Impressed With Our ISP Speeds

I haven't run a speed test since years ago when we first got Comcast HSI. Back then it must have peaked around 2 Mbps down and maybe 384 Kbps up. I just ran a test and I'm seeing 15 Mbps down and 9 Mbps up! Very nice!

Trying Out Gigabit Ethernet

Since I've been toying with the idea of SageTV as an HD DVR, I've been thinking about converting part of my LAN to run GigE. Our house was built in 1999, before Cat-5e was standardized, so we've always had a 100 Mbps network on plain old Cat-5. We also only put in 2 runs of Cat-5 per location, so I ended up splitting the Cat-5 runs for the LAN (2 pairs for the LAN and 2 pairs that I could use for other low voltage needs). However, GigE needs all 4 pairs. As a test, I freed up 2 pairs on one of the living room runs, allowing me to have all 4 pairs in one run. I was able to link up two D-Link GigE switches over that run at gigabit speed. I put a cheapo Airlink GigE NIC in the HA server but I don't have any other GigE devices to test the throughput I can get over my wiring. I guess I'll find out when I eventually build a Sage server with a GigE NIC.

Update: I put another Airlink GigE NIC in our kids' computer and was able to get around 250 Mbps file transfers - not bad running over 10 year old Cat-5 wiring, Cat-5 jacks and a Cat-5 patch panel.

Update 3/22/09: I'm now seeing about 400 Mbps to our new media server with the same Airlink card.

Firewall Died

My circa 1999 SonicWall SOHO firewall bit the dust this week. Everything worked fine, but for whatever reason, the throughput through the device slowed to a crawl. I replaced it with a spare firewall I had lying around, but this was a great little device offering tons of control that home firewalls can't give you out of the box. (Nowadays, I'm running Tomato). I got the SOHO when I worked at CacheFlow, one of the darlings of Internet bubble. Those were the days...

New Toy - SimpleTech NAS

Just received my SimpleTech 500GB NAS. Rather than do a file server and have a PC running all the time, I decided to get one of these. It comes with 2 USB ports so I can add additional storage via external USB drives as I need space. One thing I wanted was the ability to spin down the drive when not in use. I read a couple places that said it does this, I just need to enable it. It's only 100 Mbit but then so's my home network.

The answering machine continues to perform what HAL is unable to. More shotgun fixes are being offered (try this, try that, try ...), but no diagnosis is being done. In the meantime, I'm testing out Grand Central, which makes HAL voicemail seem almost like my answering machine...

New 16 port switch

Yesterday, I ordered a Netgear 16 port 10/100 mpbs ethernet switch from buy.com. After the $20 Google checkout discount & rebate it comes to about $35. This may not seem like it deserves an entry on my blog, but I designed 1 of the chips in one of the earliest 10/100 mbps ethernet switches...the SynOptics 28115. Back then, that 16 port switch was over $1000 per port (vs. $2.19/port for the Netgear)!!! It's amazing how much has changed in the 12 years since that has come out. Later, SynOptics merged with Wellfleet to form Bay Networks in 1994. Then they were swallowed up by Nortel, and out of that mess, Nortel spun out none other than...Netgear.

On a sad note, the Google Checkout discount ended yesterday. :(