networking – Graves On SOHO Technology

Extreme Power Over Ethernet

If you’ve been reading hereabouts for some time, you likely know that I am an advocate for power-over-ethernet. In it’s earliest days, almost twenty (!) years ago, I started blogging in order to share my experience combining working from a home office full-time, leveraging broadband-over-DSL and IP telephones.

SIP/IP telephones and Wi-Fi access points are natural gateways into P.O.E. That’s certainly how I got started. At first, I used POE insertors. As the number of POE-capable devices mounted, I migrated to Ubiquiti Unifi POE switches.

Local Thieves using Wi-Fi Jammer

A few days ago a couple of Houston’s local TV stations ran a story about thieves using a Wi-Fi jamming device in order to defeat the common wireless security cameras. This sort of thing is very triggering for me. I have long believed that Wi-Fi, while convenient, is not your friend. Things that you truly rely upon should be physically connected to your network. By “physically connected “ I mean Ethernet. Accept no substitutes.

We have a handful of surveillance cameras hereabouts. They are all connected via Ethernet. It provides both connectivity and power. This way, they are powered from the Eaton UPS that runs the network core. The network stays up even when utility power is lost.

T-Mobile 5G: An Experiment with Fixed Wireless Internet Access

t-mobile-gateway-v4-front In the next few weeks we’ll crest the first anniversary of Hurricane Beryl, which had quite an impact hereabouts. In the storm we lost power for a less than two days. However, our Comcast/Xfinity internet access was out for a week. As someone who works full-time from a home office, that was a problem for me. As a contract IT worker, no internet access means no money. No buénno.

My laptop, a Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen7 from 2019, has the optional 4G mobile data access module. It’s part of our Mint Mobile family plan. So, at some level I can be online with just the laptop. That provides a minimal level of productivity.

Similarly, I can tether my desktop and perhaps one or two small devices to my mobile phone. That’s ok for an afternoon, but not a good solution for a week or more.

The 4G speed test on the laptop screen reflects 4G LTE access, not 5G. Also, Mint Mobile data rates are often lower than T-Mobile’s own clients. Even though T-Mobile now owns Mint, the MVNO customers are given lower priority on the network.

Then it occurred to me that all the mobile carriers had been promoting fixed wireless service in the neighborhood. In post-Beryl Houston, power was out at our home, but not too far away there was a T-Mobile store that was open for business as usual. They had a 5G fixed wireless devices for $0 with $60/month and no contract term. It seemed like potentially a good solution. At least, there was little to risk in trying it on for size.

New Gear: JetKVM is really very handy!

Late last year I supported the Kickstarter for JetKVM. This device is a tiny little IP-KVM solution. It’s basically a refined package of everything involved in a PiKVM. Connect HDMI & USB from a computer-to-be-controlled, and Ethernet. Then the web interface on the JetKVM device allows that device to be remote controlled using just a web browser from anywhere there’s IP connectivity.

JetKVM-device-front

I had actually forgotten that I supported the project until one day a pair the wee devices arrived. It happens that I’ve been meaning to work on a KVM solution for my home office.

Comcast won’t let me be

January 13, 2025
Michael Graves
networking

When the Scientific Atlanta/Cisco CableCard failure occurred on December 1 it was just the push we needed to cut the cord. Since we could not have our beloved Tivo DVR there was no further reason to stay with Comcast. We dropped both Xfinity cable TV and Comcast Business internet access. Both changes were long overdue.

Since then, the company simply won’t stop bothering us. They send us offers in the mail saying how, “they miss us” and, “they want us to come back.” I suppose that’s to be expected. Junk mail.

However, for the past week they’ve been sending me text messages with advice about network upgrade work in the area. We had a Comcast Business account for over a decade and never received anything from them. Now they start sending me messages. A month after we closed the account?!

This is not the sort of thing that inspires. Rather, it highlights just what a senseless and uncoordinated organization they truly are.

As if that’s not annoying enough, they send further text messages asking if the prior messages have been helpful? What sort of idiocy is this? We simply don’t care about a service we no longer use.

Ubiquiti Unifi UXG-Max Router: The Most Boring Installation in Memory

December 19, 2024
Michael Graves
infrastructure, networking, Uncategorized

The transition to AT&T Fiber meant jumping from 60/10 mbps service to 500/500 mbps service. Our old router was SmallWall on a recycled HP T620 Plus thin client. SmallWall is a fork of m0n0wall, which I used for years previously. And a history lesson, m0n0wall was the progenitor of pfsense.

Alas, that little hardware/software combination simply wasn’t up to this new, and much faster, ISP. It could only manage to pass 120 mbps. The CPU tracking in SmallWall didn’t show it to be overburdened. I suspect other aspects of the hardware were the problem. It has a dual-ported Intel NIC. They’re 1G ports, connected to the host via a PCIe x4 connector.

I could have swapped out the T620 Plus for something newer and faster. However, I decided to extend our installation of Ubiquiti Unifi gear by adding their Unifi UXG Max router. That would allow me to see the ISP/router performance in the Unifi UI, which is handled by the Unifi Controller app running on a local Raspberry Pi400.

We came to use the Unifi line by way of their Wi-Fi access points. That was the end-state of what had been a long-running search to deliver reliable Wi-Fi. When our Ubiquiti PowerAP N died we deployed Unifi AC Pro access points. So began our foray into “software defined networking.”