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Thread: Techy-nerdy stuff

  1. #251
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    And the beast lives...




    Over on Wiley’s networking thread I moaned about the firewall in the tp-link Omada not being stateful and therefore not being able to isolate my iot vlan from my trusted lan but still initiate flow from devices in the trusted lan (without managing a bunch of fw rules anyhow).

    The solution (I hope) is the beast, a 10-12 year old Dell vostro 420 with a core 2 quad 2k+ MHz and 8gb of ram I had gathering dust.

    Add a intel quad port 1gb nic and a 240g ssd, watch a few tutorials swear and curse a bit and hopefully I’ll have a pfsense router/fw that will allow stateful rules, run my OpenVPN server and pfblockerng to replace my pi-hole.

    Obviously I’m ignoring the fact it’s an old klonker of a system, that the on board nic is shot, and one of the pcie x1 slots might be shonky too, so other than suspect ancient hardware, a lack of both talent and knowledge what could possibly go wrong...

    Stay awake tuned for more exciting updates...
    Last edited by Captain Morgan; 5th May 2021 at 15:42.

  2. #252
    One of the things that bugs me about PiHole is that it doesn’t block YouTube ads. Well I’ve found a partial fix. If you go to: settings / DNS and change the ipv4 upstream DNS server to custom with the IP 94.140.14.14 and 94.140.15.15 you’ll be using AdGuards DNS server and that does block YouTube ads, not all of them but it does seem to reduce the problem. AdGuard advertise this feature on their website so they are obviously happy for people to use it.

  3. #253
    Grand Master wileeeeeey's Avatar
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    Are you able to change the DNS for a specific client? Wondering if I could set that DNS for my Nest Home Max and have less adverts on YouTube.

    One of my friends had a YouTube premium account which thinks he's in Brasil or Turkey and pays 64p per month. Tempting.

  4. #254
    Quote Originally Posted by wileeeeeey View Post
    Are you able to change the DNS for a specific client? Wondering if I could set that DNS for my Nest Home Max and have less adverts on YouTube.

    One of my friends had a YouTube premium account which thinks he's in Brasil or Turkey and pays 64p per month. Tempting.
    If there is a way of specifying a specific DNS server for certain website, that is beyond my abilities. If you wanted to specify the AdGuard DNS server for an individual device just set your DNS settings on that device to point to AdGuard instead of Pi-hole.

  5. #255
    Grand Master wileeeeeey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Groundrush View Post
    If there is a way of specifying a specific DNS server for certain website, that is beyond my abilities. If you wanted to specify the AdGuard DNS server for an individual device just set your DNS settings on that device to point to AdGuard instead of Pi-hole.
    I can't edit the DNS on a Nest Home Max, it's very locked down - you can't even type on it.

    Maybe I could do it within Ubiquiti just for the Nest Hub alone?

  6. #256
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    Quote Originally Posted by wileeeeeey View Post
    I can't edit the DNS on a Nest Home Max, it's very locked down - you can't even type on it.

    Maybe I could do it within Ubiquiti just for the Nest Hub alone?
    Why just that device and not the whole vlan or network wide?

  7. #257
    Grand Master wileeeeeey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Captain Morgan View Post
    Why just that device and not the whole vlan or network wide?
    I have 1.1.1.1 as my primary and 8.8.8.8 as my secondary. That seems to be a decent option and used a lot by others. I'm not sure if I'd want to change it the entire network.

    What do you use for DNS?

  8. #258
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    Quote Originally Posted by wileeeeeey View Post
    I have 1.1.1.1 as my primary and 8.8.8.8 as my secondary. That seems to be a decent option and used a lot by others. I'm not sure if I'd want to change it the entire network.

    What do you use for DNS?
    I run a local pi-hole as my dns I can’t recall who my pi-hole uses but I think it’s cloudflare.

    Though I’m about to go pfsense and use there native blocker.

    The aim is to minimise adverts but also dns lookups of dubious security natures.
    It’s unlikely to break anything you have if you update your dns to the ones suggested and very easy to flip back if you do find legitimate sources have been blocked
    Last edited by Captain Morgan; 5th May 2021 at 22:39.

  9. #259
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    The Beast Lives - pfsense fw / router part 2

    A case of one step forward and two back until today.

    The 4 port nic arrived and worked okay, the install and initial config of pfsense on the old pc went okay and I had a working install with wan, lan and two vlans (guest & iot).

    Sunday morning I attempted to cut over from the TP-Link Omada router to my home brew pfsense, the pfsense continued to work as did default lan but no connectivity to either VLAN was present on the switch despite a config restore or a factory reset and rebuild of the switch config.


    Ffwd to today and the pfsense gui refuses to work :-( meaning a reset and reconfiguration, another reset and config rebuild on my switch and I got vlans working as expected, one of my issues Sunday I think was not including the vlans on the switch trunk port, which doesn’t explain why the previous running config works now, worked prior to Sunday but not Sunday???

    So as it stands I have a working router, the Omada switch and ap work and recognise the vlan setup.

    Next steps
    Config pfblockerng to replace my pi-hole.
    New 24 port managed switch so I can start segmenting off iot devices

    Next thrilling update in another week or so....

  10. #260
    Grand Master wileeeeeey's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Captain Morgan View Post
    Next thrilling update in another week or so....
    I still have the Ubiquiti set up with zero VLANs and no guest network. I'm going to do it but it's working right now and I know I will muck it up.

    I don't mind breaking it all but not when I have work the next day. Port forwarding for Xbox and COD via my phone on desktop mode had me up until 2am on Thursday by the time I got it set up and had a few games.

  11. #261
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    Quote Originally Posted by wileeeeeey View Post
    I still have the Ubiquiti set up with zero VLANs and no guest network. I'm going to do it but it's working right now and I know I will muck it up.

    I don't mind breaking it all but not when I have work the next day. Port forwarding for Xbox and COD via my phone on desktop mode had me up until 2am on Thursday by the time I got it set up and had a few games.
    Yeah small steps, regular config backups and incremental testing are a answer.

    Though yours should be easier as there’s no significant hw changes just additions and config changes - I trust.


    Anyhoo 24 port eBay bargain switch ordered so what could possibly go wrong...

  12. #262
    Master Grandiloquence's Avatar
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    Replaced the optical drive in my Dreamcast, PlayStation and Saturn these past weeks.
    DC and Saturn were straightforward as the ODE just drops in and is relatively easy to set up.
    The XStation was a bit more complex, had to do some pin lifting on a couple of chips and solder in a QSB to get it running.



    You can then load your disc images to an SD card and enjoy better load times, zero disc swapping and no dodgy lasers!

  13. #263
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    The Beast Lives - pfsense fw / router part 3

    Coming on leaps and bounds...


    Got the 24 port managed switch Thursday, a couple of issues in updating the fw to work in the Omada sdn system but got there.

    Spent the best part of a day in mapping mac addresses to devices and ports and then allocating static up’s via dhcp so I had a good map of my network and what devices will be allocated to what network.

    A few hiccups along the way but I have my lan and vlans available via switch or wirelessly.

    Pfsense:
    Got my OpenVPN server running and now my devices have a self signed cert / username/password access back to my home network within the pfsense instance itself. The documentation on the net was fairly thorough, the main issue I found was the need to associate the cert to the vpn user when creating the account was missed.

    Pfblockerng-devel, again followed the youtube tutorials and it’s just working, it’s just like having the pi-hole still running.

    FW rules, I’ve isolated my IoT & guest vlans from my lan(trusted), the lan can initiate comms to the IoT or guest vlans and allow devices on them to respond to them.

    I’ve also forced the IoT & guest vlans to only use the local dns servers with the associated pfbockerng-devel, preventing any ‘nasty’ devices from bypassing my dns servers.


    So overall the (re)learning curve was reasonably steep once I got my head around some aspects it’s become easier. If you’ve interest in securing your home network I’d take a serious look at pfsense.
    It’s ridiculously powerful, runs well on old hardware and once you’ve got into the mindset relatively painless to administer.

    Next steps the attempt to move my Sonos’s to the IoT subnet

  14. #264

    Cool

    Not so techy but quite nerdy... I found an old Denon DVD/CD Dolby Digital amp in a junk pile, listed as "disc unfunctioning". Which seemed like a challenge...

    Top off...



    Straight to the likely cause...



    Gears removed...




    Replace old belt...





    For good measure, clean the insides with compressed air and reinitialise microprocessor by holding "Play" and "Stop" while powering on:



    And test:



    This is now in my living room, unobtrusively powering four B&W speakers and a subwoofer with fine tunes.

    Not too bad for an outlay of ¥1000 (about £6.50)

    TT

  15. #265
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tokyo Tokei View Post
    Not so techy but quite nerdy... I found an old Denon DVD/CD Dolby Digital amp in a junk pile, listed as "disc unfunctioning". Which seemed like a challenge...

    Top off...



    Straight to the likely cause...



    Gears removed...




    Replace old belt...





    For good measure, clean the insides with compressed air and reinitialise microprocessor by holding "Play" and "Stop" while powering on:



    And test:



    This is now in my living room, unobtrusively powering four B&W speakers and a subwoofer with fine tunes.

    Not too bad for an outlay of ¥1000 (about £6.50)

    TT
    Nice. Big fan of those old players, had a couple of the "battleship" class ones in the past as they can be had relatively cheap nowadays.

  16. #266

    Windows 11?

    I'm hearing talk of Windows 11. Anyone know about it?

  17. #267
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    Quote Originally Posted by jools View Post
    I'm hearing talk of Windows 11. Anyone know about it?
    It’s like Windows 10, but turned upto 11…

    Sorry

  18. #268
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    Quote Originally Posted by jools View Post
    I'm hearing talk of Windows 11. Anyone know about it?
    https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/16/tech/...eak/index.html
    Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.

  19. #269
    Quote Originally Posted by jools View Post
    I'm hearing talk of Windows 11. Anyone know about it?
    Given so many companies don't really test their software as they can rely on their customers to be the testers for them (they're free/are even paying the company to do that job!) it's usually best to wait a few iterations before getting it yourself.

    I'll personally not touch it for a while. Just not worth the aggro.

  20. #270
    Agree with this: leave it for a year or so after release. Touch wood, W10 has been pretty stable since I started using it 6 or 7 years ago.

  21. #271
    Thanks for the link. It mentions MS saying W10 would be the last version and be updated until hell freezes over. I was beginning to think I must have dreamt that. How naive I was to have believed it.

  22. #272
    Quote Originally Posted by RichS View Post
    Agree with this: leave it for a year or so after release. Touch wood, W10 has been pretty stable since I started using it 6 or 7 years ago.
    Oooh, don't know if I'll be able to resist those rounded corners. I seem to remember rounded corners in the past, was it W2000?

  23. #273
    Just remembered to update my Pihole.
    It had been running for months untouched

    Reminder:
    pihole -v to check versions
    pihole -up to update

  24. #274
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    Microsoft unveils Windows 11 operating system

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57598554
    Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.

  25. #275
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    I am running 11 on an old machine - seems broadly fine - if there are any major bugs I've not come across them yet...

  26. #276
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    The other tread on inventions made me think of this thread

    Anyway…. Here’s my invention!

    It’s selling quite nicely…. Just launched it in the States…

    It makes buildings safer and time and motion studies have shown >80% time savings in doing maintenance

    It’s been great fun doing it!

    https://share.vidyard.com/watch/X6We4CQqYGZjH3trT89VPA
    Last edited by Wolfie; 11th September 2021 at 10:24.

  27. #277
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    Wow. Congratulations.
    Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.

  28. #278
    Quote Originally Posted by Wolfie View Post
    The other tread on inventions made me think of this thread

    Anyway…. Here’s my invention!

    It’s selling quite nicely…. Just launched it in the States…

    It makes buildings safer and time and motion studies have shown >80% time savings in doing maintenance

    It’s been great fun doing it!

    https://share.vidyard.com/watch/X6We4CQqYGZjH3trT89VPA
    Amazing! Congratulations and I am jealous.

  29. #279
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    Quote Originally Posted by Raffe View Post
    Wow. Congratulations.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ventura View Post
    Amazing! Congratulations and I am jealous.
    Thank you…. From idea to realisation took a long time and a lot of effort…! It’s immensely satisfying to see it being used now…. The irony being that I’ve never seen it working in a building as it’s made in Mexico and sold in the States…. Hope to get out there soon so I can observe how people interact with it…

  30. #280
    Quote Originally Posted by Wolfie View Post
    Thank you…. From idea to realisation took a long time and a lot of effort…! It’s immensely satisfying to see it being used now…. The irony being that I’ve never seen it working in a building as it’s made in Mexico and sold in the States…. Hope to get out there soon so I can observe how people interact with it…
    I'm impressed, congrats.

  31. #281
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    So Wifi 7 - there are no clients and practical use for 10gig network connections for most people... wonder when I can get one 😂

  32. #282
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alansmithee View Post
    So Wifi 7 - there are no clients and practical use for 10gig network connections for most people... wonder when I can get one 
    Is that still unratified & being hawked by tp-link & netgear as the next big thing?

    I recall (vaguely) reading something that suggested wifi7 is unlikely to go anywhere & 8 would be the next real iteration.

  33. #283
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    Quote Originally Posted by Captain Morgan View Post
    Is that still unratified & being hawked by tp-link & netgear as the next big thing?

    I recall (vaguely) reading something that suggested wifi7 is unlikely to go anywhere & 8 would be the next real iteration.
    Yes it is not a ratified standard. As for Wifi 8, it is at least five years out.
    Last edited by Alansmithee; 15th April 2023 at 16:55.

  34. #284
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    Chances are if you need a 10Gb transmission speed, you need the reliability and latency of ethernet. Wireless seems to just add extra cost and risk.

  35. #285
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    Quote Originally Posted by dice View Post
    Chances are if you need a 10Gb transmission speed, you need the reliability and latency of ethernet. Wireless seems to just add extra cost and risk.
    It also has 10gb ports but who can use that in the UK for WAN? Home connections top up at the 1gb really.

  36. #286
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alansmithee View Post
    It also has 10gb ports but who can use that in the UK for WAN? Home connections top up at the 1gb really.
    I believe that city fibre offers 10G in some locations now, no idea on cost though

  37. #287
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    For those who might be looking to purchase a Raspberry PI, the Pi Hut now have stock - only the 2GB RAM version though.

    https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b

    Be quick before the scalpers pounce.
    In the Sotadic Zone, apparently.

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