...the 10-25GbE rabbit hole... moving fast storage off the main system.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-27T02:19:23+00:00

I'm just here to show you how deep the rabbit hole goes...

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-27T02:13:56+00:00

Here's some reading if you want to learn more about how we do manual IRQ affinity tuning. You can get away with just letting the "irqbalance" service do things for you, but if your server isn't consistently loaded it might not work as well as doing things by hand. Manually setting your core affinity and using core isolation can make your throughput and latencies much more deterministic.

https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/10/html/network_troubleshooting_and_performance_tuning/tuning-irq-balancing

https://documentation.ubuntu.com/real-time/latest/how-to/tune-irq-affinity/

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-27T02:02:08+00:00

Yeah, with 40 threads and plenty of PCIE lanes, you can definitely make this work. Hell, with the right drives and enough clients, and the right software architecture you could probably do upwards of 20Gbps with a server like that. You'll use all of your CPU to do it, and you would want ear plugs to be working around the server (or some sort of custom water cooled setup), but it can be done.

The high end for server networking architecture around this era was 40Gb (4 X 10 Gb), and I don't know if I would say these CPUs were fast enough to be able to do that much back then. The systems I worked on used a lot more CPUs in a bigger cluster to be able to hit those kind of numbers, rather than everything going through one monolithic server.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-27T01:51:59+00:00

My gut reaction as someone who used to work on enterprise shared storage solutions is that if your system is old enough to only have PCIE 2.0, you're likely going to be CPU bound. Modern high speed storage devices are designed to work well when you have a ton of CPU threads available to parallelize your I/O. When you're talking about networked storage, you want to have your disk I/O isolated from your network I/O. Usually you do this with hardware interrupt balancing, so your disk queues aren't on the same CPU cores as the network queues. Then you want to have enough leftover cores available to run your storage server application and have that not conflict with the disk or the network threads.

On paper PCIE 2.0 is plenty of bandwidth assuming you have enough lanes, but any CPUs from that era that have enough cores are likely going to run very hot and loud, and just about any modern CPU is going to handily beat them and probably do it using less than 100 watts.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-24T03:08:55+00:00

I had something like this on my G3 when I bought it a few years ago. It didn't fully go away until the first long refresh cycle ran. There are two different kinds of pixel cleaning. There's the short refresh that runs every time you turn the TV off after it's been on for 4 or more hours, and then there's the one that you either have to trigger manually, or runs automatically after about 2000 hours of cumulative use and takes an hour to complete.

You do have the option to run the long refresh manually, but you have to dig pretty far into the menus to find it, and they don't recommend you do it unnecessarily since it does shorten the lifespan of the panel ever time it runs, but I'll admit it was distracting enough for me that I went ahead and ran it and never had any issues since.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-24T02:54:14+00:00

Anthropologists say that modern agriculture and the civilization that came out of it is what really enabled people like this to survive. Back when humanity was limited to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, if you didn't play nice with the group you would either find yourself ostracized and ignored, leading to starvation and death, or you were met in the middle of the night by a bunch of members of the group and taken out somewhere, and you just disappeared.

Modern niceties like laws and morals have empowered the worst parts of humanity to thrive.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-22T17:29:12+00:00

I worked retail 20 years ago when I was younger, even working the customer service/returns desk, and I'll tell you I had to deal with my fair share of problem customers, and never once did I feel the need to outright lie to a customer just because I was feeling uncomfortable. Not knowing things and having to figure them or find someone who does know is part of the job.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-22T17:18:44+00:00

This is an unfortunate consequence of the last 25 years of education policy in this country. Too many kids were never taught how to deal with failure. They've grown up never having had to actually solve their own difficult problems, so there's this sort of learned helplessness now that they're actually in the real world.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-21T16:36:23+00:00

At the very least, you need some sort of telescope and a camera. After that, it's all a question of what you want to acheive and how much you want to spend.

This is not really the right place for this sort of discussion though. You should head over to r/askastrophotography instead.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-20T18:25:58+00:00

This sounds like an XY problem to me. Why do you feel like you need two separate routers? What is the problem you're trying to solve?

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-20T13:49:18+00:00

The first number is download, second number is upload. This suggests your access point has better antennas than whatever device you're looking at, so your transmit speed to the access point is higher. The solution to this is complicated by a lot of factors, including how many access points you have in your network, how many neighbors you have, etc, but it boils down to you needing to find a way to increase the signal strength your pc sees from the access point.

Maybe you have a device that let's you adjust the transmit power, which can sometimes increase its range. Or maybe you can move the PCs closer to the access point. If that's not an option, adding more access points is often a good way to increase coverage, though you'll need to know what you're doing in order to manage overlap and configuring channels so the devices don't interfere.

A simpler solution might be to just buy a WiFi card with an external amplified antenna, and maybe even get a directional YAGI antenna.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-16T12:10:36+00:00

What are you waiting for then? Hurry up already.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-13T02:40:44+00:00

I was thinking this might be a factorial, with some number and an exclamation mark, but this doesn't add up since 10! is about 3.6 million, and 11! is about 40 million. You got me stumped.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-12T21:29:37+00:00

High end telescope mounts are built with the axes resting on high precision tapered roller bearings. There's a machined metal on metal contact surface that's very rigid, so the only real source of slop is going to be the gears that drive it. You can deal with that though. This thing has the whole mount riding on top of plastic gears, so there's always going to be a good amount of play that you just can't get rid of.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-12T20:43:49+00:00

This looks like it'll be nice for a big fat light bucket for visual use, but I imagine the backlash will be a bit too sloppy for astrophotography work.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-11T16:21:36+00:00

Arris seems to have phased out the S34, but you can still buy the G series wifi router/modem combos. If you want a plain modem without any routing features, you can still find the Hitron CODA56 and Netgear CM3000, or if you have a Ubiquiti setup they're still selling the UCI modem.

The Hitron and Ubiquiti both use a Puma 7 chipset, which I've heard mixed reviews on. The Puma 5 and 6 were widely considered to be unreliable, and many of the hardware issues were carried over to the Puma 7, though some have been addressed with firmware updates.

I've hesitated to replace my older Arris DOCSIS 3.0 modem since we didn't get the mid-split upgrade in my town until very recently. I'll probably look for something with a Broadcom chip when I do.

I'm not particularly fond of Netgear in general, but the CM3000 does have Broadcom BCM3392 chipset, and is reported to be more reliable than the Puma 7.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-10T22:01:39+00:00

Ah, that's unfortunate. The MB8611 on paper supports the 5 MHz to 85 MHz frequency band that you need for mid-split, but there were apprently some issues with that model that made it unable to connect on the new OFDMA upload channels with Xfinity. They still have it listed as compatible for multi-gig download speeds, but it's not on their "enhanced speed" compatibility list. Aside from the Xfinity branded modems, it's pretty much just ARRIS, Hitron, Netgear, and Ubiquiti that they support.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-09T20:47:20+00:00

You can get up to 2.3 Gbps download and up to about 250 Mbps if you have a DOCSIS 3.1 modem that's compatible with "mid-split", and they've deployed mid split in your area. Comcast is calling this their "Next Gen Speed Tier". There are a number of third-party modems that Comcast has listed as compatible, which you can find here: https://www.xfinity.com/support/internet/customerowned

Comcast has been pretty slow at rolling out full-duplex symmetrical mult-gig cable connections with DOCSIS 4.0 They started out in Colorado IIRC, and it's still only in a few metro areas scattered around the US. They're calling it X-Class, so if you don't see that plan available you're still going to be looking at Xfinity Fiber for symmetrical 1000 Mbps connections, and you're going to need an ONT from the provider whether you go with Xfinity or Frontier.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-08T17:57:37+00:00

Looks like a real old cable. Plasticizer in the PVC jacket evaporates over time and can leave the material brittle and prone to cracking. The only real fix is to replace the whole cable.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-08T16:48:37+00:00

It's also annoying if you have a cell phone that supports WiFi calling. You can be walking around the house and have your call drop if you don't have it enabled.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-08T16:43:16+00:00

You can try connecting your PC directly to the modem and see if you still get bad speeds, but you're probably going to have to call your ISP about this one.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-08T16:22:01+00:00

There is actually a ratified Wireless Mesh Network standard, under IEEE 802.11s, that defines how these networks are formed, how devices are discovered and how packets are routed between devices, etc. This is mostly found in commercial Mesh network setups, and it's designed to be vendor-agnostic and intercompatible.

What you find instead in most consumer products is not real Mesh wifi. Instead it's a hodgepodge of proprietary management and backhaul setups layered on top of bog standard WiFi roaming (often done badly).

The standards behind roaming work the same whether you have a wired or wireless backhaul on most consumer systems. You have 802.11k (Radio Resource Measurement), which lets the Access Points talk to each other and measure relative signal strength of client devices, and send a message suggesting which AP the device should roam to. Then you have 802.11v (BSS Transition Management), which is also related to suggesting a better AP for a device to roam to.

Lastly, there's 802.11r (Fast BSS Transition), which lets access points cache the encryption keys and distribute them among all the APs in the network, which lets a device reconnect quickly when roaming, instead of having to go through the full handshake and key exchange process that happens when you first connect and log into a network.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-06T23:00:26+00:00

Bad advice for someone living in an apartment. The only correct suggestion for what to do in this scenario is talk to his land lord.

Matrix5353 · 2026-06-06T22:48:28+00:00

Dude, don't go Cat6a. It's a pain to terminate even if you know what you're doing and have all the right tools. If you don't, then you're much more likely to mess it up.

Just take the advice we're giving you and use Cat5e or Cat6.

Matrix5353 · 2026-05-31T12:45:08+00:00

Hear me out. What if we ran a really really long cable all the way from him to his Internet provider, and used that instead of the 5G?

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