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I can only info dump when I’m prompted to start talking about something now. I have special interests, but I have no interest in talking about them with people that I can feel aren’t really engaged. And the only people who ever engage eventually do get worn down after a while, or they’re more knowledgeable than me about something and that makes me fall in infatuation with them.
So if anyone wants to talk about modding video games and get married, hmu. Modding specifically is my special interest, and the games I mod include:
Elder Scrolls series (primarily Oblivion/ Skyrim but I have played some modded morrowind within the last 5 years)
Fallout series (all of them! Ok, I haven’t played 2 or the offshoots, but… shut up. New Vegas is my favorite :3)
Stardew Valley (I have 2700 hours in stardew :3 burnt out rn tho lowkey)
Dark Souls 1/3, Elden Ring
Baldurs Gate 3
Dragon Age (mostly origins, it continuously went downhill from there for me. I have done a couple modded replays of inquistion tho)
Minecraft
If you were to ask me what I could go on for the longest about? Probably New Vegas? Especially since I recently put in a fresh 200 hours. I finally got into TTW (a mod for new vegas that utilizes your copy of Fallout 3 goty to combine both games into a single experience) and installed it alongside some modernization modlists and HOLY SHIT.
I hadn’t played since 2021, an era that seemed like New Vegas was dying. People had long moved onto Fallout 4, quest mods weren’t coming out at the same frequency, etc
There was a total renaissance right after I left. If you haven’t played new vegas in a while: consider coming back and finding a guide or using a program like wabbajack to mod your game.
I personally followed the Viva New Vegas guide, then after deciding to jump into TTW, I found that the VNV people have a guide for a TTW list called TBoT (The Best of Times). Both of these lists are,'in my experience, more stable than the base game. A lot of important performance and configuration mods came out.
Then, there’s another list called WSG that I followed (wasteland survival guide), which added new content to the game and made it more hardcore.
If you made it this far and you really want to hear more, ask me a question. :3
Somehow I missed the “up by” the first time around, and was confused about who would be so bored to hang themselves.
Is this the weaponized autism I keep hearing about?
I am into old back-of-the-archive Korean historical dramas. They’re lost? Even better. I’ve been scouring old newspapers for plots of old dramas (mostly dailies because they were the popular format in 70s SK) and plying them on an equally old forum dedicated to the topic. I’ve also been cataloguing them and trying to identify the oldest ones (TV guides between 1964 to 1970 didn’t always list the name of the program, sometimes they’d just list it as “historical drama”). So far it seems I have the plots to most of the 70s historicals, which then opens new realizations that a lot of the more popular 80s shows are remakes of the 70s dramas. And those 80s dramas were then remade into 90s/2000s dramas and the occasional 2010s drama (there’s been a major artistic shift starting from the Korean wave in 2003 that’s stopped this cycle in TV dramas though). I can post the plots to a lot of these dramas and even started subtitling the ones that are more complete.
If you ask, I’ll post a plotline here!
Edit: I didn’t realize this was a science lemmy, might just delete soon lol
Don’t delete, give us your
favoriteweirdest plotline!Hm, not the longest but definitely the weirdest - this one’s a daily historical called Oknyeo (1978) from channel MBC (who’s still around today), a remake of a 1970 weekly drama of the same name from channel TBC. TBC was the biggest SK terrestrial channel of the 70s, abruptly ended when Jeon Du Hwan’s military dictatorship shut them down in 1980 and incorporated them into government channel KBS. TBC’s corpse remains today as KBS2, while a cable channel jTBC started in 2011 as a resurrection by the original channel owners, the Joongang Group.
The original plot was:
Lee Gil Jae (Geungjae in some episodes, probably a mix-up with the male love interest from competing drama My Lady), a nobleman, loves Heo Oknyeo, a fallen noblewoman from a different political faction, but his parents arrange his marriage to Yihwa, a noblewoman from their political faction. Gil Jae tries to run off with Oknyeo, but they are caught by Kim Yun (don’t know his relation to anyone). Unable to do anything, Gil Jae marries Yihwa in despair, and promises to build a future with Oknyeo one day. Oknyeo becomes Yihwa’s servant, and is greatly favored by the sickly Yihwa. Gil Jae has secret meetings with Oknyeo, which lead to a murder attempt by a certain Scholar Song (don’t know his relation to anyone). Unaware of the whole situation, Yihwa misunderstands and believes Oknyeo is having an affair with another scholar Park (don’t know his relation to anyone). Oknyeo gets pregnant with Gil Jae’s child, making Yihwa extremely jealous, and Oknyeo’s father Secretary Heo, formerly presumed dead, reappears as a beggar. Court strife comes between Oknyeo and Gil Jae, as their families are from different factions, and they are forever unable to attain happiness. Oknyeo dies at the end.
Pretty tame. But then 8 years later MBC extended the plot to (I’m including the marketing catchphrases and description from the newspaper ads because wow tv marketing sure has changed)
“Mother, what do we do about Oknyeo? The Young Master’s love moves one to tears. His father hates her to death. But there’s nothing Oknyeo can do!” “The tragic story of one woman of the Lee Dynasty, wandering in search of her lover, determined by a fate that transcends time and space!”
Plot:
During Prince Gwanghae’s reign in Joseon Korea (1608-1623), Yun Sang Heon’s only daughter Oknyeo dies of illness. During her funeral, Oknyeo climbs out of her coffin to everyone’s surprise. Her prospective fiancee Kim Shijin backs out of their future marriage after this, and all chances of her getting married are broken after he finds out Oknyeo can now predict the future by looking into her mirror. Rumors spread to Kim Gae Shi (Gwanghae’s closest confidante and the most powerful Court lady in the Palace, more powerful than the Queen) who invites her into the Palace to act as her fortuneteller. Oknyeo becomes famous and acts as Gae Shi’s helper for a while. One day, Oknyeo sees the ghost of her mother Lady An, who predicts that her true love is ex-suitor Lee Se Young, son of Lee Myeong Ha. Seyoung is set to marry a maiden named In Shil, but he’s still very much in love with Oknyeo, and confirms it before the official engagement arrives.
Suddenly, Oknyeo and her father are caught in conspiracy, and by Kim Gae Shi and Lee Myeong Ha’s schemes, Yun Sang Heon is ordered poisoned. Oknyeo too, but she manages to escape punishment. This enrages Lee Myeong Ha, who lies to Kim Gae Shi and tells her they’re both dead. Oknyeo runs to Mount Dobong, Lee Myeong Ha at her heels. She dresses as a man and hides out at the house of a woman named Suwon. Oknyeo uses her shamanic powers to exorcise Suwon’s husband, who is haunted by the ghost of her sister-in-law, but Suwon sells her out to Lee Myeong Ha anyway. When the officers arrive, Oknyeo has already disappeared.
Seyoung and Inshil are about to be married, but Seyoung gets a shock when Inshil’s maid Gyehwa turns out to be Oknyeo. Seyoung loses his mind for like a week, then gets locked up because everyone thinks he’s faking. Oknyeo begs Inshil to be Seyoung’s concubine. Inshil gets married to Seyoung, to Oknyeo’s frustration. She looks to her mirror again, wondering if Seyoung and her are truly destined to be with each other. However Seyoung leaves the bridal chamber after the wedding and goes straight to Oknyeo, getting her pregnant. Oknyeo then predicts Prince Neungchang (Prince Gwanghae’s distant relative who is a threat to his legitimacy as King)'s death, which starts more chaos. Somehow Seyoung gets himself involved and Inshil ends up protesting outside her own house on a mat, refusing to eat. Queen Yu (Prince Gwanghae’s wife), who’s been working with Kim Gae Shi the whole time, reveals Oknyeo’s identity.
Meanwhile in Court, Court officials Kim Yu and Jeong In Hong try to kill Lee Myeong Ha, who is still out for blood. Oknyeo hides in Jeong In Hong’s house and tries to kill herself, but her suicide attempt is foiled when she realizes Kim Yu switched out her poison for baby medicine. In Hong dreams of Lee Myeong Ha killing Oknyeo with poison, but Oknyeo ends up trying to poison someone named Song Sa Cheon because he found out who she really is. Song Sa Cheon reports to Kim Gae Shi, and pressures Lee Myeong Ha to prove if Oknyeo can really see the future.
Now everyone’s on the run for Oknyeo, including Lee Myeong Ha, Queen Yu, Kim Gae Shi and Song Sa Cheon. Oknyeo hides with Suwon again and everyone’s about to find her when… the issue of deposing Queen Inmok suddenly comes up and everyone in Court gets distracted. Kim Gae Shi starts the chase again when she needs to know if she’ll be successful in deposing Queen Inmok, and with nowhere left to run, all chances of leaving the Capital dashed due to her imminent delivery, Oknyeo gives birth at the same time Lee Myeong Ha coincidentally dies, and then kills herself. Queen Inmok is then deposed (but that’s its own story)
Edit: come to think of it there’s one more I think is crazier than this but it’s based on a novel
if i didn’t hate the phone ringing you might have almost given me a reason to answer when scammers call.
i don’t want it ringing every 15 minutes. i don’t have energy to explain… i don’t know, the difference between schulmerichs and malmarks all day. i got chores to do. i would get too overexcited explaining it to them especially if they stayed on the line long enough for me to get to fucking whitechapels.
Okay so sounds can be broken down into individual tones called sine waves. The math that lets us do this doesn’t care about how tonal or noisy the sound is. It takes arbitrary input. However, human brains and ears (as well as those of many other creatures) seem to optimize for tonality of some type.
The simplified explanation is that we like when the frequencies of the tones that make up a sound are in whole number ratios (the harmonic series). However, there’s a tolerance for frequencies which are close to those ratios but not perfect. And when harmonics don’t fall perfectly within the harmonic series, we can instead prefer intervals between notes which are slightly “out of tune” compared to what the harmonic series would dictate. For instruments like strings and woodwinds where the vibration of the air happens along a more or less straight line, the harmonics tend to be close enough to the harmonic series for this not to matter a ton. But for instruments with different resonant features (bells are a common example), the effects of this are more pronounced.
There is also some math which makes tuning instruments solely to the harmonic series impractical. This combined with the tolerance for consonance I mentioned before has led to a rich sea of different traditions which play around with tuning in different ways. The western tradition alone has a long history with how a twelve note chromatic scale ought to be tuned. It turns out that equally diving the octave into twelve notes just so happens to be a good approximation of a lot of harmonic series intervals, but some intervals are less perfect than others. It’s all a series of compromises.
I’ve been a clarinet player since I was about 9. But when I was like 16, I had a physics class on the science of acoustics. We used slinkies to create standing waves either fixed at both ends or moving at one end to understand the concept of a standing wave, and then diagrams to demonstrate different harmonics. The connections were so amazing to learn. Seeing the diagrams of a closed vs open pipe, and of a string, and the standing waves that can form in it, was so enlightening. I finally knew why my instrument overblew at an octave and a fifth but other instruments overblow at an octave.
It was years later thanks I’m pretty sure to a Reddit comment, that I additionally learnt that a cone also experiences every harmonic, just like an open pipe. Though I unfortunately never learnt the intuition behind how to explain that detail.
Of course, this all goes somewhat out the window when you realise that it’s possible on many instruments to bend the pitch smoothly and play out of tune—or correct your tuning. No idea how the physics behind that works with the model of standing waves with fixed nodes and antinodes.
Twice we got scammed. Well once for real, I caught the second one. I only realized the first one after my parents were already gone. My brother went on a solo psycho-journey when I was like 14, trans-Siberian railway through Russia and Mongolia, ended up in China. He was perhaps 19 at the time. A couple months in we got a call from China. Chinese embassy say my brother is in trouble. They read back his information, everything on the passport, is this him? Yes, it is. Keep in mind this was in the 90’s when international calls to the other side of the planet cost actual money by the minute.
My parents spoke very broken English, and I was too young to speak properly to handle something like this, so there was a bunch of back and forth over several days, but it was clear to all of us that he was in trouble, and needed us to send money to get him out of whatever it was. China, ffs. I don’t remember, shit I don’t know even how much they ultimately sent, but it was likely by my estimates around $1500- a very solid chunk of change for our not necessarily struggling but not exactly thriving family either.
He came back a year later or so, and I don’t know why but the whole debacle kind of never came up at the dinner table, until just like a year or so before my mom and dad both passed. We were all sitting after dinner, drinking and telling the usual family stories, and it came up, and we all laughed about how crazy that shit was to deal with back home when he was on his crazy first trip of his life and had to send money to China. He didn’t laugh. He hadn’t any clue what the fuck we were talking about, and nervously laughed it off.
At the time I just shook my head, of course he wouldn’t remember when someone else bailed him out and saved his ass, narcissistic piece of shit as he is. Only after they passed did I realize, oh shit. There was no embassy, there was no emergency. Some entrepreneurial Chinese hostel manager just took down his info, somehow tracked down our parents (likely he had just straight up given them their contact information, just in case), and scammed us out of a decent amount of money.
My parents were hard working, we never wanted for anything, and they never let on we were actually not particularly well off and struggled at times. If they were alive, I still don’t know if I would tell them. What was, was. What good is that heartbreak gonna do anybody thirty years after the fact? Anyway, that moment has passed either way, and well, we survived anyway, but damn it stings being the only one knowing this such a long time afterwards. My brother stayed a piece of shit and our remaining family have all gone no-contact with him, so even he doesn’t know, it’s just me.
The second time was possibly even more heart-breaking, but at least nobody lost any money. My parents, my father specifically, I mean both of them but this concerns my father- they grew up in a war torn country. My father had three brothers. He was youngest. When he was three years old, war broke out. The big one, number two, and in the worst possible place. He loved his brothers, and the eldest one got drafted, the story is unclear and lost to time, but joined the airforce somewhere abroad. The second one, I can’t even recall, but he disappeared somewhere, sometime, somehow, and none of dad’s family ever heard anything from him again- MIA, basically.
It was a big thing for my father, my grandmother too, she lived with us for years in the new country after the war, and just like in the story above, it’s first after I got up in years and some that I realized what that haunted look was on her face as she zoned out and pulled her fingernails along the armseat of the leather chair that was hers, as the family watched TV together. Dad used to say, “Grama! Stop scritching!”, it was a thing and we all laughed at it because grama scritched. She was thinking of her two lost sons- one of them went into the airforce but was also never heard from again, the other, who knows. Nothing good, probably. But they never knew.
Dad was like her, he just never got over it. He had kind of reconciled the fact that his eldest brother either died fighting, or after the war just relocated somewhere in another country and couldn’t find his family back home again. But the other brother, it just itched him until the day he died, he used to light a candle every Christmas and make the table for one person extra, just so that in case he happened to come knocking, the table would be set for him to sit down and have Christmas dinner with us. We didn’t think much of it, only, again, in my older years did I understand what emotional luggage was being brought out and put on display on that one night every year.
Sorry for being long-winded, but it kind of matters- decades go by, no more grama, parents getting old, and one day there is a letter. Dear so-and-so, it has come to our attention that a lost relative of yours, by the name so-and-so, has been trying to get in touch with you. Disclosed are his personal information, we are reaching out to you to make sure that you are actually related to this person, and would you want to accept his communication? If so, please get back to us by sending $100 to the following address for verification purposes, and he will be passed along your contact information.
My dad called me at work, “Something amazing has happened, get over here straight away after work”. So, of course, I did. By then I was coming up on 40 working IT, I’d been around. I took one look at that letter and just laughed at it, “dad, this is a classic scam. Like, do you mind if I keep this? I have never seen an actual printed Nigerian Prince letter with stamps and all, like, they really went the extra mile with this one!”, and he looked at me with despair, and I will never forgive myself for not being quicker on my feet and realizing the trauma I was casually laughing off, and said, “are you sure? His name is in there, and all, and our name is too, this is clearly real!”.
He wanted so badly for it to be real, my mom sat by him, they both started arguing with me, like, clearly it was real, and that is when I knew for sure that it wasn’t, because they weren’t arguing with me, they were arguing with reality, or god himself, pleading for it to be real. I just shook my head, ever the bitter cold rationalist, “no, this is a very classic trick, and your long lost brother is not trying to contact you”.
I don’t know how I should have handled it, to me it was just another Nigerian scam letter, I was just overcome with the novelty of having a physical copy in my hand, but to my father, and to my mother, it was the one tiny spark of hope they had been waiting for, for decades.
That is the type of sorrow and grief that scammers prey on, and cause. Fuck them all to pieces.
worst place possible to be at the start of WWII? setting up an extra plate at the Christmas table?
your dad was either dedicating this polish tradition to his new intention, or reinvented it from scratch just for him
Except now they record your voice and use it to train voice ai and scam you harder. My coworker’s ex-husband got a call from their “daughter” distressed “kidnapped” needing money for ransom. Sent it and called the ex-wife. Daughter was sleeping at home.
I wonder if they do. That seems like a lot of effort to go to for the average person for a scammer.
It seems easier to have a generic voice, rely on the fact that phone audio quality isn’t great to bridge the gap, and use a shotgun approach.
Some places do, since there were a few high profile attacks, but they were nearly all targeting organisations by pretending to be the CEO or something.
I still have an ace up my sleeve: I don’t pick up the phone unless I know who is calling or am otherwise expecting a call.
Right now I just get the occasional one liner email: “hey Sahara what are you doing tonight?” Who the hell falls for that?Once it’s automated it’s the same either way. Probably something even vibe code could pull off.
that’s why they only get one word from me. and it’s said like a jolly game show host.
HELLLOOOooooo!
Nobody wants my info dump. I know way too much about networking and computers. The topics are massively deep, like iceberg levels of deep. One for each topic.
I could lecture for an entire day on the nuance and considerations of picking a Wi-Fi channel, or you can ignore me and just hit “auto” which may or may not take some, or all, of my considerations into account when selecting a channel.
If anyone is keen to hear some generally good advice about home networking, here’s my elevator speech:
Wire when you can, wireless when you have to. Wi-Fi is shared and half duplex, every wired connection is exclusive to the device and full duplex. If you can’t Ethernet, use MoCA, or powerline (depending on what internal power structures you have, this can be excellent or unusable, keep your receipts). Mesh is best with a dedicated backhaul, better with a wired backhaul. Demand it from any system you consider. The latest and greatest Wi-Fi technology probably won’t fix whatever problem you’re having, it will only temporarily reduce the symptoms and you won’t notice it for a while. Be weary about upgrading and ask yourself why you require the upgrade. Newer wireless won’t fix bad signal, or dropouts.
For everything else, Google. That’s how I find most of the information I know.
Good luck.
I’ll be around in case anyone has questions. No promises on when I’ll be able to reply tho.
What about the SNMP protocol? And is ARP level 1 or 2?
I love low level network stuff, but nowadays nobody needs that anymore.
I’m planning on setting up a NAS, so I will be reading into networking aswell. Hopefully I won’t get to frustrated lol
I set up my house with cat6 when I moved in. The overall setup looks like 10G fiber to the house -> 2.5G capable router -> 2.5G capable NAS running *arr stack. Also off the router is a single cat6 downstairs -> 8 port 1G unmanaged switch, which is connected to my desktop, work dock, parters dock, TV, and backhaul run to the back of house wifi extender. The desktop, both docks and wifi extender are 2.5G capable. This has been extremely reliable. I plan on upgrading the switch to a 10g capable one at some point, and then the router. Since the switch is unmanaged, is there a good way to know when it is the limiting factor and I should update it?
Dude these type of replies are what had made reddit such a great time sink, even random browsing you may find something incredible in the comments. Thank you
Thanks. I’ve been on hiatus for a bit. I’m around.
I still won’t go back to that place either way
Tell Me everything you want about MAC addresses
Is this a kink?
The first six hexadecimal digits of the Mac address are referred to as the oui, or organizationally unique identifier. They are supposed to all be registered, but with modern systems, mac address randomization is common, so the Mac address in use can be little better than nonsense.
I have a theory that some of the more budget oriented manufacturers (think Ali express), just don’t bother using a registered mac address at all.
This all makes my job harder as a network admin, I usually need to look up what a device is by mac address to help identify what it is and what it’s doing. I need to make sure everything is on the right network, and I can’t do that if I don’t know what anything is.
The last six hexadecimal digits of the Mac are simply to uniquely identify the interface that the Mac is burned into. This also means that any systems with multiple network ports, have different mac address on each port. Some things are exempt, like network switches, but for the most part, every interface has, or is supposed to have, a unique mac address.
Also, the mac isn’t hex, it’s binary. Hex is just how we’ve decided to present it to users. The switches, routers, and interfaces don’t work with the hex, only the binary. Same for IP addresses, which normal are shown in “dotted decimal notation”, but are just binary. But you didn’t ask about IP.
Did you need me to whisper ouis into your ear and you can guess what company is registered to that oui?
Nothing sexier than someone who knows what they’re talking about.
Fun fact, when I worked for Alstom and programmed their electric substations, they had a 10bit network and proprietary network cards, and the prototypes sometimes had the same MAC address 😁😅
So if you plug the same device into a different network using the same port, it’s the same MAC?
The MAC, at least as it was conceptualised (as they said, MAC randomisation etc. mess with this), is a unique identifier for that specific device. It doesn’t change, and only one device has that specific MAC.
Or more specifically, that specific network adaptor, the hardware responsible for connecting to networks. So one computer might have multiple MACs if, for example, it has an Ethernet port and a wifi card.
The device mac doesn’t change unless mac randomization is on.
I hate that, as far as I know, on Android you can’t choose the “randomized” MAC
You want to pick your own MAC? At least you can set it to not be random for a specific network.
Yes, by picking my own MAC as with my linux laptop I could share pre approved network access on both devices (although not at the same time)
5 or 6Ghz backhaul on the mesh?
Should I buy consumer or small business hardware?
Recommended brand(s)?
High end consumer aka prosumer, which is only really one brand, ubiquiti. Specifically their unifi stuff.
Or used mid range business stuff, Cisco, Aruba, juniper. The pinch here is that you usually need specialized knowledge to configure this class of device. I’ve also used Cisco, watchguard, Fortinet, Sophos, sonicwall, and probably others for firewalls. I prefer Sonicwall for some very specific reasons about how they structure their configuration, but for anyone who isn’t a certified sonicwall tech, I’d point at Sophos. Their stuff seems to be a fair balance of configurability and user friendliness. If you’re instant on new business stuff and you have the money for it, Sophos for the firewall, Aruba instanton for switching and Wi-Fi.
The benefit to unifi is user friendliness and a unified control console. If you’re not an IT professional or a similar technical job, unifi will provide plenty of what you need and leave out the unnecessary knobs that needs like me want to see.
Be prepared to spend several hundred on the networking if you’re going to do it right, there are some places you can trim some costs, but before you nope it from sticker shock, consider how much you spend per year on Internet service, and then consider how much the router/firewall + switch + access points are in comparison… And those are things you don’t need to buy every year.
Edit: I forgot to mention the backhaul. The decision will depend on the wireless environment. You might be able to save some cash having 5ghz backhaul, but it’s going to struggle in dense environments, so consider spending some extra on 6ghz if you’re in a medium to high density housing situation. Good luck
It’s okay to message you?
I’ve been switching a lot of my devices to ESP-NOW instead of WiFi so that they can just fart out their data to anyone who can hear it and then go back to sleep, no connecting or handshaking or authenticating or overhead. Should clear up my wifi network I think.
If I’m not mistaken, they still use 2.4 GHz, which is also used by wifi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, a bunch of other stuff… Microwave ovens…
And anything operating on a frequency, regardless of protocol, will interfere with eachother. I think the main benefit for you would be the brief amount of active time, could reduce the airtime being used by the devices.
I hope it works out for you and your wifi works excellently. Just be aware that it could still interfere. Use 5ghz when possible.
Thanks a lot for sharing you experience! I recently saw some people I follow on youtube talk about fibre as an alternative for ethernet cables, do you have an any experience with that?
Alternative? Sure. Though why?
If ethernet works, you’re just using a more expensive option to go with fiber.
Unless you need something unique about fiber, like distance (which can still be dubious for consumer grade hardware), or a non-electrical based signal (dubious requirement in most cases), then you’re just throwing money at being able to say you use fiber.
Additionally, fiber is more fragile than a copper cable. One bad hit with a vacuum cleaner and it’s toast
Maybe you shouldn’t vacuum your cables?
I don’t vacuum them, I vacuum near it. But you can always accidentally go too far and bump the cable
Yes. Fiber is great but extremely nuanced. SMF, MMF, UPC, APC, OM3, OM4, OS2… All different parts of just the cabling… Not to mention the connectors, LC, SC… You get the idea.
Everyone I tend to talk to about it seem to think multi-mode is cheaper, and it can be, but in my experience, single mode is usually the better choice and usually not much of a price uplift if you’re buying from a good company. Look at FS.com and do some comparison shopping against them. They make some high quality stuff, and it’s at pretty incredible pricing for what you get, but the equipment can add up fast.
Multi mode can only really carry one connection per fiber and usually needs to be duplexed (two strands per link) while single mode can leverage WDM to carry multiple independent signals on different wavelengths. This can be leveraged for bi-directional single strand links, multiple links that are aggregated into a single connection in hardware (this is how 40Gbit works, it’s actually 4x10G connections on different wavelengths)…
It’s still more costly and requires more specialized equipment and training to work with, compared to copper Ethernet, so it’s pretty uncommon to see in residential or home networks.
YMMV. Good luck.
I feel like fiber only makes sense for long runs or extremely high bandwidth needs. For a typical home network, I don’t see any benefits for fiber over ethernet.
Fiber is complete overkill for home networking. Also, POE is very nice to have for things like WAPs or cameras.
Sorry, I know there was more, but all wireless is half-duplex!? I never knew…
It’s a single frequency for all people, including those that are on the same or adjacent/overlapping channels. If you ever used walkie talkies, they don’t work so well when more than one person is talking.
Same idea.
Wi-Fi 7 is introducing multi link, which could improve the duplex operation, but it’s far from perfect. Even if you use one channel for download and one for upload, you’re still competing with everyone else on the channel - whether they’re connected to your network or not. They can still interfere with you if you’re on the same channel but different networks.
This is also why its generally better to turn your wifi signal power down to a low or middle power as long as all your devices can still connect.
Less range, less overlap, less competition for shared bandwidth between different access points. The more people that do it, the better the wifi gets for everyone.
The elevator pitch is wonderful and I’m glad to be following your recommendations already. Wired everything is not practical for me without drilling through the floor, so a mesh router with dedicated backhaul and a wired connection to the downstairs node is working like a charm.
Awesome. That’s good to hear.
I know not everyone can run Ethernet. Whether it’s because you’re in a rental, or you simply don’t have the budget for it, the reason doesn’t matter all that much. There’s plenty of good reasons not to.
Usually mesh nodes have Ethernet on them as well and it just bridges into the LAN. Using that can actually cut down on wireless traffic overall. Maybe something to look at which could help if you have any troubles.
Good luck friend.
They mentioned MoCa. If you have cable (like for the tv) you can probably use MoCa. It’s fantastic.
And if you can’t use MoCa - say, bc the cable installers cut all the other coax cords on the house (true story!) - you can also consider powerline adapters to send Ethernet over your electrical wiring. It’s a crapshoot depending on the quality of your wiring but I can usually get at least the same speed as my wifi with it.
Just read up on that, seems very interesting. I don’t think it’s a great option for my setup since there’s only one coax port in the house, but I learned something new today.
The general rule I’ve read for wifi is to use channels 1,6 and 11 for 2.4 GHz as those do not interfere with each other. So I use a wifi scanner on my phone at the furthest point in my home from the router and check which is the least busy from the surrounding neighbors. Do you think that’s a good technique to use?
For 5GHz, I try to pick between 36,48,149,161 and pick by the same rules as above. I also keep my channel size at 20Mhz for both.
There’s some nuance with 5ghz, let’s talk 2.4 GHz first.
You’ve heard correctly, 1, 6, and 11 are the “non overlapping” channels, if anyone is on, say, channel 9, then everyone on 6 and 11 are going to have a bad time. But this is entirely based on everyone using 20mhz wide channels. Anyone using 40mhz wide channels are just going to fuck up the airspace. 40mhz wide channels basically occupy two of the three non-overlapping channels on 2.4ghz. never use 40mhz wide on 2.4 GHz. IMO, it shouldn’t have ever been an option.
5ghz is a UNII band, and there’s three, technically four or five, main sections of the band that are relevant UNIi 1 is the low end of 5ghz, I don’t have the channel numbers off the top of my head, but I know it ends at or around channel 90 or so? I’m tired and I’ve been ill today, so please forgive me. Some of the specifics are slipping away right now and I don’t have the brain power to cross reference it. You can look all this up anyways.
UNII 1 is pretty typical, very similar to how 2.4 GHz works, just on a different band.
I’ll circle back on UNII 2
UNII 3 is the high part of the band and the only nuance here is that the 5.8 GHz ISM channels overlap with a lot of this, so any consumer electronics like cordless phones that use 5.8 GHz, might cause problems with some of these channels. Use of the ISM band here has been on the decline for a while, so it’s probably not an issue, but something to be mindful of.
UNII 2 is a whole thing. You’ll need to look up what is allowed for your country, but some channels are off limits and this band actually interferes with radar operations, so anything operating UNII 2 channels needs to have radar avoidance built in. That’s pretty much automatic, or it should be. The key take away with these channels is that you need to let the system pick the channel or will use in the band, so that it can change the channel to avoid radar if needed. Setting a static channel on your Wi-Fi in the UNII 2 band might land you in hot water.
Some 5ghz channels can only be used indoors, some can only be used in specific countries, so look it up for your situation. Wikipedia has a comprehensive article on it, and I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with it.
6ghz regulation is starting to settle down but it’s looking to be a bit more open and consistent between countries which would be a nice change.
Also, there are different power restrictions on different channels, don’t worry yourself too much with that since most consumer access points and Wi-Fi routers don’t push enough power to exceed even the lowest restriction.
Feel free to move to 40mhz for 5ghz, there’s a lot more channels and 40mhz wide can really enhance your speeds. Stick to 20 for 2.4 GHz; but don’t feel limited for 5 or 6ghz.
Your methodology is good. But please understand that the graphs are an estimation, a real waterfall examination with an SDR that’s capable of observing the channel would be the only way to really know what’s happening in the airspace. Generally that’s overkill for residential installations. Just bear in mind, those scanner apps will only show other Wi-Fi networks. Non-Wi-Fi interference will not be shown. Don’t hesitate to try a different channel if one isn’t working great for you. Might just be alien interference (in this context, alien means non-Wi-Fi).
Thanks for the long reply. I was using 20 for 5GHz for the range as on the other side of my home, the signal is quite weak. So I figure its more stable at 20 than using 40, even if 40 would be faster. Actually reading up on it more, the lower bands would be better in my case as they offer better wall penetration, which I think is my problem. I’m currently set to 161, let me try to swap to 36 and see if my signal improves. And I’ll test it out to 40MHz, might as well go for broke.
The difference between high and low ranges in the 5 GHz band shouldn’t be significant. My understanding of the rule with penetration is that the signal will be attenuated by something that is half of the wavelength in thickness. Which for 5 GHz frequencies with a wavelength between 50 and 60 mm. Anything thicker than 25mm will impact performance. The lower end, channel 36 will be closer to 30mm
5mm isn’t significant enough to worry too much about. Certainly worth testing either way.
By comparison 2.4ghz has a wavelength of ~125mm.
For wall penetration 2.4 GHz is better, but you’ll suffer on speed. I think the phy rate caps out around 150mbps on 20mhz wide channels. I can double check that, but I don’t think it’s far off. I think you could get up to ~300mbps? But I’m pretty sure that was 40mhz wide… So as far as I’m concerned that’s not valid.
Good luck. Test, document it, see what’s what. Remember, the difference between science and fucking around is writing it down.
Yay!
Should I learn iptables or is it more sane to use a front end like ufw?
I have an RPI with dual Ethernet between my modem and consumer router so I don’t have to depend on the obsolete and limited consumer router software. I’m using OpenWRT at the moment but curious if you have other recommendations. I like the Luci gui so if I switched to headless Debian or something then I’d still want a luci equivalent.
I’m self hosting with docker and I want to set up a wireguard vpn container that joins a network with a select set of containers. So I’d have containers that are accessible only by actual LAN users and then others that are in this isolated group that only the VPN (i.e. WAN people) can access. I thought that’s what docker was all about! But by default it seems all authenticated VPN peers just get to be on the LAN. Sure, they can’t get at containers on a different docker bridge network, but they get to access the host itself! This is why I asked about iptables above, but it’s daunting. Any ideas on how to achieve “two levels of trust” for self hosted services?
Just adding my 2p, when it comes to cabling, unless you have a specific need (or anticipate one) for a specific connection to need more than 1gbps, CAT5e is plenty good enough for 99% of domestic usage. CAT6 maybe a good idea to anticipate future demands going up dramatically on your home network but anything more is just exponentially more expensive overkill.
I always recommend Cat6, mainly because it can carry 10G up to 55m, which is basically your entire house, unless you live in a mansion or something.
10G might work on 5e, but it won’t be reliable.
Even if you’re not planning to go for 10G any time soon, do yourself a favor and run Cat6. In 5 or 10 years when you want 10G for any reason, you can just upgrade the equipment on both ends and it will just work.
The cost difference isn’t significant enough for cat5e to make any sense for new installs.
CAT6 is so cheap you might as well get that by default now. 7/8 is where it gets expensive.
But if you can’t find 6 for a good price, 5e will do everything you need it to.
what i’ve done is simply lower the power of my 2.4GHz network so i have reliable coverage in my apartment, but by the time i’ve walked 2 floors down my phone is utterly unable to even see the network.
super simple way to avoid polluting the local airwaves, though i presume it’s not really something you can do on most standard router interfaces…
Actually makes me wish I had kids, this is brilliant.
I’ve been getting a lot of spam calls lately. Eventually said fuck it and screwed with them as much as possible. The best times were where I had something to do that didn’t require much brainpower but had to be done. I eventually was able to keep them on the phone for up to a half an hour by pretending I was following their instructions until they realized I was bullshitting them. Everything from the internet being slow (and going on a rant about “ever since I moved to [made up town] I’ve had to deal with this shitty Internet, and they promised it to make it better X years ago”) to fake accents and changing my voice, or sometimes just not having a clue if I have an iPhone or Android and getting walked through how to figure it out. Once they figure out I’m bullshitting them they get furious. Absolutely hilarious.
Unfortunately for the fuckery with the scammers I don’t have as much brainless stuff to do at the moment. Though I still do fuck with them, I keep it short. Some things they really hate:
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go into the bathroom, and when they’re explaining their stuff flush the toilet so they can clearly hear it
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answer in a voice like you’re getting off. Instead of “yes” answer “Oh God yes”. At a fitting moment say “Oh God I’m going to cum”
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go really far away from the microphone and speak softly, and when they ask you to speak louder tell them you’re already speaking loudly, something must be up with the line. They’ll most likely turn up the volume. Once the conversation goes to their scam and they’re not thinking about it anymore, scream as loud as you can into the microphone.
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“How would you like to get fucked in the ass?” (Works best with men, considering those men often seem to be pretty prejudiced)
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in a crazy voice: “HEY, WHAT DO YOU WANT, I’M TAKIN A SHIAAAAT”
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"You say you’re from [insert company they’re pretending to be from]? Shit, your ex was right, you are a liar!
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"you work for [insert company they’re pretending to be from]? Is that what you tell your mother?
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“Hey [insert their fake name they gave you, the way they pronounced it], if you’re going to use a fake name, at least learn to pronounce it right”
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if you recognize the name from an earlier call, reference what happened in that earlier call and rile them up further about it
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when they’re about to hang up: “don’t be a chicken, don’t hang up! I have a bet going with my friend here, if you hang up, I win!”
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after getting insulted because you told them you know they’re not who they say they are: “you’re insulting me, which means I’m right, thank you!” [Proceed to laugh loudly]
Anyway, I have more, it’s just not popping into my head at the moment. But creativity is the key here, and it’s fucking entertaining.
Only robots are calling me 😭
Usually the robot asks you to press a number, as soon as you do that you’ll be talking with a “representative”
Making suggestions about their heritage seems to really get the blood pressure up.
“I would have been your daddy, but the dog beat me over the fence!”
Instead of “yes” answer “Oh God yes”. At a fitting moment say “Oh God I’m going to cum”
I wish I would get actual spam calls so I could try this out :D
I like telling them “My start menu? I don’t have a start menu, I’m running Arch Linux.”
the one where you go away from the mic / speak softly and then scream is so fucking hilarious
I think next time I’m going to tell them all about bees! And I could throw in a few facts about chambered nautiluses, too although I don’t know enough to center the call about them.
This is legit the funniest comment I’ve seen on the fediverse. Bravo and thank you.
Thank you and you’re welcome!
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These days you have to invent a whole fake identity to give to a robot just to schedule an appointment to fuck with scammers.
I lead them on. Then ask if their parents were proud of them for their career in attempting to scam the elderly.
This was a lot more wholesome than i expected
For a long time, I’ve been meaning to flesh out a lengthy piece on libertarianism and the issues I have with it, but I can’t perform when put on the spot like that. :-(
Write it all down. Just for yourself. Dumb takes and all. Write it all out so you have your own opinions clear before you on paper, black and white. Then when you’ve edited it all and have said everything you want to say in a way that you are satisfied with, print those pages and put them up in your bathroom right opposite where you shit. Every time you shit, you read it, close your eyes, and try to recite it without looking. In a couple of weeks you can perfectly tell anyone exactly what you feel and think about it without missing a beat.
If you can’t perform on the spot it’s because you’re still not comfortable with what you really feel and think. This is the cure.
