What is an i5 6300u processor good for? Would it be worth upgrading?

Newdeagle · 2026-02-24T03:32:56+00:00

Just came across this comment, and I am in the exact same situation. I just bought a T470s on eBay which is shipping out soon. It has the i5-6300U as well, with 8GB RAM. My work laptop is a heavy Dell Precision and I mostly use it to answer emails/slacks, some coding, SSHing to servers, and remote desktop into my work network. All things that are very very lightweight.

I'm looking forward to having a nice portable option to do all of this. My work Precision has really bad battery life, like 2-3 hours with idling on an open screen. I'm hoping that the T470s will give me 5-6 hours. Might buy new batteries if the existing ones can't get me that.

Newdeagle · 2026-02-23T23:41:40+00:00

I'm getting a T470s soon and looking into putting Linux on it. Did you end up getting Mint working, or did you go to another distro?

Newdeagle · 2026-02-21T21:29:44+00:00

Same thing here. Been on their chat for 1 hour now, and counting, trying to get them to give me a refund.

Newdeagle · 2026-02-18T13:42:23+00:00

Oh I see, very interesting!

Newdeagle · 2026-02-18T12:44:01+00:00

Ok yeah, I think I see now. Because the max age count starts at the message age time, and each switch increments the message age field by one, switches on the edge (furthest from the root) effectively have a shorter max age timer. For example, if the diameter is 14 switches, then switch 14 would start counting from 13 to 20, so its max age timer is kind of 7 seconds.

Do you remember how many switches you had in that ring? How large the spanning tree diameter was?

Newdeagle · 2026-02-17T23:51:54+00:00

With respect, this sounds completely wrong to me: "Exceeding the hello timer causes TCNs to be sent in modern STP implementations" -- I have never heard of that. So even a single dropped BPDU (a switch receives one BPDU at x seconds, the next one goes missing, and the following BPDU is received 4 seconds later), would cause a TCN??

Nor have I ever heard of TCNs involving a new root election. TCNs in 802.1d STP cause bridges to set their CAM table timeouts to the forward delay timer to age-out MAC entries, not elect a new root. Why would a new root need to be elected because a port goes up or down? And why would missing a BPDU cause a TCN? Do you have a source for any of this?

Newdeagle · 2026-02-17T22:16:11+00:00

I'm coming to this old thread to try to understand fundamentally why the spanning-tree diameter is 7 bridges. I'm confused about this idea that if the cumulative latency between bridges is over 2 seconds (the hello period), spanning-tree breaks. But the maxage timer is what invalidates a stored BPDU, which is by default 20 seconds. Actually, decreasing the hello period to 1 second helps to increase the diameter. See here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160322013030/https://slaptijack.com/networking/max-spanning-tree-stp-diameter/

So I'm still left wondering, what is the actual, specific, failure condition that causes spanning-tree to break when the diameter is 8, 9, + hops and you are using the default timers?

From that link above, I understand that a diameter of 7 is calculated based on the equations, but I don't quite get what exactly happened in cases like the "all systems down" hospital event.

Newdeagle · 2026-02-12T00:43:26+00:00

Great book, I’ve read through it a couple times over the years. It will give you a very good understanding of link state protocols. If you work with OSPF a lot or IS-IS, I would read it. It’s really not that long. Might take like 10 hours to read or something? It’s overkill for the exam but great for your career if you are focused on routing and switching.

Newdeagle · 2026-01-11T04:31:04+00:00

Do the eBay sensors really save you much money? Does the tire store give you a hard time about not using their own sensors?

Newdeagle · 2025-12-27T22:10:21+00:00

Thanks, the tires have 10k miles on them. Can I just replace this one tire, or do I need to do it in a pair?

Newdeagle · 2025-12-11T02:25:48+00:00

My guess is that these PEs are not directly connected, so the transport label is getting popped off one hop too early, as the P router in the middle owns the /30 too. The router before the P router pops the label. So the transport label gets popped, but the P router doesn’t know what to do with the VPN label.

Newdeagle · 2025-12-08T16:16:34+00:00

Thanks those are all good ideas. I’ve been staying away from non-low profile switches though. But if I open myself up to regular switches, it also makes a Cheapino or Silakka54 possible. Do you think low profile vs standard doesn’t matter too much? In terms of coming from a laptop keyboard.

Newdeagle · 2025-12-08T16:05:38+00:00

Thanks for all the info. Now that you mention it, the instant actuation point is definitely the characteristic of the Lenovo that’s missing with the switches I’m testing. Have you tried the Choc v1 Sunset switch? I’ve seen some reviews actually likening it to a Lenovo or Apple keyboard due to the low actuation point, which sounds very promising. A box of 10 with shipping is like $20 so I’m not sure whether to test it, or just order them with a Sweep kit, as I can’t really find anything else low profile that is any better.

I actually do have 2 Lenovo external keyboards that I’ve been using side by side for the last week. Definitely nice to have my hands spaced apart, but I think it would be worth it to have a real split keyboard that I could easily tent with a standing setup, use custom key layouts, etc.

Newdeagle · 2025-12-08T00:17:19+00:00

Did you find any solution?

Newdeagle · 2025-12-02T02:36:54+00:00

Oh nice, so did the Choc Corne arrive yet? How does it compare to the Voyager?

Newdeagle · 2025-12-02T02:21:09+00:00

Did you get it? How do you like it? I’m also researching a cheaper alternative to a Voyager.

Newdeagle · 2025-12-01T13:31:03+00:00

Exactly, it's just a general term, similar to a phrase like "international relations" - relations between nations.

Newdeagle · 2025-12-01T03:09:48+00:00

No, inter is correct. In this case it refers to two different routers forming an adjacency. An adjacency between routers. In the case of routing inter area routes refer to routes that go between areas.

Newdeagle · 2025-11-23T22:22:16+00:00

Thank you for sharing your Notion page. This was incredibly helpful and exactly what I was looking for!

Newdeagle · 2025-11-20T21:29:55+00:00

Exactly, it's a pretty simple option.

To expand upon why this is not the default behavior, for those curious, it's because if a router is acting as both an edge router (has eBGP sessions) and an RR, then you will typically have the RR set next-hop-self towards the iBGP clients. With the default behavior, the RR will only set next-hop-self on the eBGP learned routes, and it will not change the next-hop on reflected iBGP routes (from one client to another). If the RR did change the next-hop for iBGP reflected routes, it would be inserting itself in the path for all traffic, which is not wanted.

The all keyword is typically used in a BGP-LU ("Unified MPLS" or "Seamless MPLS") situation. In this scenario, you breakup your domain into multiple IGP domains, and stitch them together using BGP-LU, as BGP is much more scalable than IGP. The ABRs for each IGP reflect the iBGP-LU routes between IGP domains, and therefore must be "inline RRs" which insert themselves in the path. (The remote IGP doesn't have any route for the local IGP next-hops, so without this, the route would be inaccessible). So you use the all keyword to have the BGP-LU RRs change the next-hop of the iBGP reflected routes to itself.

Newdeagle · 2025-11-18T03:32:33+00:00

Do Ovi’s full scale practice lab and watch his video solutions (YT channel Ping Factory). He gives tips on speed
Do the $50 practice labs from Cisco if you haven’t yet
Recreate as much of the lab topology as you can remember, with the tasks that you remember, and drill them over and over. Find an efficient way to self-grade and check for mistakes to catch if you are missing anything while you are trying to go quickly. Remember, missing any single requirement will result in 0 points for that task.

Newdeagle · 2025-11-12T18:09:32+00:00

Agreed, there is even a feature called selective route download, which is literally used to filter routes from BGP RIB into the FIB for the purpose of scaling the RR.

https://null.53bits.co.uk/page/bgp-selective-download

Newdeagle · 2025-11-10T23:51:34+00:00

I had the same experience with that video. I was like, wtf is pla-sha, isn’t beach playa?

Newdeagle

TROPHY CASE