Norphy

I’ve seen some ProCurve 1800-8G switches on eBay. I think they’d fit the bill perfectly

I’ve got something else to do the routing, hence just wanting L2. I do however need something to segregate Internet and General traffic and I can’t do it across two devices.

Can you give me an example of something in Unifi’s rage which meets these criteria? I don’t want to be running a controller to manage it, it needs to be completely stand alone.

I’m open to refurbs. 8 ports isn’t a hard and fast requirement but being fanless and utterly silent is. This is going in the cupboard underneath the TV in my living room, I don’t want to be listening to a screechy 40mm fan. The switch will also need to survive living in an unventilated cupboard as well.

Hi, This is personal, not for work. I want a cheap, L2 manage switch with support for 802.1q VLANs. It doesn't need more than 8 ports. It needs to be gigabit. I don't need PoE. As much as I'd like something like an HPE/Aruba 2530-8G, that's far too much money! Does anyone have any recommendations? The cheaper, the better. Cheers!

w00t!

Why do you have such a downer on Apple doing that? At least with the Apple TOCs, you're only selling your soul to Apple whereas with Google, you not only sell your soul to Google but then sublease it to whoever the hell they feel like.

Our schools all have the same: 3x Dell R630 (or R640 in the new school) with 16 CPU cores, 256GB of RAM each and 10Gbe NICs. They have Dell Compellent SCv3020 SANs with 24TB of storage, approximately 4TB of which is flash. Two of the schools have the SANs connected by iSCSI, the other two with SAS (Historical reasons for this, the newer ones are SAS). They're all running Windows Server 2019 but were running VMware at one point. We're hosting our entire infrastructure on those, from SIMS to domain controllers, from SCCM to Smoothwall.

Our office has Summit Chairs, specifically these They're lovely, I'm just sad that I'm going to have to take this one back to work when lockdown ends.

I probably don’t want to know the answer to this but What on God’s green earth is yawn raping?

Unless I’m sitting right next to the router, 2.4ghz networks are pretty much unusable here. There is far too much noise on that band, whether it be from other wireless networks, doorbells, DECT phones, baby monitors, microwaves or whatever. Using the 5ghz band might result in a more reliable connection as there’s less congestion on that band and there are more usable channels which, crucially, don’t overlap like they do on 2.4ghz. However, it’s a trade off; the 5ghz band is less congested and has the potential for a higher bandwidth network but the range of it is considerably less and higher frequency networks aren’t as good at penetrating walls and other solid objects. If you have an old house with thick walls, you may find that you need more than one wireless access point to get the same coverage. It all depends. If you live in a more remote location where you can’t see as many networks, switching to 5ghz might actually be worse for you

I’ve found that with consumer routers, the only sure fire to make sure that a device uses a particular band is to create separate SSIDs for 2.4ghz and 5ghz networks. All of the dual band home routers I’ve seen have been just plain crap at band steering. Failing that, sometimes the driver for the wireless nic can be set to prefer one band over another

Way back in the day, Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V was a separate SKU to Windows Server 2008 but that went away with 2008 R2. Could be that the OP was thinking of that?

You can upgrade the functional level of a domain but you can't downgrade it. Once it's been set, it can't be de-set The functional level of a domain mostly controls what version of Windows a domain controller can run. However, it shouldn't affect trusts between two domains; I have a domain running at 2016 level and another running at 2008 R2 level and they're trusting one another quite happily. It may be worth re-creating your trust?

OK, fair enough. Let me rephrase. You can run 10gbit over a more useful distance on OM2 fibre if you use LRM transceivers, up to 220m. Otherwise you're limited to about 80m. We've just got a whole load of new networking equipment in for one of our schools. We're using 5400R switches for both the core and edge because why not? We've bought 4 5412Rs, a 5406R, three 2540s and two 8 port 2530s. In all, there are about 900 ports. Including Airwave licenses, it came to a smidgen over £60k. So I'd say that the £29k quote just for the core is waaaay off.

Not strictly true, it depends on the transceivers that you use. One of our buildings still has OM2 fibre but we’re running 10gbit uplinks to the switches by using LRM transceivers. They’re more expensive but they work.

I've not seen the documentary but if this review on Ars Technica is anything to go by, I'm not going to go out of my way to watch it: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/michael-moores-green-energy-takedown-worse-than-netflixs-goop-series/

Indeed, I had a moan at VM the last time they hiked my prices. I threatened to leave so they gave me a "special deal", which I suspect they give to everyone who threatens to leave. At the moment I'm paying £22 a month for what was originally for 50mbit but got put up to 100mbit about three months ago without me asking.

There's something about Rob Wilkins that makes me uneasy. When that dramatisation of Pratchett's unfinished autobiography aired and it showed him sitting at fan conventions signing Discworld books, I found that rather odd. Still, hopefully whatever this ends up turning out will be good if the family is involved. We'll see.

There was AUP Informant on here a while ago but I don’t think it got updated post Windows XP. We use Net Support DNA for this but I appreciate that’s not what you’re really after.

I have Virgin. The main reason I have them is that generally speaking, they actually hit their advertised speeds which is more than you can say for most DSL services. Today has been a bit flaky (I live in SE London) but usually they’re ok. Their supplied routers are getting progressively worse though. The Arris thing provided to me the last time around is atrocious.

I remember it well. Bunch of conmen.

I really don’t see the point. Once the OS has booted there is no real advantage. Data will be in the RAID arrays so the actual service the thing is running won’t benefit. SSDs from HPE aren’t cheap and you’d have to get an HPE one for this to work. Why spend the extra?

Working from home is really starting to do my nut in. I can’t wait to get back to the office so I can get some rest!

The most my car had done was a two mile trip to the big Sainsburys in Sydenham, at least until I noticed the battery had died. I managed to get it jump started and took it on a 30 mile drive on Saturday, hopefully that'll keep it going for a while. Go to say, it was nice just getting out even if it was just a quick jaunt on the motorway.