[Dave Rice]

+1 for the Gower (and beyond) even if you can’t make it this time.

[Dave Rice]

I don’t use port forwarding at all these days, using quick connect seems to take all need for it away.

I have the VM PiHole doing DHCP and DNS for everything but the Vodafone router which has been left on default.  I can’t get the Draytek to authorise the new Vodafone line, probably been given the wrong password as it connects to the dslam just fine.

As you probably guessed from the above BT fixed the line problem this morning and I’m now getting near 80 up and near 20 down. The 4G proved quite usable apart from the evening when quite often for a hour or so it would be nearly unusable and one morning when it dropped back to 3G.

[Dave Rice]

We have a government not a dictatorship, the state of Boris Johnson’s health or home status shouldn’t have any affect on the governing of the country. If he can’t lead the government then he should get out of the way.

Everything is just a U turn shit show with his lordship being absent even when he’s in London. He only shows up for show piece events he can grandstand at and appears to have little grasp of the reality or any detail. It’s even come to the Speaker having to pull him up, and thankfully no-one can now blame the Speaker himself.

The honours list is just a roll call of nepotism, cronyism and rewarding Brexiteers. Who would have thought the Revolutionary Communist Party IRA supporting Claire Fox would have been on that list? Misogynist homophobic Abbot being given a government role? Yes you can see that, should fit right in, but a terrorist supporting commie? Imagine if Corbyn had done that!

[Dave Rice]

Unfortunately having been caught out with excess stock twice before, no-one is showing signs of stockpiling this time. The money men are moving out at a faster pace too.

Everyone was told to worry about Corbyn running some sort of Marxist state experiment, well it seems this lot are quite prepared to throw the country into the bin to run their own right wing experiment.

[Dave Rice]

Plex working OK on mine.

[Dave Rice]

I must get around to using docker.

[Dave Rice]

I just used Ubuntu server, that’s all I ever use for Intel CPU VMs. I don’t see the point in a GUI for this sort of work. Once you’re set up all you normally do is sudo apt update / upgrade every now and again. I have auto updates set up for Ubuntu itself.

[Dave Rice]

You have to be careful with modems, they must just bridge the connection to whatever device will be doing the routing (or a standalone device). If they get involved in authentication they are no use. The only device listed on Broadbandbuyer is the Vigor 130.

But as you say that then opens up all sorts of other routers like the Synology which are excellent and do now support a mesh system. But then Draytek now have a mesh system too. The 27xx series allow you to control 2 APs which should be more than enough for home and small offices. The big boy 28 / 29 will control 8 APs.

 

[Dave Rice]

I still think that there will be a way of pretty much moving to all wireless, a lot depends on where the master socket is located.

The trick is to get a decent AP up high (mine is on the top landing ceiling) and cabled back to a cabinet in the garage via an external cable hidden behind a down pipe. The master socket is in the kitchen but a quick hole through the wall into the garage accommodated the RJ11 cable which is then extended to the cabinet via a Cat 5 cable and baluns.

If the cable is impossible it is possible these days to get a mesh system working relatively easily. Generally the base unit is a router, so to avoid the dreaded double NAT you need a proper VDSL modem like the Vigor 130 that basically converts the VDSL into Ethernet. The base unit router deals with the ISP authentication, not the modem. The TP-Link Deco Range looks promising and is becoming a mature product.

As ever, so much depends on the house layout and what the walls are made of. That’s why I favour the top down approach as ceilings are generally not so much of an issue as walls.

On the TT front I had a call from their leavers Dept offering all sorts of price matching. I tried to tell them that price wasn’t the reason I was leaving it was their terrible customer service and things like data breaches. It just didn’t sink in, no apologies or anything just more banging on about cost and trying to slag off Vodaphone. In the end I had to say that I wouldn’t stay if they paid me, but the aggressive tactics were still being used so I just hung up.

First day with Vodaphone and the long suspected line error has been identified (but not yet what it is) without looking at DNS caches on a single PC or disassembling the master socket. When I pointed out their router was showing the DSL connection stats whilst it was still on TT was enough to convince them the issue wasn’t on my premises so start checking the line. It took mere seconds for the fault to show up. TT will have none of that logical troubleshooting nonsense, you must follow their step by step process every single time. Even when you get to the end they are very threatening about costs if it’s still proved to be an issue on your premises. It’s all about making it difficult to complain (and therefore show up on stats) and the escalation process is non-existent. I had to prove it was their router by buying a third party one then everything started to work.

[Dave Rice]

A line fault has stopped our change of ISP from TT to Vodaphone on Friday so we’re all back on the Three 4G service via a TP-Link router piped into the Ubiquiti AP.

I’ve stopped obsessing with speed tests and am just using it. There are 4 of us mooching around the internet right now plus another online gaming with Netflix running on the TV. It’s been absolutely fine.

[Dave Rice]

I think you’ll find the CPU becomes the bottleneck then. I know benchmarks don’t tell the whole story but a Ryzen 3 3200G benchs about the same.

But in line with the two upgrades I’ve just done it does show that if you push the boat out a bit your system can last a decade. I don’t know how many HDDs you’ve been through but these two were still on their original Seagates, which I find amazing.

[Dave Rice]

I tend to run my photos through either MS Photos and  / or google photos, it can sort out a lot of exposure issues.

In this case it’s also had one of the blue filters applied as well.

[Dave Rice]

Ed

[Dave Rice]

There’s another trick too, higher performance with lower power consumption Toms Hardware

The owners are very happy with their new PCs, mind you I think a lot of that is down to the Adata NVMe.

I was looking at an i3 as an in-between 3000G and 3400G solution but realised I’m out of touch with Intel world big style. The latest trap is watching out for the “F” CPUs which means you have to add a discrete graphics card. Fair enough (I think) in CPUs aimed at gaming but an “office” machine, albeit a higher end one?

[Dave Rice]

Carriers make a good floating base for things like dealing with lots of (maybe injured) people and other things the military get involved in besides fighting.

[Dave Rice]

Latest trace and trace madness, people from the West Country being sent to Wales for tests because it’s closer. Maybe if you’re a crow or a dolphin. I gather it’s happening elsewhere you find pesky things like estuaries or chains of hills / mountains.

So that’s a design flaw followed by no testing. Dido up to her usual quality standards.

[Dave Rice]

Bedruthan Steps (between Padstow and Newquay) in March. Almost got blown off my feet.

[Dave Rice]

This is the default setting:

[Dave Rice]

If you’re sure the data is OK then that sounds like a plan. When you put the drive in it will start to rebuild the array, the easiest thing to do is a hard factory reset.

Get a paper clip or a SIM card removal tool and hold down the reset button for about five seconds—until you hear a beep. Then let go immediately. Right after that, hold down the reset button again for five seconds until you hear another beep. Let go immediately after that.

Your NAS will beep a couple more times, and then the NAS drive will reboot. After a couple of minutes, the status light will blink orange. DSM is now ready to be reinstalled.

To do the reinstall in a browser type http://find.quickconnect.to/ If it can’t find it download the Synology Assistant from the Desktop Utilities in the Download Center.

Just shout if you need any help, always happy to pass on my knowledge of these boxes.

[Dave Rice]

I have a 2TB pool for my customers (which I charge for). Going 1TB+ opens up hourly backups (no-one really needs that atm), deduplication and a customizable retention policy. Their first backups can take days but after that the average is <10 minutes, the surveyor with 100+ photos per survey often comes in near 20 but never more. Even the Legion which only has ADSL use it.

With servers currently in empty buildings or vulnerable at home it’s a comfort to know the backups are there and easily restored. Not sure what will happen if there’s no Brexit deal as the data centre is in Frankfurt, but we’ll cross that bridge when we have to.

[Author]

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