APC BR900GI UPS tips

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As the proud owner of a Synology DS415+ NAS (network attached storage) device, I thought I had better protect the large amount of data accumulating on it by also becoming the proud owner of a suitable UPS (uninterruptible power supply). That way, when the power fluctuates or goes off unexpectedly (as is quite common in rural Australia, where I live) the NAS is protected and will have time to shut itself down in an orderly fashion. So I purchased a Schneider (APC) BR900GI UPS. This article is about how I set things up.

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A voice for heterogeneity

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In a recent email conversation, the relative virtues of Hyper-V and VMWare were being discussed. I stuck my hand up to suggest going with both. Why? Because heterogeneity is a good thing. In this post the topic is two competing hypervisors, but the arguments are the same for almost any technology. And they mostly apply to open technologies as well as to closed, proprietary technologies. Continue reading →

Fibre? Don’t make me laugh.

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Apparently some people at University College London (UCL) have achieved data transmission speeds of greater than a terabit per second to a single receiver:

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/innovation/breakthrough-enables-downloads-50000-times-faster-than-superfast-broadband-20160211-gms3bd.html

To which I say – phooey!

It’s on fibre – but copper is the future.

Copper is faster, cheaper, and can be installed more quickly. That’s why all the really top-shelf research is concentrating on getting super high speeds over copper. Apparently people are already pushing tens of gigabits over inch-long snippets; it’s just a simple matter of scaling that up. And Australia’s world-class broadband network will be ready and waiting when they do!

UCL? Fibre? What a pack of amateurs. Sheesh.

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Data Loss Prevention policies made simple

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On a mailing list I frequent, someone asked about policies to help a company avoid losing intellectual property. The generic term for stopping the loss of important information (with loss being not just destruction, but also the wrong people getting it) is data loss prevention or DLP. I was moved to comment… because most DLP policies are not worth a button.

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What a lot of simmering frogs we are…

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A network operators’ mailing list I am on has just gone through yet another multi-day discussion of how to comply with Microsoft licensing. No-one understands it. I don’t think Microsoft itself understands it. What finally compelled me to write this rant was this quote from some Microsoft document or other: Continue reading →

Trojans and ransoms and backups, oh my!

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Data loss can be a business killer. There’s a simple test for how badly you need good backups: Imagine all your computers are irrecoverably gone. Just – gone. Did you shrug? Gulp? Or clutch your chest? If the last, you need good backups 🙂 Now let me tell you about ransomware, trojans and backups… Continue reading →

Adding a default route to a TP-Link TD-8817 ADSL router/modem

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Once upon a time l was trying to talk to my TP-Link TD-8817 ADSL router/modem. I couldn’t, but I worked out that the reason I couldn’t was because the poor thing lacked a default route. The full story is here, but this blog entry is about how I added the necessary default route. You wouldn’t think that would be a big deaI, but it turns out that adding specifically a default route to one of these units is surprisingly tricky. Continue reading →