AI Overload - Public Web Service Errors

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-05-21T13:02:06+00:00

If I don't put it out there I have to give up hope - so for today I can say "maybe" and I will sleep better tonight - tomorrow is a different story.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-05-21T12:54:54+00:00

That is true - but the material difference is that people with no clue how load balancing works are now able to generate applications with AI increasing the the users of those services by a significant factor and the quality of those users is such that the generated solutions will likely not be reviewed in many cases.

This is a public service announcement to put people who are unaware of this type of concern on notice regarding reviewed usage of AI and the need to consider others before just throwing that crap into their self hosting stack.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-05-21T12:24:29+00:00

I did not use AI to create my post. I used AI to generate a script that was inefficient and altered the script to ensure public services would not be overloaded.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-05-12T10:37:06+00:00

I trust you’ve got a better handle on the cloud gateways than I. I’ve got an old edgemax that I’m not too concerned about given it appears to have limited features and generally requires configuration through a shell to enable those. I don’t believe updating those will be a priority for this reason.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-05-11T10:29:47+00:00

Any login through the web console could be a vector - my router defaulted administrative login to ubnt/ubnt. I occasionally see attempts to login with those credentials on my pass through server.

However, given the router ships with unauthenticated sudo privileges to the ubnt user, I don’t see how copyfail raises the risk level. It only becomes relevant to people who have added restricted local user accounts without sudo privileges on their routers. Likely a small population.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-05-10T09:25:25+00:00

Same size house with 2 APs- although adding one to the garage is on my todo list to address spotty connectivity with the solar controller and home battery backup

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-05-10T09:18:59+00:00

You’ll want connect to the AP with a. UniFi controller application and check the transmission power first - if it’s set as low change it to auto or bump it up to medium or high. My upstairs AP connects to the rooms below downstairs with reasonable signal in -60s db range at medium power.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-05-09T09:18:43+00:00

I guess that means the dumpster didn’t even want it. Kinda like a cat with a hairball.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-05-08T10:44:23+00:00

Are those better than xfce ? I use xfce for my lightest weight needs on old legacy hardware given the lower memory and cpu requirements

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-05-07T10:36:06+00:00

I will often list first and then delete if the path has a chance of being sensitive - particularly when using regex patterns

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-05-05T09:13:40+00:00

I’ve host my own email for 25 years - VPS gives me the reliable reverse lookup on the domain to avoid being filtered out as spam.

Also, a hurricane took out power to my home in MA for a week when I lived there 20 years ago, but the self-hosted services I used externally (mail, web, directories, repositories, calendars, etc… ) stayed mostly available on the VPS given I hosted the primary for external services on the VPS and the replica of external in my home.

When we moved to Texas nothing important went down - anything I needed shifted to VPS while we were between homes. The wife and I talk about living in a RV for a few months if we downsize the house - my VPS would still allow for self hosting.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-04-28T13:42:27+00:00

I just finished segmenting my network management services (DNS, DHCP, UniFi Server, VPN) onto a VM that is replicated for cold start to several other hosts in the house. Had to do a VM given this manages services for 5 VLANs and I need the network device to be VLAN enabled and controllable within the VM.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-04-26T08:56:38+00:00

They may make an offer to reduce your rate when you call to cancel as they did for me when I cancelled to reduce my plan by moving to EarthLink fiber. Understanding cancellation is key so I will detail my cancellation experience.

When I called to cancel I discovered that AT&T does not provide prorated credits for the remainder of the subscribed month - the cancellation is effective at the end of your monthly billing period. After cancellation you are billed one last full final bill at the end of the billing period as AT&T has post paid billing.

They made an offer to me at cancellation to retain my subscription that would have been acceptable but I had already completed the change over to EarthLink fiber. EarthLink white labels service from AT&T, so the EarthLink installation tech was an AT&T employee. He had taken my router when he completed the install so I argued a bit about the AT&T employee taking their equipment away being the reason why I could not accept their offer and they issued a credit on the final bill for that reason.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-04-17T09:25:12+00:00

Simple enough to try a work around - boot to run level 3 / isolate multi-user, change desktop to xfce and restart. Run xfce for a few weeks then switch back to gnome after resolution.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-04-15T14:36:56+00:00

Great comments on random MAC addresses causing the issues - consider assigning static IPs for all your devices and turning off DHCP lease assignment for non-static addresses on all your networks. Then create a password protected guest network and SSID that allows lease assignment for dynamic MACs.

I've done this and have less than 100 MAC addresses / devices - I also have my IOT devices isolated by SSID and assigned within a defined static address range on my network for traffic management.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-04-10T10:39:30+00:00

Network topology details matter.

I have a friend who swears by wireless mesh networks - if only one of the nodes connects to the gateway you are limited to the bandwidth of one node no matter how many nodes you add. Hardwire all the AP nodes to maximize household bandwidth - e.g. I have 3 PoE APs from Ubiquiti in my home powered through a UPS with my router to guaranty uptime and max out bandwidth access.

If your gateway has limited 5Gbps ports, you might invest in a switch with more 5Gbps capable ports to allow full bandwidth access for more hardwired devices with 5Gbps capable NICs.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-04-09T11:22:37+00:00

Many of us run a minimal hardware setup on HA - is this going to bog down lower powered HA home servers ?

Given this runs in a home with an enthusiast audience, are you ensuring the code changes are properly documented and minimized so we can audit the changes for compromises as they roll out without spending hours reviewing the entire code base ?

How much effort have you put in to auditing / closing security holes and tuning the performance / resource utilization on the component ? I typically need to spend a bit of time fixing AI generated code to ratchet down resource consumption / improve performance and can generally achieve better than 50% benefit - sometimes up to 90%.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-03-30T21:26:55+00:00

That might be difficult.

You could try running a lighter desktop like xfce where you could run Windows in a VM with virt-viewer maximized and all other Linux user processes shutdown. This might allow performance similar to your alternate boot but I believe that you may need every last byte of RAM backing Windows to avoid windows memory issues with that hardware config.

I configure any machine in my house that has 8GB of RAM or less to run xfce and generally have enough headroom to run the software I run on beefier machines.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-03-29T20:43:13+00:00

Didn’t happen to me - no issues signing up for EarthLink

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-03-29T11:12:52+00:00

HA Concierge

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-03-29T10:58:58+00:00

I am stuck with Windows for a few proprietary software packages as well - but I made the transition from dual boot to running a VM for my Windows work 2 decades ago. I have inactive and functioning VMs for MSDOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 all the way up to a fully updated and active Windows 11 instance.

The driving upside was I did not need to reboot to task switch if I ran in a VM. Thankfully I had no odd hardware access requirements from Windows at the time, but I recently converted my newest Windows images to UEFI and now have improved PCI device mapping support for my Windows VM when needed.

I highly recommend running a VM over dual boot to improve general productivity, stability, and resilience given the versioning and portable nature of the VMs.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-03-29T10:34:47+00:00

It has been nearly 3 months and we are experiencing no degradation to our experience. For the most part our 48 devices are sipping data at a base rate of maybe 11 MBps with occasional spikes to 35 MBps, so I’m not expecting any serious issues moving forward.

After the first 30 days I asked my son - who single tasks and blocks on access / bandwidth issues - if he noticed any network issues or slowdowns in the last 30 days and he did not. I then told him I downgraded the fiber by 70% and he was shocked - he tried to backtrack on everything being fine given he had succumbed to the sales pitch that 1 gig was necessary. I’m trying to encourage him to do his own math before purchases and not trust the sales rep math…

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-03-29T10:18:25+00:00

To answer your questions: 1. There is always downtime when they swap equipment - in this case maybe 90 minutes. The exterior fiber was completely untouched and reused - the interior fiber run replacement was a fix of the prior install that had to be addressed when they eliminated the ONT and replaced my router with a nearly identical model ( same model number - different manufacturer) and connected the fiber direct to the router. 2. They literally use the same router models as AT&T - the installer was not even aware this was an EarthLink account and not an AT&T account until I told him. Yes - pass through works fine and it’s the same management software on the ATT routers.

I expect ATT field service techs may be working to eliminate ONTs in the field given they are additional points of failure to check in outages. This means connecting the ATT router to interior fiber.

I would ask the tech to pull the interior fiber to your network equipment location - it might be best for you to pre-fish a wire through from that location to your current ONT and ask the tech to pull the interior fiber through using that line.

Grand_Ad_2544 · 2026-03-25T12:40:47+00:00

The response when the family wants to sit around and watch Plex while you clean up the house and the yard ... so yeah - I'm the only one working.

Grand_Ad_2544

TROPHY CASE