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  • I'm a massive networking nerd. I have literal stacks of old networking hardware, probably enough to connect a small town. It's almost all used and some is damaged and I love the shit out of every scrap circuit board with those glorious ports.

    I usually end up ranting about home networking on Lemmy, and the networking subreddits are generally the only reason I go back to that site every now and again.

    I've become a wireless expert, and I regularly flex that knowledge at work. It always amazes me how bad some people's wifi is and they just accept it, like, it do be like that sometimes.... But it doesn't have to be like that.

    Because of this I often find myself ranting about what to do, or not do, when it comes to home networking projects. I always feel like this falls on deaf ears because I end up repeating the same or similar rants regularly.

    • You ever seen a Unify AP just chilling on the floor under a desk in a commercial setting while people complain the WiFi is always slow?

      Pain.

    • That's a pretty good interest to have. Do you happen to have a write up of good networking solutions to use for homes? Most people probably just grab a router on sale or use the one provided by their Internet provider and use the default settings.

      I'm sure that everyone has bottlenecks that they could fix, but most people just don't have the knowledge base to figure it out.

      • It really really really depends on the situation. How big is the home, how fast is the internet, future plans, coverage needs, etc. And budget.

        IMO, most people don't spend an appropriate amount on their internet network. They'll spend hundreds per month for internet service from an ISP, but refuse to spend more than $60 on a router to get it from the ISP modem to their $1000 phone. It doesn't make sense, especially when you consider that it's a one-time cost that will serve you for many years; the per month cost of owning it is less than a cup of coffee a month, even if you buy something that's 10x more expensive. People are so resistant to it that is crazy.

        Even at $100, you're going to get what you pay for, better than the $60 router, but it's going to fall short of anything that's worth keeping for extended periods of time.

        Right now my blind go to, when I don't know anything about someone's situation, is the ubiquiti UDR. It's an all in one device, around $200, with a WiFi 6 access point built in, and four ethernet ports, all 1Gb and two of them have PoE. The limitation is the 1Gbps internet link so anyone with an ISP connection faster than 1Gbps should go with something else. Most don't, so this is my recommendation.

        The reason I recommend it is that you can add additional access points to it as needed with basically no additional spend (beyond the ap itself). With two PoE ports, you can add two aps without worrying about whether or not you have power injectors or anything. Adding a small network switch is easy on any of the other two ports if four isn't enough for you, and ubiquiti has some pretty cheap, small switches for that.

        The UDR comes with a built in network management device (otherwise known as a "cloud key" in unifi) which puts everything into a single interface. So the access points (both internal and add on), switches, etc are all managed from a single system that's local, and has local sign in, and has a convenient cloud interface which is free to use, and has all the same functionality.

        As a starting point, this is excellent. Because having just the UDR you can service a small apartment without any add-ons. If your needs grow, you can build out as needed. If your needs grow beyond the UDR, you can upgrade to the UDM/UDM pro (or similar) and keep using all the add-ons you've purchased. There's room for growth, and ubiquiti has proven themselves to be rather adequate at providing networking for the home. Unless you get into some very advanced features, it should serve whatever needs you have both now and in the future.

        My recommendations obviously change depending on the situation. One person I worked with recently, I recommended the UDM pro and a pair of access points, because his ISP connection was in his furnace room. The UDM doesn't have any WiFi built in, and the furnace room is usually a nightmare to get wireless into or out of. The connection will suck. So being able to move his access points (of which he got a couple), out of that area and into more open spaces, was critical. In that case I gifted him a Dell power connect switch and used PoE injectors to power the access points. I was able to provide a very good, very reliable network for him without ongoing difficulty or issues (which was his primary concern). Before this he struggled with the wireless from his ISP modem, and it disconnected and had very poor signal throughout his home.

        Since the initial set up, I've heard nothing but good things about it. He's very happy with the system. His situation had some unique challenges, and we even ran ethernet vertically up to his second floor office through what used to be a chimney stack and that had been used to install a forced air duct for the second floor. So the space was only that forced air duct from the furnace. The cable(s) share that space with the air handling duct (but are run outside of the duct for safety), and he has gigabit ethernet jacks in his office to get a reliable connection for his professional systems in the office. He probably doesn't need the Dell switch in the mix, but it gave him extra ports for use for later.

        I've done dozens of custom recommendations for people. At this point I'm thinking of making a website to point people to that has all the information about home networking you could need, generalized enough to always be correct. I want to include sections on different manufacturers and why wifi kind of sucks, explanations of different technologies, their benefits, pros and cons, that kind of thing. Etc.... All in one place so I can link people to it and they can learn as much or as little as they want; with pages like recommendations, all time stamped so you know what's current or recent, and deep explainer pages of different technologies and how they work and what benefits and stuff that they have if you want to know more.

        It's a huge plan, and it will take me weeks or months to write it all out. I will need to find cheap web hosting for it and get some kind of UI/UX design going for it, and build the whole thing so I can update it without having to work too hard to start the new page entry. Maybe a wiki style? Idk. I'm thinking of calling it something along the lines of "WiFi sucks" or something related... Like wifisucks (dot) com or whatever. I'm sure I'll need help with it, mainly in the UI/UX, but it's something I've been considering doing for a while, just to handle these kinds of questions continually.

        I have a blog about it, called untangle the tubes, IIRC, and I go on long, in-depth rants about stuff. But it's highly disorganized and random.

    • Nice. I too have my share of older networking equipment. Mainly 3Com. I've grown fond of that brand and the quality of their devices (though not the quality of the supplied wall adapters).

      I am by no means a wireless expert but would like to know how to expand my current wifi network into the garden.

      • 3COM was picked up by HPE networking, which eventually became Aruba.

        The last 3COM I worked with was a 48 port gigabit switch.

        My collection is mainly Cisco stuff. Some of their early gigabit equipment and late FE stuff. Everything from ISR 1841 and even older 2600 router stuff, and 3750 stacking switches at 100mbps with and without poe, and a bunch of newer stuff too. I recently picked up a 3750X 48 port PoE, and a catalyst 4948.

        I also have other vendors like HPE, juniper, even some of D-Link's "enterprise" stuff (spoiler, it sucks). I have firewalls from Cisco, watchguard, sonicwall, etc.

        I have wireless stuff too. Mainly Cisco, a couple of WLC 2504, with aironet 3602, 2802, a bunch of 1141 and 1142.... A mix of other one-off versions.

        Yeah. I have a bit of everything. From firewalls to switches to wireless to routers. Active in my network is a sonicwall 2650(? I believe), the Cisco 4948, and 3750X PoE, one of my WLC 2504's and a pair of 2802i access points. I also built and run my brother's network, which is almost entirely unifi, a UDM pro, enterprise 48 PoE switch and a few U6 pro access points. It works for him and it's not so difficult to manage, so if he needs to update his WiFi password or something, he is able to do that.

      • I realized I didn't address the garden issue you have. Ha. I'm dumb sometimes.

        It's going to depend on what you have in mind and what capabilities you have to install the equipment, as well as what you're currently using.

        I'll discuss two situations, in the first, you have a preferred vendor for all of your wifi stuff. Someone like ubiquiti. From there you have two choices, either find an outdoor unit to install on the side of your home near the garden(something with waterproofing), and install an indoor unit as close to the garden as possible. In either case it may be a good idea to get a directional or semi-directional unit that can "point" the wireless in the desired direction. It doesn't need to be a very directional unit (like a dish antenna), and something like that may actually not improve things very much. So look for something like a panel antenna style unit. It may be a good idea to get a point to point panel-like semi directional unit. If you're uncertain what I mean, Google panel antenna and it should be a bit more clear. If no such type of device exists, I would see if there's a unit that can use external antennas and go that way, buying a compatible panel antenna for the job.

        If the garden is not very large, you may be able to get by with a normal "Omni directional" unit.

        Installing outside has the difficulty of getting it wired into the network. The most common solution is to run a cable through the soffit, into the attic, and to the rest of the network. I would highly recommend outdoor cable that is UV rated, otherwise it will fall over time. Failure will take many years with a non-outdoor rated cable, but it will happen. So a bit of extra investment in cabling is going to be worth it in the long run. Nobody wants to climb through the attic to run ethernet, and nobody wants to do it twice for the same network run. So save the time and effort of doing it, and get the UV rated cable.

        The other scenario is that you have random network gear or no preferred vendor. In this case the network will be disjointed, where you have to disconnect from your home wifi, and connect to your garden wifi, either manually or from saved profiles automatically. This is a bit less ideal, but usually cheaper. Finding a wireless bridge access point for outdoor install, or simply putting an access point as close to the garden inside the home, may be sufficient.

        I'm planning on doing the same, but it's winter right now, where I am, so I'm at a stand still. The network in question is ubiquiti based, so I got a U6-Mesh, which I'm planning to install in the soffit (the unit is water resistant and has a "ceiling mount" option which will embed it into the soffit part way). The biggest challenge I have is getting the wire out there. In that case the wire will not be outside, so I don't need UV resistant cable, but I'll likely get it anyways for that unit. I'll skip the specifics of my difficulty running this network cable. While the unit is called the U6-MESH, it does not need to be running in a mesh operational mode, which I will not be running it in a mesh mode. The U6-MESH is small, its a bit larger than a redbull can, so I shouldn't have any issue putting it in. It's omnidirectional, so I'm planning to place it around the midpoint of my home, in the soffit, to give fair and adequate converage of the area. I want to repeat this for the front of my home.

        The last step for me, and something I would recommend, is to have someone with a WiFi device that can report signal strength, at the very end of the area (at the back fence) about as far as possible from the access point as anyone should reasonably be for access, then "turn down" the broadcast power of the unit until that area is just barely covered enough to stay connected. Outdoor wireless can go far with no obstacles in the way, so I want to limit coverage so I'm not blasting my neighbors with the power of the unit at full, all day and all night, possibly disrupting their wireless in the process. My main motivator for this is that if they can "hear" my network, they can connect, and if they can connect, then it's possible for them to illegitimately use my internet, or "hack" into access that they have not been given. By limiting the signal strength, I can reduce this attack vector. As long as the signal can be picked up outside, however, it will never be eliminated. The point is to make it harder for the layperson or casual hacker to try. Any professional trying to gain access will overcome this with ease, so I don't want to invest too much effort into it.

        I hope that helps. I have no idea if it will. Either way, good luck.

    • I have a bunch of networking gear to sell, it's semi recent stuff, all Cisco. How would I go about selling it? Are those websites that buy old network gear in bulk any good? I really don't want to sell them individually on eBay

      • I don't often (or ever) sell equipment. So unfortunately I may not be very helpful here.

        I would suspect that the bulk gear shops are just going to individually list the items on eBay or something similar; if you want top dollar, you'll need to sell them yourself on eBay. If you don't care all that much, then hand them over to a highly rated bulk shop and let them do it for you.

        If you have a list, I'm looking for a few pieces, and there's others that I'd be interested in if I got them at a good price. We could work something out.

        I'm also sure that there's buy/sell communities and subreddits that you could try as well.

        A short list of things I'm usually interested in is:

        Catalyst switches, usually 3750 series, specifically anything PoE, but there's other 3k/4k switches I'd like to get my hands on.

        Aironet wireless, not the meraki stuff, that's usually trash unless you have a contact and I don't roll like that.

        ISR G2 routers, usually the 19xx and 29xx series.

        Anything newer than the ISR G2, like the Cisco 43xx routers and such.

        I usually stay away from anything chassis based, it simply takes too much room and power compared to what I need and I get the same functionality in terms of commands and learning from smaller units, though they're not as capable, they still function well enough for a lab/home use.

        There's other stuff I'd like to pick up, but that's what I'm usually looking at... At least off the top of my head.

    • You know HAM radio? It's kinda interesting, because people can use it to talk to each other and it technically doesn't require any infrastructure. But there are also repeaters in cities that can increase the range.

      I've been wondering why people don't try to do something similar with WiFi? Some kind of city-wide WiFi network with repeaters. It's probably difficult and I'm not sure if it would have any practical use. But the advantage over HAM radio is that it's encrypted and doesn't require a license. I imagine that people could use it to chat with each other and share stuff without having to rely on social media or the internet.

      • I'm a qualified amateur operator. I can operate on any ham bands up to 190W EIRP if I recall my countries regulations correctly.

        The issue with doing something like wifi on ham bands technical issues finding radio chips capable of signalling at such a high rate of speed, on bands that are able to be used by hams. There's also the requirement for hams to identify themselves on air, and the general use of AM/FM and derivative technology on ham bands and general resistance to the OFDM used as the main signal encoding for WiFi. So finding an OFDM capable radio transmitter/receiver for use in... say, the 2m band (144Mhz .... ish) is basically impossible, and there's no way to identify. You would have to build a new protocol and standard from the ground up and use very modified or rare/expensive radio chips, and likely build the drivers/firmware for it entirely yourself. People with the required hardware, software, baseband, radio, and firmware experience that are hams who want a product like WiFi for ham radio channels is extraordinarily rare.

        As for city-wide WiFi/mesh networks: it has been attempted, and has seen some limited success, but doesn't scale well with the usual protocols. Routing protocols like BGP, OSPF and IS-IS are meant for much larger IP blocks being routed between interfaces. A wireless mesh system would use a single interface (one radio) for both send and receive, which most protocols don't support, and each "hop" or station on the mesh would only be advertising a single IP (or an extremely small set of IPs) per participating node.

        Most routing protocols assume that every node on an interface can talk to every other node on the same interface and thus there's no need to repeat or relay messages from an interface to the same interface.

        There's also no standards that allow wifi to use multiple channels/frequencies for tx/rx, eg, send on 5.45 GHz, and receive on 5.65Ghz. it simply isn't something that any WiFi chip is capable of. So full duplex isn't possible right now.

        The common wifi frequencies are also extremely power limited and on bands that are prone to interruption. In the wild, there's plenty of things that can disrupt 2.4Ghz and 5/6Ghz transmissions. With the power limits, to go any significant distance, you need directional antennas that limit free space path loss so the signal travels further. In the case of wireless internet service providers (WISP, not to be confused with the mobile carriers), they generally use panel or dish antennas to extend the range. For power output, at the high end, some bands allow for upwards of 5W of directional power, or 1W of omnidirectional power (in EIRP). On the low end, handheld ham radio units start at 5W of power, and can usually attenuate their transmitter to 1W or lower as an option. Household WiFi is usually around 0.1W of power per radio. Even cranking that up to the maximum legally allowed wattage won't result in covering more than a few blocks of a city with a fairly poor signal overall; that signal is going to be fairly easily blocked, absorbed, reflected, or otherwise attenuated by just about everything, including, but not limited to the structure of your house.

        Meanwhile, standing in my home with a 5W handheld transceiver operating on 70cm (440Mhz), I can hit a repeater that's something like 10 miles away with a nearly perfect signal over FM, without assistance. OFDM signals would likely be scrambled beyond recognition at 2.4 or 5 GHz across that much of a gap, or even one that's 1/10th as far, with only 1W of legal power, without using some kind of directional antenna or antenna array.

        Don't get me wrong, well configured wireless can go so far that you have to account for the curvature of the earth, but they're always very very directional, using dish antennas or similar.

        Don't get me wrong, the ideas are great, but the challenges faced are enormous. It can quickly turn into a lifelong project to get something functional, and even then, there's no guarantee that it will ever catch on as a product. The limitation for ham operators regarding encryption is problematic when it comes to data communication as well, since just about everything that's data-driven on the internet implements SSL. Computers and systems expect encryption all over the place and bluntly, those messages cannot be sent over ham bands. There's nuance to that regulation, at least in my country, but I won't get into the fine print here.

        Even so, there are some crude digital modes used by ham operators which are normally voice encoding or plain text encoding. Uses are limited on purpose. If you're interested in longer distance emergency communications you could look into LoRA, which is relatively new.

        There's a lot more to say on this, but bluntly, I've said enough. It's all interconnected, and I love it, but I'm just ranting now.

  • I haven't slept in a long while so I don't have the energy or memory to infodump too extensively but please for the love of all that is holy listen to the Magnus archives. I am begging everyone who sees this comment and has even marginally enjoyed horror atleast once to immerse themselves in this masterpiece.

    To give an incredibly brief description it is a 200 episode long horror audio drama that follows an archivist at the Magnus institute; an academic establishment focused on archiving paranormal events in the form of experience statements from the general public. Jonathan sims, the archivist, is tasked with transforming some of these statements into an audio format (along with every other aspect of an archivist job but he kinda sucks at it) and he starts to notice some connections.

    That's as much as I can say without spoilers. I think with this amount of information it can be enjoyed to the fullest with the maximum feeling of wonderment, fear, and curiosity. However for those of you who need more convincing and don't mind knowing a bit more I'm gonna add a little under this spoiler tag. Nothing too major but I think knowledge of it takes a bit away from the experience.

    I hope someone here sees this and becomes as obsessed as I was. I shit you not I listened to 200 20min episodes in the matter of 2 weeks and that was my second time listening. It's sequel, the Magnus protocol is currently releasing every Thursday and I just don't know If I can handle e listening at that pace

    I LIED I ABSOLUTELY DO HAVE THE ENERGY TO INFO DUMP

    Next up on the roster is sweet home by by Kim Carnby and Hwang Young-chan. I'll make this as quick as I can

    You like depression, monsters, tense group dynamics, apocalypse, and the constant nagging fear that you will never make it out of this shit hole of a situation? Yeah me too, sweet home has it all. Star of the show hyun is a shut in who just moved into a new apartment building after the death of his sister and father iirc. Not long after being there shit starts to get a lil weird but he doesn't notice all that much because he's a shut in. Eventually even he has to notice the world's gone to shit when he starts seeing posts on the intenret about it before the Internet stops working. One look outside is all it took really. Will hyun ever get to see the finale of maria from the sky? Probably not but a man can dream.

    I'll be back to info dump some more if I still can't sleep. You better pray I don't turn this comment into an 8 page rant. I don't know the character limit for Lemmy comments but I'll fucking find it.

    • Ok fuck. I've had it in my podcast Playlist for a while now. I'll start it this week once I finish my current audio book. You sold me by the first paragraph so to avoid spoilers I stopped reading. Thanks for the push, here I go.

      Also this reminds me, for anyone that enjoys this sort of archival paranormal story type check out Out of Place on Spotify as well. It's similar but with historical artifacts it gets pretty intimate as the story progresses.

  • Theres a small indie game called Gods will be watching. Great pixel art, buut its main thing is crisis management, that happens with the player character, a hostage situation gone wrong, surviving on a desert planet behind enemy lines, and my favorite: making a cure for a deadly disease, while being caved in.

    The virus couses paralysis, and in 72 hours shuts down your body systems. Not a fun way to go. All of your teammates are infected, which includes a doctor, a researcher, a robot engineer, a robot assistant, you and your friend who's a soldier, and his dog. The only way to make a cure in this deadline is abandoning all ethics and jumping to human trials.

    First you synthetise the drug, the first of maybe on pure guesses, but each completed test narrows down the possible compounds needed for the cure. Each test has a chance of killing the "lab rat", you can try making it more stable, but it takes longer to make, and you don't have much time. Do you go for sale ones, or try to get the cure faster? Who would you sacrifice? Obviously not the doctor, he's needed for the cure. The researcher can help making drugs, so not her. The robot can't be tested on, but need repairs by the engineer, so not him. You can try on yourself, but if you die you fail, so you can't sacrifice yourself. Your friend? Or maybe the dog?

    I don't know why I'm so engrossed with this game, is pretty old by now, and on youtube there's only a handful of playthroughs of it, but I really like the situations it puts the player in. Also the game is a bit punishing, but tells you before the game. There are no checkpoints in a chapter, which means you can lose 30+ progress by making a bad choise, out just having bad luck. But the mc has a... well not optimistic, but something similar vibe, like it doesn't matter how bad things are, you can always work in some way to your goal.

  • I FUCKING LOVE SPACE STATION 13/14. I LOVE THE LEVEL OF DETAIL AND FREEDOM ACHIEVED WITH JUST 2D PIXELS. I LOVE BEING AN OVERWHELMED DOCTOR ON A CARELESS CAPITALIST SPACESHIP JUST TRYING TO HAVE NO ONE DIE BEFORE HIS SHIFT ENDS.

    • I saw Lord Mandalore's video. What a crazy game with so much passion put into it!

      • Its FOSS since its inception in 2002! The only thing that sucks is Space Sation 13 is locked behind the BYOND launcher.

  • I like lore dumping on people who have some understanding of what I'm talking about.

    I don't have much interest in explaining everything to someone who knows *nothingď about it, but if they have a vague understanding/interest in the topic, enough that I know they can understand what I'm talking about, I could talk for hours. And have.

    Once while playing Halo, a friend of a friend asked the group why something was the way it was. I told him I can give him the short answer in about 30 seconds, or the long answer which will be very long. He wanted long answer.

    Three hours later only two other people were still listening, he knew the entire context of his answer, and he knew never to ask for the long answer again.

    I've done tye same for star trek multiple times.

    But give me someone who doesn't know the first thing about either and they would have to be super interested to learn for me to keep going. I don't do well with blank stares.

    The funny thing is it isn't any specific thing either. It's not just halo or star trek or even Sci fi or games. Its anything I have interest in and know a lot about.

    It's that a "weird niche thing" or just a "weird quirk about weird niche things"?

337 comments