go the Synology…

[Dave Rice]

Following on from Ed’s reply in a new thread…

I agree that this is one case where spending an extra £35 will gain you so much more it’s in a different league. I’m sure you know what I’m going to say Synology DS115j

[Dave Rice]

D2 – there are 2 levels of administrator. The lower one is the class you are, but no-one can be logged in as the “super administrator” which is what is required to write things to certain areas or perform certain actions.

You do this as a (usually) one time thing by right clicking on the .exe file and choosing “Run as Administrator”. One time as normally this is only for a setup process, once it’s setup you can run it without fuss. If it’s a long term issue you use JCD’s method.

It’s all part of Microsoft measures to make things more secure.

[Author]

Posts