The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

LSI sense codes

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/04/29

A while ago, I had RAID arrays suddenly drop out with unexpected sense codes.

I had a hard time tracking down what was wrong (it ended up being a faulty LSI Multi-lane Internal SFF-8087  to SATA/SAS Cable).

This caused all sorts of unexpected failures, hard to track down to any specific sense code.

As drives are bound to fail, and finding sense codes is a bit difficult, here are a few links that might help if I ever run into trouble again:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in LSI/3ware, Power User, RAID, SAS/SATA, SFF-8087 | Leave a Comment »

“Comprehensive Guide to pfSense 2.3” and “pFsense Firewall setup and Features in depth March 2016”

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/04/25

Now that pfSense 2.3 is out some videos:

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Internet, pfSense, Power User, routers | Leave a Comment »

MikroTik CRS226-24G-2S+RM Review – A super switch

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/04/18

Interesting device: Our review of the MikroTik CRS226-24G-2S+RM a 1U rackmount 24 port gigabit switch with dual 10 gigabit Ethernet SFP+ ports and a slick management interface.

Source: MikroTik CRS226-24G-2S+RM Review – A super switch

It’s fanless, support SFP+ and many people seem to like it.

Pictures are at Just got my CRS226-24G-2s+RM! – MikroTik RouterOS.

There is also a desktop version of it called CRS226-24G-2S+IM.

–jeroen

Future reading:

Posted in Ethernet, Network-and-equipment, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Tools that Isotopp installed on his Mac…

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/04/01

IRC so: »i> Isotopp: Ich habe jetzt nen Mac als Arbeitsplatzrechner… Was will man als UNIX Hacker zuerst an Tools installieren?«

Source: IRC so: »i> Isotopp: Ich habe jetzt nen Mac als Arbeitsplatzrechner… Was will… by Kristian Köhntopp.

Since G+ is very bad at searching, I created this summary of the tools; read the full G+ post (Google Translate is quite OK), including comments on why.

Edit: 20160402 – I’m posting regular updates based on the comments for that G+ post. I’ve changed or added German iTunes store links to US-English ones.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Audacity, Audio, Fusion, Hardware, Keybase, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, KVM keyboard/video/mouse, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Pro, Media, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Power User, Security, VirtualBox, Virtualization, VMware | Leave a Comment »

From the #alleskaputt -Dept: Hotel, Internet of Shit Switches, Predictable IP… boom!

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/04/01

From the #alleskaputt -Dept: Hotel, Internet of Shit Switches, Predictable IP Addresses (== Room Number) and no security. Right. – Kristian Köhntopp – Google+

referring to: mjg59 | I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was just as bad as you’d imagine

And then I noticed something. My room number is 714. The IP address I was communicating with was 172.16.207.14. They wouldn’t, would they?

Then you get this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in #alleskaputt, Development, IoT Internet of Things, Network-and-equipment, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Some links on SSD RAID

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/03/29

In the future, I need to add my own experience as well. For now some links:

–jeroen

Posted in Hardware, LSI/3ware, Power User, RAID, SSD | Leave a Comment »

Two opinions on Netflix and blocking: they hate Netflix or contact tr@netflix.com and try to solve …

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/03/28

Basically there are two opinions on Netflix and blocking:

  • TL;DR: People use VPNs for security, Netflix fucks them up, they hate Netflix for that and just torrent that shit.
  • tl;dr If you have issues with Netflix on public Wifi, contact the provider and forward tr@netflix.com to them so they can settle issues.

I’m not a netflix user (or user of any form of DRM) as I really dislike the fact that DRM means for any reason your license can be ended. I’ve seen too many players going out of business or taking decisions turning.

So I buy CDs, DVDs, BlueRays or DRM-free media files. Now it’s my problem of making proper back-ups to ensure future access to them (:

The DRM walls and ladders war^w game has gone so far that in this case, Netflix is blocking even though the WiFi provider / proxy / VPN is in the same country like the below imgur image:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Cloud, Infrastructure, Netflix, Network-and-equipment, Power User, VPN | Leave a Comment »

difference between ADSLfiber and fiberfiber when both are @xs4all.

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/03/28

20150412 ping statistics from WiFi -> ADSL -> VPN -> fiber (where ADSL and fiber both are Fritz!Box machines having LAN-LAN VPN to each other):

PING 192.168.71.1 (192.168.71.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=63 time=19.190 ms
...64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=63 time=18.905 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=63 time=19.261 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=63 time=19.982 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=63 time=19.332 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=63 time=26.800 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=63 time=20.139 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=63 time=19.498 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=63 time=18.915 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=63 time=19.200 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=63 time=18.948 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=11 ttl=63 time=19.524 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=12 ttl=63 time=19.511 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=13 ttl=63 time=20.417 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=14 ttl=63 time=19.350 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=15 ttl=63 time=18.690 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=16 ttl=63 time=18.632 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=17 ttl=63 time=18.912 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=18 ttl=63 time=19.397 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=19 ttl=63 time=19.257 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=20 ttl=63 time=18.147 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.71.1: icmp_seq=21 ttl=63 time=18.601 ms
^C
--- 192.168.71.1 ping statistics ---
22 packets transmitted, 22 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 18.147/19.573/26.800/1.657 ms

same but LAN –> fiber -> VPN -> ADSL

Pinging 192.168.24.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63
Reply from 192.168.24.1: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=63

Ping statistics for 192.168.24.1:
    Packets: Sent = 24, Received = 24, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 17ms, Maximum = 19ms, Average = 17ms

–jeroen

Posted in ADSL, fiber, Fritz!, Fritz!Box, Internet, Network-and-equipment, Power User, routers, VPN | Leave a Comment »

OpenVPN – How to connect to Access Server from a Mac – basically says use Tunnelblick

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/03/18

Nice summary for just saying “Use Tunnelblick

This howto article explains how to obtain and setup a Mac openvpn client to connect to the OpenVPN Access Server.

Source: How to connect to Access Server from a Mac

–jeroen

Posted in Apple, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, MacMini, OpenVPN, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Power User | Leave a Comment »

TP Link ER5120 limitations: lacking and disturbing features

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/03/18

Mikrotik have statistics and way more features. The most lacking or disturbing features on the TP-LINK (none of which are mentioned in their documentation):

  • The documentation mentions you can enable Enable Bandwidth Based Balance Routing then select the WAN connections to combine but that doesn’t work at all, even if you follow the bandwidth steps carefully.
  • Balanced Routing work when you perform these steps as mentioned at time point 457 in this video https://youtu.be/YDUfP8a5zNY
    • Enable Application Optimized Routing
    • Enable Bandwidth Based Balance Routing
  • Virtual-Server table can only handle 32 incoming port redirects; you get the message “Cannot add more than 32 Virtual Server entries” like in the picture below.
  • No IPv6 support
  • No way to show any statistics as graphs.
  • Every once in a while the web interface becomes really really slow which only a reboot can resolve.
  • You cannot have one of the WAN connections have multiple IP addresses.
  • Local DHCP clients are not added to the DNS proxy which means you cannot resolve them by name.
  • TCP Sequence Prediction: Difficulty=0 (Trivial joke)
  • You cannot configure how often to check WAN connections

On the other hand: when you do balanced routing indeed bundles all the WAN connections, configured Virtual Servers do work well and WAN specific routing settings to what they need to.

Source: Gigabit Load Balance Broadband Router TL-ER5120 – Welcome to TP-LINK

Verdict: fine for home use, not good for real multi-WAN use.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Internet, Power User, routers | 1 Comment »