FreeNAS 9.2.1-RELEASE announced

Seems to get better and better with every update! The plugins are also being well maintained.

I've not fully played with Plex yet but that looks pretty capable as well.

http://www.freebsdnews.net/2014/02/08/freenas-9-2-1-release-announced/

Rectangular Light Spectrum Pulses Promise 10x Faster Fibre Optic Networks

Good news for core network development

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/12/rectangular-spectrum-pulses-promise-10-times-faster-fibre-optic-networks.html

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131204/ncomms3898/full/ncomms3898.html

PirateBrowser Hits 500,000 Downloads, Tor Traffic Surges

Reported by Torrent news site Torrent Freak:

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-browser-hits-500000-downloads-130830/

The next home-networking revolution will be wired

Anything to reduce the amount of cables I have behind my Amp and computer is considered a big step forward!

It has great potential, especially with the built in PoE! You could power, TV's, VoIP phones, games consoles etc with no need for all those separate power cables!

The real plus is for PC's that can function on less than 100W. You eliminate the display / power / network cable and just have one for them all. (I didn't mention audio as HDMI can carry that).

It's doesn't quite match up to DisplayPort's 17.28 Gbit/s transfer rate as it only manages 10.2 Gbit/s bit i'm sure as the standard develops it will catch up. Its good enough for 4K. 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2036527/the-next-home-networking-revolution-will-be-wired.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDBaseT

http://www.hdbaset.org/spec2

Rasp Pi adventures with Smokeping!

So I got a bit side tracked from my ICND2 studying tonight. I need a larger SD card for my Raspberry Pi but I set it up with a 2GB card regardless.

I then wanted to try smokeping which is a tool I haven't used in a while.

After a quick format of the SD card and then using Win 32 disk imager . I slotted the SD card into the Raspberry Pi and plugged in the power.

Next, as I was using the Pi without a monitor or keyboard I had to SSH into it which it is already setup for luckily with Raspbian.

Loaded up Putty and checked my routers GUI page for attached devices (typically 192.168.0.1 on home routers). A nice touch is the Pi presents its hostname as 'raspberrypi' so I didn't need a OUI checker to check all the MACs until I found the Pi.

Once I found the IP I put that into Putty and got a login challenge. By default the username is 'pi' and the passsword is 'raspberry'. As soon as your in I recommend using the 'passwd' command to change the 'pi' usernames password!

Next, it doesn't have a hardware clock. So check the date with.... 'date'.

Then:

Sudo apt-get update - updates the Pi's librarys 

Sudo apt-get upgrade - upgrades any software that needs it. 

sudo apt-get smokeping   - Downloads the Smokeping repositories

From here you basically change directory using:

cd /etc/smokeping/config.d

I had to comment out a line using 'sudo nano /etc/smokeping/config.d/pathnames' as the installer complained about sendmail. 

Then you just need to use 'sudo nano' again with the target and Probe files to get your desired effects. 

I'll go into more detail another time but right now i'm a bit tired! 

End result (Also long as I haven't turn it off / broken the firewall / port forwarding):
alpagot.redirectme.net:8081/cgi-bin/smokeping.cgi

HP ProLiant G7 N54L 2.2GHz MicroServer deal on @ eBuyer

eBuyer has their next HP micro server promotion up. Its a slight upgrade over what I think was the N40L (Could be N45L).  The price is currently £209 with a £100 cashback (you'll be waiting a month or so for this).

The specs are pretty basic, but this is ideal for my intended purpose of it being a NAS box to share all my videos and music across multiple devices. I haven't bought any upgrades for it as of yet. I want to experiment with it first as it'll be my first NAS box. The 250GB hard disk should suffice for the mean time until I am ready to use it properly. Its interesting to see what people have done in terms of running the OS off a flash drive on the internal USB port or their set-ups with RAID arrays.

I'll also need some sort of Dynamic DNS service as I'm on a residential Sky broadband line with a dynamic IP. Free ones can be had from www.no-ip.biz, but there is also dyndns.com which is $25 a year. Then again with the O2 purchase, Sky has been hinting at rolling out a static IP address to some customers. My guess is probably at an extra cost which is fair enough as it isn't a business service I guess.

Other concerns are noise. I want it to be dead quiet as its going to sit in the living room. I recently upgraded my Shuttles graphics card (a whole different beast) and it's noticeably louder these days.

http://www.freenas.org/ is looking like the OS of choice from what my colleague suggested.
From what the site says it looks pretty versatile which is what I need running a variety of OS's in my household.

I've not used a Windows server in a long while now, but it might be worth a download of the trail version to have a look. I've heard some good things about Windows Server 2012.

Link to the product is here:
http://www.ebuyer.com/430446-proliant-microserver-turion-2-2-2gb-250gb-nhpl-sata-lff-in-704941-421

Sky dismisses network strain ahead of O2 and Be migration

The key bit in the CNET article is Sky don't traffic manage like most of the others with unlimited download usage.

Also I'm sure they've seen from other large buyouts such as the Tiscali / Talk Talk one that public opinion is a fragile thing, so they won't be wanting any large mistakes... They wouldn't chose to migrate them if they couldn't...

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/sky-dismisses-network-strain-ahead-of-o2-and-be-migration-50010583/

Reducing noise on cisco equipment.

Running a home CCNA lab is NOISY to say the least! These aren't routers your generally going to be using under heavy loads for long periods, so if your like me and can't deal with the noise then the guide linked below maybe for you. It seems to cover all the basics such as the voltage and the pin layout although I would recommend testing with a multimeter and not the trial by error method used.


http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Networking_Hardware/A_2570-How-To-CHEAPLY-Replace-Cisco-Device-Fans-Or-Cisco-LED-Fan-Mod.html

5G mobile network news.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5573-4g-auction-not-over-but-time-to-start-talking-5g.html

Broadcom promises triple-speed 5G WiFi for mobiles in early 2013

http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/25/broadcom-5g-wifi-for-mobiles/

Fujitsu Expands its UK Dark Fibre Optic Network Coverage and Capacity

ISPreview: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/07/fujitsu-expands-its-uk-dark-fibre-optic-network-coverage-and-capacity.html

Vodafone looking to buy Cable & Wireless, just can't resist that fibre-optic infrastructure

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/23/vodafone-cw-deal/#comments