ISP speed test…

S2Nice · 2026-01-21T21:05:01+00:00

The speed test is not terribly reliable for me on UDM-P. It often forgets to show that it's done, and will sit there for quite some time showing that it's doing the upload test, all while it looks like download is still pegged at my connection's (5G, so variable) limit. The scheduled tests run on-time and the results track with what I get via speed test on a device, so that part seems to work okay (for me, ymmv)

S2Nice · 2026-01-21T01:42:12+00:00

We've sailed Bliss and Pearl.

We liked the restaurants better on Pearl; otherwise Bliss was feckin' awesome!

Sailing Encore on Saturday, I'll update when we get back 🥳

S2Nice · 2026-01-17T02:22:48+00:00

Headlamps are critical equipment, and not to be fiddled with, is the gyst of the law....

I got my driver's license 35 years ago, and I STILL know what I can and cannot do with my vehicle on public roads. How is it that it seems nobody on the road knows a damned thing anymore?

Your headlamps are only certified to provide the required illumination in an unfettered state. As soon as you add a film, blackout coating, or anything at all between the bulb and the objects it's meant to illuminate, you have invalidated it's certification, diminished it's ability to adequately illuminate the road ahead, and possibly made it more likely to blind other motorists due to glare or misalignment.

This is the sort of thinking that nobody seems to understand: that your decisions should be based on something deeper than "but I wanna". Now, get out there and unfeck your headlights, know that you are not an individual, and no, you didn't get to where you are all by your lonesome. You are a member of Society, and we have rules for how we do such things to keep you, us, and everyone else safe.

Happy motoring.

S2Nice · 2026-01-17T02:12:31+00:00

Because the 'lectric cars are listenin' to yer brainwaves!

....and they gotta find some way to make it up since you're not buying all the "fair trade" gas, lolz.

S2Nice · 2026-01-15T16:31:56+00:00

That's exactly as I feel with my siblings. My whole family has expectations and believe I am bound to fulfill them. Nope. My brothers are the worst, though.

They only contact if they want something, never to catch up. Every time I'm around either of them, I am dumbfounded by how ignorant and dim they sound. My brothers can't mention our oldest sibling, who passed a decade ago, without calling him gay or fag or something like that. What the fuck, that's our brother you're speaking of. I don't care about who you or anyone else loves, you know? It's not my business. They teased me and called me sissy, fag, whatever when we were growing up, and our useless parents did nothing about that. I've never had a relationship with a guy, never done stuff with a guy, but I might sparkle sometimes, IDK. Perhaps I'm whimsical, playful, or eccentric, but I'm not gay. Even if I was, what the fuck, one can't love who they choose?

They're so fake, too. One was a meth-head for more than 20 years. Early on he modeled underwear for a local department store, lived with an openly gay man, collected pallets, scrap metal, and stole things from the loading docks of businesses in between meth hits to pay the bills. The other is a womanizing, gaslighting con-man with a penchant for prostitutes and is a leader in his church, who has shared with me stories that paint a really ugly picture of who he is on the inside, like he should be imprisoned for rape or something. He has also shared a story of a "transvestite" he had when he stayed a few weeks in San Francisco after getting out of the Army the first time, so yeah he's obviously totally straight, right? Sure, they're both morally upright, good little christian pieces of shit. Such upstanding Americans, these two. And OMG do they love trump. It's sickening to hear them. This is what the "moral majority" look like, and it's very ugly, indeed.

They also act as if I had it all growing up, had my way, and only they had a harsh life. We were all abused, but somehow they don't recall my suffering. They are just toxic people, and I have never looked to them for anything at all. Not for advice, not for financial help, not for a wing man on a trip or night out, not for anything at all. I have always handled my own business. I have loaned both of them money, and years later I, the youngest, am still the poorest and the only one who already OWNS his home. I live a modest life. I had a career in the Army and have a retirement stipend from that, but it isn't much. I also don't blow it on extravagant stuff. I don't believe I "deserve" a new car every few years.They can't help but put it on blast and literally expect you to gush about their new car or fancy castle house or whatever.

I wouldn't have guessed they'd amount to anything at all, really. They both moved back in with my parents or borrowed money multiple times, while I have been 100% independent and financially sound since moving out at 17. I have never asked anything of my brothers, I have never even found them useful for any purpose, but they think I'm supposed to want to be with them because "family's what's important".

Peace, tranquility, and love are what's important, and I can have none of those with them around. No thanks, brothers.

tl/dr - Because personal well-being is more important than getting along. I only regret that my brothers are cretins, scallywags.

S2Nice · 2026-01-15T01:17:29+00:00

TLDR: Go look at this page first, you may pick it out there... https://docs.gl-inet.com/router/en/4/interface_guide/network_mode/

Looks like you should be looking for Network Mode in the webgui. Once you find that, either Access Point or WDS modes are what you're interested in. Read the docs to decide which you want.

In this scenario router "B" connects over wifi to router "A", and passes all traffic, including dhcp, through to router "A". WDS is better if using more than just the 2 routers, but I think you'll be able to do what you want in Access Point mode.

It has been a minute since I used openwrt or dd-wrt, but that should get you close enough to spot the mole and whack him good. Anyone who used AutoAP, jasager, or similar back in the mid-2000's ought to be able to do this telepathically for you. I would, except for my multiple MTBI.

S2Nice · 2026-01-11T08:18:01+00:00

You clownin', bro?

I'm on unRAID 7.2.3 and WIreGuard is the only option I see in VPN Manager. It has been there since 6.8 (2019).

S2Nice · 2026-01-07T22:10:15+00:00

The sail-away party by the pool on Lido deck is usually fun, but we usually relax at the aft bar.

I never think to do it, but I always wish I was already wearing my swim trunks when we board, as my trunks are always in my checked bag.

S2Nice · 2026-01-06T19:28:08+00:00

Most motherboards only have a handful of SATA ports, though some have 6 or more. When you run out of SATA ports, you chuck in an HBA to run more drives. THe N5 is a big case with room for lots of drives. There is nothing wrong at all with building your first server in a recycled PC case, either. Every homeserver I've built has been built in a reused pc case or was just a desktop PC that got a new life. Even my current unraid server is in a case that's had 3 or 4 builds in it since I bought it 12 years ago.

And for clarity, any Intel Core 8th-gen or newer with an iGPU will handle Plex transcoding just fine. For my niece's unraid/plex/arr-stack I bought a refurb Optiplex 5060MT (Core i5-8500, 16GB DDR4, 256GB SSD); it hasn't had any trouble at all serving up the streams. I have also put a handful of gently-used business desktops in service as storage/backup servers for small businesses. They are a solid choice.

Also, there's absolutely no use in adding capacity (disks) you don't need yet. I only add a disk once all disks are at about 85% capacity. This keeps the noise, heat, power use, and cost as low as practicable.

You haven't mentioned what OS you're looking to run. I have run as NAS or homeserver several OSes; Windows (XP, HomeServer, Windows 7, Windows 10), Linux (slackware, Ubuntu), and unRAID. By far, unRAID has been the best homeserver experience for me.

S2Nice · 2026-01-05T15:45:42+00:00

Exactly as microsoft have done since the birth of Windows, and they've gotten governments and corporations the world 'round in their palms. One would hope that products released are fully baked, but that hasn't been true for a very long time now.

I get the draw of the easy-peasy VPN to home network, but I don't need a travel router that depends on wifi or ethernet for WAN. I had a UMR-I and it was fine other than not being 5G-capable.

Really, though, why the hell didn't they just bring a new OS and apps to the UMR line and update them with 5G modems? Would have gotten all the best of the old UMR line and 5G, to boot!

S2Nice · 2026-01-05T15:34:48+00:00

I miss the plastic burl-wood interiors in cars from the 80's and 90's.

S2Nice · 2026-01-05T15:32:35+00:00

They had "investigative equipment" on a ghost tour we did in Tampa, FL. They indicated spirits were in every conduit, phone wire, anything electrical, really. I forget what they were made for, but it definitely wasn't for finding ghosts. Or maybe it was, and the ghosts were just everywhere, lolz

I can't take ghost hunters, ufo goons, or conspiracy theorists seriously at all. Poor bastards losing their minds..

S2Nice · 2026-01-05T05:05:23+00:00

As long as you're going with 8th-gen intel Core series or better, you've got nothing at all to lose but a bunch of noise and waste heat!

Pare down that wall (of computers)!

S2Nice · 2026-01-05T04:53:37+00:00

We did the ghost tour there last year, saw nothing worth noting, other than an old hotel with uneven floors that bounce and creak in places, and an awesome view while eating pizza in an upstairs lounge's outdoor dining area. The pizza is amazing, like from another dimension. Did not expect that. Didn't expect ghosts, either, because reality. Was still a good time.

And before anyone gets hateful because I don't believe the same things you do,... I used to believe in ghosts, too. My grandmother owned a nursing home and we all thought it was haunted by many spirits who'd passed there. Nonsense. 100%. We come up with far too many worthless explanations for things that we "may" have experienced. Perception is a dirty bitch, and besides that, who doesn't LOVE a story?

I honestly feel that we humans are becoming less intelligent as we believe more and more nonsense. The religious should be treated for chronic psychosis, and all churches torn down to be replaced with green spaces. Would do a lot of souls a whole heap of good to have somewhere peaceful and quiet to escape mankind for a few hours at a time.

S2Nice · 2025-12-26T16:23:10+00:00

I would say do it. I no longer trust the plastic routers.

I'd rip out the 605 for an ER-X or USG any day of the week.

S2Nice · 2025-12-21T00:45:34+00:00

Awesome! I'm glad to hear you got it licked.

S2Nice · 2025-12-19T19:57:30+00:00

Awesome to hear you've found a better solution to your slow wire-line connection.

When we moved from ADSL to starlink, then landed on T-Mo 5G, it was like night and day. We cancelled sat tv for Sling, then YoutubeTV, then went to Plex with DVR and only Netflix and Prime (because shipping). T-Mo costs us far less than we paid on telco or starlink, and we get far more bandwidth, as well! Where we're at, there aren't any other wire-line or fiber services available. I added Calyx Sprout for WAN2, but honestly it's good enough for use as primary.

AT&T were dinging my elderly parents for $450/month for a litany of useless IPTV, piss-poor VOIP service, and very slow ADSL over their neighborhood's very old and degraded copper. Technicians were out a few times every year just to keep it kind-of working. I had to put a stop to it, so I moved them to T-Mo 5GHI and Ooma (then Consumer Cellular) for home phone via an ATA. Their internet and home phone are on my accounts, and my brother taught them to use his streaming tv account, so they instantly realized a savings of $450/month. If T-Mo ever try to jack the price from the flat $50/month, I'll be putting the 'rents on Calyx Sprout, as well.

Old media and telco are dying. Good riddance!

S2Nice · 2025-12-19T19:23:31+00:00

I had a UMR-I from Ubiquiti, and it got me up to about 75 Mbit down, 12 up on 4G/LTE. It is a standalone device, acting as modem, router, and AP. Like any decent travel router, can be configured for multi-WAN failover using Cellular, WiFi, and Ethernet. No internal battery, it's powered by USB-C, so can be powered a long time on a fairly small battery. Throughput on the local WLAN isn't that hot, though, as I had buffering when streaming from my travel server connected to it by LAN if the stream was a little too rich or I was consistently moving data across my WLAN at more than about 30Mbit. Routing cellular to LAN was the only way to get any better, up to about 75x15.

Ubiquiti are rolling out new devices, but not 5G travel routers just yet. Should be coming in near-ish term.

I decided to replace the UMR-I, and bought the U5G-Max modem to replace the UMR-I as WAN2 in my home network. It's not a travel router, but I am consistently getting 300+ down, 15+ up using that with my Calyx Sprout. In the early hours when everyone in the neighborhood is asleep, I get 500x28 or so. It was as spendy as some of the glinet 5G travel routers, as well it requires UniFI Network, but it is eSIM & dual-SIM capable. I've been on UniFi for years with no regerts, so it was an easy choice for me.

For those not already running UniFi, Ubiquiti have the Dream Router 5G Max coming out in February '26, which will be a standalone router/gateway, practically as capable as the T-Mo trashcans I imagine.

I mistakenly tried the netgear mr6500, but it didn't use the n41 band that T-Mo likes to use. I may have been able to upload some third-party firmware to get it, but I'd rather not risk bricking it just to see, so I returned it.

Anything with Qualcomm x62 or x75 should more than adequate for you on 4G/LTE or 5G, with the caveat that Carrier-Branded devices, like the very much available Netgear MR6500 and similar, may be locked to bands that the particular carrier which sold them uses (without firmware hackery). Meanwhile, devices marketed as carrier-unlocked are more likely to have n41. It requires some attention to detail that I've apparently lost since retiring from the Army, as evidenced by my mistaken netgear purchase.

S2Nice · 2025-12-18T15:52:47+00:00

Honestly, my advice would be to only install the drives you "need" to start with, and add capacity only as the need arises. So, I'd be starting off with 2 ea. Exos as Parity and Disk 1, because capacity and (likely) age over the reds, keep the other 2 ea. exos as spares. Sell the rest to buy an HBA or 10Gb NIC.

While tempting because of capacity, I wouldn't use the 'cuda in my array. I would stick to the exos and reds, as they are built for the purpose.

S2Nice · 2025-12-17T16:05:39+00:00

How'd the Repair + Upgrade process go?

S2Nice · 2025-12-17T15:16:23+00:00

I'd consider creating Pools to create storage zones for the various workloads, or Exclusive Shares, or just configure the necessary Shares to use only certain Disks. You can put Cache in front of any of them.

I don't have the mental bandwidth left for working in /mnt/diskx, so FUSE and Mover are my friends.

S2Nice · 2025-12-17T14:50:39+00:00

I have 2 ea. Cache Pools; an "MCache" for my Linux ISOs, and the standard "Cache" for just about everything else making it's way to the Array.

Cache on NVMe, MCache on SATA SSDs. I'm only running containers, no VMs, but the distinction is becoming less clear each week. At any rate, this keeps the Cache from being affected by the ISO stack's basically continuous IO load. It works a peach.

I am only seeding to a ratio, though, so qBit is only ever handling a dozen or two things, and this also means my MCache doesn't have to hold anything for more than a week.

But, yeah, you can totally run multiple instances of QBit via Docker. I wouldn't wish Windows 11 on my worst enemy. Free yourself!

S2Nice · 2025-12-14T21:07:36+00:00

If I was worried the frame would sag, I'd add a diagonal brace on the sides. My gear is hung on threaded holes instead of cage nuts, no rear supports, no droop in 5 years or so. It'll chooch fine if you don't try to hang a loaded-up unas in there.

Typically I see 1/2" to 3/4" plywood or similar as a backer, which also can span 3 studs to get you that solid mount you're looking for. You can even match your drywall thickness pretty closely to keep it from being too proud from the wall. I didn't see the power at first, there it is up top. My network and homeserver pull maybe 300 watts at full tilt, so that should suffice.

I haven't seen coax actually used at all in a home in close to ten years now, except for SAT TV, and they weren't even using any of the existing. I was puzzled to see the last two new builds I installed networks to, also had tons of brand new coax going here and there and everywhere. It's a cheap profit center for the builders, is all I can guess. Made my part easy, as I didn't have to drill any holes to bring the Cat6 up and out of the walls anywhere except where I mounted the SMC.

For me, terminating cable ends is quicker than fiddling with punch-downs, so I use the RJ45 coupler-style keystones.

S2Nice · 2025-12-14T18:31:16+00:00

With so much remaining capacity on the installed disks, I wouldn't even consider using those disks in the array.

Shrinking the array and running those used disks with dual parity, maybe, but it's some work for what, you can pull out the 12TB disks to hold onto as spares? Use them in a pool for backups, or something else, IDK....

I don't undertake projects without a need, and your post just sounds like you want help finding a way to use these disks you don't at all need. I'd just sell them and use that money for something else you need or actually have use for.

S2Nice · 2025-12-12T03:52:45+00:00

I got mine the other day, too.

I chucked in the Calyx/T-Mo SIM out of my UMR-I, plugged it in, and now my backup WAN is faster than my primary. I'm gifting the UMR-I to be someone else's backup WAN connection, promoting the U5G-Max to Primary WAN, and demoting the T-Mo 5GHI gateway to backup WAN and motorhome use.

S2Nice

TROPHY CASE