Tag Archives: wireless

The new home network, part II

Previously, on Prison Break:

For the past nine years, a venerable Asus DSL-AC68U wireless modem/router has dutifully been providing access to the pipes filled with cats to all my devices. It’s done its job so well, faultlessly, that I feel like I need to put it out to pasture while it still can be repurposed as someone else’s wireless router. Besides, it’s 2024 now, and the Wi-Fi 5 that it came with is positively pedestrian compared to what we have now, putting aside the glaring limitations of Australian internet speeds or your device’s ability to utilise that kind of speed. Plus, WPA3 is also a thing now too, and any security upgrade is always worthwhile.

The MikroTik Hex has been rock solid as a router. After a solid week of Googleing and configuring, I think I have it set it up just how I want.

In many ways, RouterOS reminds me a lot of when I played with dd-wrt all those years ago. There’s just as many options to configure, and while that means there’s a bit of a learning curve, especially if you want to start from scratch, basically everything is configurable, and there’s very little hand-holding. Want to use one of the Ethernet ports as WAN? Of course, take your pick. Want to remove one of the Ethernet ports from the bridge and use it as a backup/dedicated management port? No problem! RouterOS will tell you when your config is invalid, but it won’t stop you from doing something stupid if it is technically possible. It’s absolutely possible to lock yourself out from your router if you’ve configured management interfaces to be only accessible certain interfaces/network ranges, so it’s absolutely possible to shoot yourself in the foot. If you want, you can start from literal scratch; no DHCP server, no DNS, no firewall rules. I can tell you now; you haven’t truly lived unless you have setup your own DHCP server, even if all that really means these days is ticking a box to turn it on and configuring a few options like your desired IP address range. The next best thing is customising the one that comes with the standard default config, which is what I ended up doing.

But did the Hex fix what marginal levels of bufferbloat I had? Yes, absolutely, although I don’t have SQM1 enabled all the time. For whatever reason, Opticomm FTTP connections are usually over provisioned in that I get slightly faster speeds (usually around 110 Mbps down, 45 Mbps up) than what I actually pay for (100/40), so I have SQM disabled outside of peak periods so I don’t miss out on that little bit of extra speed. It’s a small thing, but the way SQM is most noticeable is when I’m downloading something and watching a YouTube video at the same time. With SQM off, when that download is saturating my connection, my YouTube video drops quality and starts stuttering like it’s buffering over a dial-up connection. But with SQM enabled, I can download something and watch YouTube at the same time, without any loss in quality and without any buffering pauses. It’s a small thing, but SQM has made a minor but appreciable impact on my internet quality. If nothing else, now I can use my internet connection with impunity. Not like I didn’t before, but now I know it will actually work when I want it to, irrespective of whatever else I might be doing.

And yes, the Hex has limitations in terms of throughput with SQM enabled, but thanks to Australian internet speeds, I can save money by having a cheaper router. As it stands, apparently the Hex is good up to about 200-500Mbps with SQM enabled. Given that I’m not planning to upgrade my internet speeds anytime soon, that’s plenty, but if and when I do, a RB5009 (or its successor of the time) has my name on it. I’m still tossing up whether I want to “upgrade” to 250/25 for $4 more per month. While that may not be worth it, I can absolutely recommend SQM on any modern internet connection. If you have a one person household it might not be that big of a deal, but even I’ve noticed it, so I can only imagine how great it would be in a family home.

But honestly, the Hex is too fully-featured for my meagre networking requirements. I’m not running my own ISP, nor do I need any kind of failover. Fancy routing rules for specific traffic, or complicated NAT rules, are also outside of what I want out of my home network. I’m not even using VLANs or anything that would require me to know more about networking than I currently do. But it’s good to know that I can, if I want to in the future, or if my networking circumstances change, I can do all of that without having to redo my entire home network setup.

If I have hesitations about the Hex, is that it’s fairly basic in terms of features. While it does have a microSD card slot and a USB port, there are “only” gigabit Ethernet ports on the thing, no 10G SFP+, no PoE, and I can’t run containers on it like you can on some higher-end MikroTik hardware. It feels bad buying networking gear with only gigabit Ethernet in 2024, but unless I want to spend many hundreds more dollars and buy one of those little fanless mini-PCs that come with 2.5G/10G SFP+ ports and run RouterOS on that, I’m stuck with the hardware that MikroTik currently offers. I think the RB5009 would be great, but as it is, I can probably wait until the next iteration, as there’s basically nothing the Hex doesn’t do for me today. That changes if I get gigabit internet, but I can’t see that happening anytime soon, especially with the state of internet infrastructure in Australia right now. Further compounding this is that while you can get gigabit internet on NBN, the problem here is that Opticomm doesn’t seem interested in competing with the NBN2 or even offering higher speed tiers, so the fastest that I can get is 500/200 at roughly triple what I currently pay. For a one-person household, that just doesn’t seem worth it.

So for now, the Hex has this strange dichotomy between incredible software with mid-tier hardware — fine, capable hardware that’s more than enough for home network usage, but lacking a few niceties and/or esoteric features that would have been “nice to have” in 2024.

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The Logitech MX Master

According to the dates I just punched into Wolfram Alpha, it’s been over 20 months since Logitech released the MX Master. I’ve wanted their flagship consumer wireless mouse for almost as long, and as of earlier this week, am now the proud owner of a MX Master of my very own.

The last time I looked for a wireless mouse replacement, it was out of necessity. An attempted cleaning and repair of a scrolling issue on my old Logitech Anywhere MX may have merely exacerbated or outright sparked a tracking issue, but regardless of what happened, the end result was that tracking became awful. So awful, in fact, it rendered the mouse inoperable, with replacement the only recourse. After examining the pros and cons of different models, I procured a replacement of the exact same model, and everything was hunky-dory.

Then Logitech released the MX Master, and I immediately knew what my next mouse was going to be. The MX Master is everything the Anywhere MX was, for the most part, and had enough of the features that I liked about it that I’d consider it an upgrade. The argument could be made that some aspects are compromises in one way or another, or even side-grades, but what about the overall package?

MX Master on the left, Anywhere MX on the right. Pikachu in the back.

For starters, the MX Master is almost twice the size of the Anywhere MX. It’s also nicely sculpted for right-handed usage, and probably ergonomically “better”, whatever that means. Because of how much taller the mouse is, the “palm” part of the mouse where it meets your palm is much further off the surface of the desk than I’m used to, which means using a fingertip grip isn’t as easy as it was the Anywhere MX. It’s partly because the diminutive size of the Anywhere MX lent itself to being used with a fingertip as much as it did with a palm grip, and partly because the larger size and shape of the MX Master means you’re more inclined to use it with a palm-style grip. While you could use a fingertip grip with the MX Master, the position and placement of the vertical scroll wheel, as forward as it is on the mouse, means that you either need longer fingers or position your entire hand further up on the mouse in more of a palm grip.

While I’ve always been a “fingertip grip” user for the mouse that I use with my Mac (my primary computer which gets used for everything bar gaming), I’ve always used a palm grip when gaming. I suspect that I’ll get used to palming the mouse that I use for general web browsing, but for now it’s a little awkward, especially given the vertically asymmetrical design of the mouse which means that it’s not quite a standard palm grip. For now, even trying to wrap my hand around the entire mouse feels incredibly awkward. The “ridge” of the mouse — the thickest part of the mouse — that sits underneath the knuckle of your index finger feels far too large, and I’m yet to find a comfortable position when gripping the mouse. It’s possible that my hands are too small for the larger size of the MX Master, but on the other hand (pun not intended), maybe I’m just holding it wrong.

As much as I used to like the fact that the Anywhere MX used AA batteries, over the months it became apparent that having to charge AA batteries and always keeping some charged spares for when the ones I was using in the mouse died was all a bit of an inconvenience. If the rechargeable Li-ion pack in the MX Master means I don’t have to deal with scrambling to find some charged AAs right when I need them most, then I’m all for it. Hopefully the quick charge time of the MX Master also means I’ll be able to plug the mouse in for a minute or two to get me enough charge to last me through a quick browsing session, too.

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New Mouse

Logitech Anywhere MXWell, kinda. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

For the past few years, I’ve been using a Logitech Anywhere MX. It’s been my wireless mouse of choice whenever I’m using my MacBook Pro at my desk, and it’s served me pretty well.

There are a couple of things I like about it:

  • It’s compact. I don’t have huge hands, so I don’t need a huge mouse. I prefer to grip with my fingertips instead of with my palm, and the compact size of the Anywhere MX means I can do that easily without having to exert much force to move the mouse around.
  • It uses AA batteries, not some proprietary rechargeable Li-ion pack.
  • Scrolling is awesome. The Anywhere MX has two modes of scrolling, one which has the normal clicks, and one where the ball just spins — and spins, and spins, and spins. The scroll wheel is weighted so it just keeps going, and this makes scrolling a long list of anything as easy as flicking your finger and letting the wheel do the rest of the work.
  • The dual side buttons are a pleasure to use. At first I was really used to middle-clicking links to open them in a new tab, but the Anywhere MX has no middle click (one of its only faults). Using the included Logitech software, you can customise the three programmable buttons (two on the right hand side near your thumb, one on top behind the scroll wheel) to be almost any combination of button or modifier key. I’m currently using what defaults to the back button as my “middle click”, and the what defaults to the forward button as my back. The button on top is usually an application switcher, but I’m using that to take and upload a screenshot.

For the past few years, the Anywhere MX has been faithful. The programmable buttons make a difference in my day-to-day workflow compared to my previous mouse, the bluetooth Logitech V470. That too was a nice mouse — if I had one other complaint about the Anywhere MX, it would be that it doesn’t connect via Bluetooth and has its own separate USB dongle, but that’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

As you can see in the picture above, I now own two Logitech Anywhere MX mice.

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Simplicity

AirPort Extreme

It just so happens there’s a reason people own Apple products.

That reason?

Simplicity.

If there’s a universal truth, it’s that people just want their stuff to work. No mess, no fuss. No one wants to know how their stuff works, they just want it to work every time, like it did the last time. No one really cares how it works — I mean, there’s only so many hours in the day. You could probably point to a dozen or more household appliances that few people could explain the inner workings of. Do you know how your fridge works? Do you know how an oven gets hot? Or how an induction cooktop generates energy? Most people have no idea.

And why? I’m not entirely sure myself, but there’s no reason to care how your microwave heats up your food, just so long as it does it every time you want it to. Magnets are probably involved somewhere in the process, but how many times will I have to take apart my microwave to fix it? Unless I suddenly get  a job as a microwave repair technician, none. Zero. Nada.

But look, I hear you. We’re nerds, and we like to know how stuff works. We like to know the ins and outs of every appliance, every kind of technology we come into contact with. I can understand wanting to know, merely out of pure curiosity, what kind of unfathomable magic makes water boil when no energy is directly transferred as heat that we can feel. (Again, magnets.)

Which is why projects like dd-wrt exist. DD-WRT, for those playing at home, is a totally custom router firmware that includes everything but the kitchen sink. The interface isn’t spectacular, but it’s packed to the gills with functionality, and provided you have the right kind of router to run dd-wrt on, you’re all set. Only a router-specific installation procedure to follow, a few harrowing moments when you might think you’ve bricked your new router, and boom — you’re running the arguably the most powerful third-party firmware out there.

I’ve always been curious about dd-wrt. I learned about it back in high school, I think, and I’ve wanted to play around with a dd-wrt compatible router ever since. I’ve never really had any real need for one, mind you, but it would have been cool to tinker. Just ‘cos, you know?

As it happened, I bought a Nintendo DS lite a little while ago for some old-timey DS games. (OK, Pokémon. But I’ve played other games, too!) The best thing about the DS lite is that it’s the best one available if you want the best combination of backwards-compatibility and, uh, homebrew media; it has an old-school GBA slot for Game Boy Advance cartridges, and with an Acekard or similar, you’re all set for just about any GBA or DS game you could care to name. It’s even better with a flashable GBA card for, uh, homebrew GBA games, but we’ll leave that for another time.

But the worst thing about the DS lite is that it only supports Wi-Fi networks with no encryption, or WEP. Now, I don’t know if you know, but WEP is about as secure as locking up your house with sticky tape. A miniscule deterrent at the most, and a mere inconvenience for anyone actually wanting to see what’s happening on your network.

Which brings us back to dd-wrt. You see, dd-wrt has a cool feature where it can broadcast multiple SSIDs if you have the right hardware. Each of these multiple SSIDs can have their own security settings, and if you really want, you can also choose to route traffic from each of the WLANs separately. Pretty cool if you have your CCNA cert, but otherwise just a hindrance to get some real stuff done.

Anyway, one thing lead to another, and just for fun, I picked up an E4200 wireless router to play with. I saw an Engadget article on the E4200 years ago, and I’ve always wanted one. Not really sure why. After a moderately complex installation process (are all those 30-30-30 resets really necessary?), I had dd-wrt up and running on my E4200.

That was when the real fun began.

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English Russia » Connected

Wardriving

That’s the way to stay connected even when you stuck in the traffic jam in Moscow downtown. There is always some free wifi network around, just, for better coverage, you gotta leave your car a while.

via English Russia » Connected.