My #ISP has been cranking up the #network speed recently. Over the past few weeks, my decrepit old #router couldn't handle it any longer and kept dropping the connection and then resetting. It was very frustrating. Happily, they've sent a new one and things are back up and the connection is looking solid again, with the added bonus that the speed is nearly three times as much I had been getting previously.
One day in May in 1997, I tried #RedHat #Linux. Interestingly, it booted directly from CD on my laptop. Why couldn't Windows do this? I would discover that this Linux distribution did so much more on a basic install. I would discover my #ISP hosted a usergroup and helped me set up a webserver, mail server, static IP address, and so much more. A month later, I wiped out the windows partition I never used to make room for all the free applications and media I discovered. The computer was so much faster since I had control what part of applications compiled. Pretty soon, I was traveling to Atlanta for the Linux expo with many others around the world.
25 years later, seeing people struggle with Windows boggles my mind. I guess commercial software is like sugar in food. People can't quit. I no longer use any commercial Linux distributions as they share many types of hostile vendor lock in such as Microsoft.
Hmm...
Google exec objects as EU mulls whether tech giants should fund telecom networks.
Here's another #post-mortem for you.
Tl;dr: Be sure your diagnostic tools show everything and do not hide vital information even though running in verbose or verbose-verbose mode.
First of all: My home #network is not as simple as it could be and certainly not as simple as it would be with most private users around the globe.
That brings with it its very own bunch of challenges, none of which is of any particular concern here. Suffice it to say, a regular consumer-grade internet access device (colloquially "WiFi router") would not do it. I have heavier requirements.
That in turn means my #ISP did not supply me with a real router – in fact I decline any ISP-supplied device whenever possible. Instead I bought my own device which does fulfill my requirements, in this case a semi-professional router with #PPPoE #pass-through capabilities, essentially a #DSL-modem.
The latter is the important part, because that is where my weekend worries began.
The modem did work for years on end with no reason for me to ever regret my decision to buy it in the first place.
Until last friday morning when it rebooted from the latest firmware upgrade.
At that very moment my internet connection dropped with a very dreaded error message from the #PPP daemon: "Timeout waiting for PADO packets."
That's tech-talk for "the ISP does no longer reply to my connection requests."
The message was already known to me and experience had me on the side of stupid coincidence which I have seen more often than I could count. So, quickly I was on the phone with the ISP requesting a port reset hoping for instant recovery.
Which didn't happen.
I'll skip the boring part of booting, downgrading, recabling and testing (even with a new OS install) for hours while other people expected me to work, but it went on until monday morning. Needless to say, I had a lot of time to think during the weekend.
I will just mention that most of the time I got beyond that PADO step, yet #pppd failed to get any replies for its #LCP configuration requests (that way I can add some more hashtags to the post, yay!).
On monday morning I finally figured I should do a real trace of the conversation appearing on the wire, for as far as #tcpdump told me not only was I sending requests, I even got answers from the ISP. Only, they were ignored by my endpoint software.
tcpdump's console output did not reveal why this should happen, a different network card, updated endpoint software - nothing actually helped. Requests were sent, replies came in and were promptly ignored.
Until I was fed up enough and decided to have a deep look into that very conversation on the wire, using #wireshark. Wireshark is a very powerful tool and its most notable feature is it doesn't hide any information by default.
And it was this now unhidden information which finally pointed me in the right direction: The oh-so-dutifully ignored replies from my ISP carried with them a #VLAN tag.
Short excursion: I am using a #VDSL landline on which the provider offers "triple-play", that is, Internet, Telephone and TV all over the same cable. For that to work technically, the ISP requires its customers to tag their "regular" outgoing internet traffic with a certain VLAN id before sending it out to the ISP. Likewise, the ISP tags all incoming internet traffic with same id.
Usually, the modem should do the tag/untag of the traffic before handing it over to the LAN, in my case to my PPP endpoint.
And it was this very tag/untag which actually stopped working.
From this point on the solution was pretty simple: If the tagging inside the modem is unreliable, the feature can be disabled (in fact, it can be configured to suit the ISP's requirements). So I did that. Now that caused the situation to deteriorate in the first step, because now nothing was coming back at all anymore. Where at least I got ignored replies from the ISP before now I got nothing.
However, #linux is capable of a lot of things, one of which is making network cards do "the right thing". In this case I reconfigured the system's network to add the required VLAN tag to everything related to the much needed PPP connection. A side effect is that the kernel now also removes the tag from any incoming frame.
At this point my PPP endpoint finally got the replies again and within seconds the connection was back up as it was designed in the first place.
Needless to say I think it's a bug in the modem's firmware, yet since downgrading did not improve the situation, it seems the bug was introduced much earlier but never manifested itself.
Also, to reference the "tl;dr" from above: Had I done the wireshark trick right from the start I probably would have stumbled over the wrong VLAN tag much earlier, saving me a lot of testing hours as well as a lot of worries on how to get the system back to its intended state.
The lesson I learned is that even though diagnostic tools can be made to be very verbose, sometimes they still skip some information vital to the issue in question and thus can not necessarily be fully trusted. It is not only important to have those tools at hand, it is quite as important to know their limitations and how to handle or overcome them.
#capitalism, in practice:
Operating an #ISP isn't #Mauch's primary job, as he is still a network architect at Akamai. He started planning to build his own #network about five years ago after being unable to get modern service from any of the major ISPs.
..
As we wrote last year, #AT&T only offers #DSL with download speeds up to 1.5Mbps at his home. He said #Comcast once told him it would charge $50,000 to extend its cable network to his house—and that he would have gone with Comcast if they only wanted $10,000. Comcast demands those up-front fees for line extensions when customers are outside its network area, even if the rest of the neighborhood already has Comcast service.
..
Mauch was using a 50Mbps fixed #wireless service before switching over to his own #fiber network. In addition to his home Internet customers, Mauch told us he provides free 250Mbps service to a church that was previously having trouble with its Comcast service. Mauch said he also provides fiber backhaul to a couple of cell towers for a major mobile carrier.
Attention! Highest danger level! The following link leads you directly to the #YouTube data mafia. It is strongly recommended to use this link only with appropriate security protection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z7H5tXqMGo
Alternative: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4Z7H5tXqMGo
Choose another instance: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=4Z7H5tXqMGo
#password #web #internet #www #isp #privacy #surveillance #browser #tracking #messenger #tor #fdroid
video: https://ripe84.ripe.net/archive/video/emile-aben_resiliency-of-the-internet-in-ukraine_main-20220516-143147.mp4
source: https://ripe84.ripe.net/archives/video/738/
#Decentralization makes the Internet in Ukraine very resilient even in wartime.
Getting fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) Internet for your household will ensure you have the fastest and most reliable online connectivity on offer.
But there are various parties, several pieces of hardware, and some confusing terms involved in the process that might be a challenge for the less technically inclined.
Although the providers are South Africa specific, the terminology and components should be generic to any country, and it is useful to understand how it all fits together. Always shop around as often ISPs will have special deals if you switch to them, and remember you can choose any ISP that supports the fibre present in your area.
#technology #fibre #southafrica #ISP
#Blog, ##fibre, ##isp, ##southafrica, ##technology
Apple appears to have added a feature in the latest iOS 15 operating system beta that will automatically remove the "green orb" lens flare that is common when a bright light appears in the frame, but only in certain circumstances.
Noticed by MacRumors, a discussion among some users on Reddit appears to have found instances where the iPhone is performing some kind of background image processing that automatically removes the green dot lens flare from photos.
Apple has strongly relied on its image processing to improve the quality of images in new iPhones, and this change appears to be baked directly into the upcoming operating system. In two images posted on Reddit (and shared below via Halide), Apple appears to have created an algorithm that will automatically remove flare from photos in specific circumstances after the photo is taken. The two photos show post-photo processing on the newest beta where the final still shot from a live photo appears without the "green orb" lens flare.
Big news: the latest iOS 15 beta automatically removes the famous 'green orb' lens flares we are so used to on iPhones. Thoughts? https://t.co/l6OQ3vRVRR pic.twitter.com/4wtorXaZxt
-- Halide (@halidecamera) August 4, 2021
Once pointed out, other beta testers agreed that the change was visible on their devices as well, but not in every circumstance.
"It doesn't appear to do it when the flare is on certain surfaces, like trees or through screens," one Reddit user has reported. "It does fine for grass, sky, and most other textures though!"
He later adds that it doesn't seem to work with bathroom lights either, and may only work well with the sun.
"It's pretty inconsistent."
One other Reddit user pointed out that they were able to see the lens flare in a photo taken with an iPhone 12 Pro, but when they revisited the photo later in the day they noticed it had been automatically removed.
"So I've noticed something that I haven't seen reported elsewhere; whilst out and about I took this photo and thought it was ruined/needing to be edited later due to the lens flare (as I've done numerous times in previous photos with the iPhone 12 Pro as it's so prone to lens flares)," they write. "However, I got home and noticed the lens flare has automatically gone in the original photo despite it being obviously there still in the live photo, meaning the automatic post-processing has gotten smart enough to remove lens flares now!"
PetaPixel reached out to Apple, but the company did not immediately reply.
iOS 15 is still currently in testing and will not ship to all users until this fall.
#mobile #news #apple #appleiphone #beta #betatesting #flare #imagesignalprocessing #ios15 #iosbeta #iphone #isp #lensflare #smartphonecamera
Anleitung / DNS-Sperre
Internet-Provider wie 1&1, Vodafone oder die Telekom blockieren seit dem 11.03.2021 das Streaming-Portal S.to und SerienStream.sx. Wie du die Sperre als Nutzer umgehst, erfährst du hier.
Inhalt:
- Möglichkeit: DNS over HTTPS aktivieren (Empfehlung) [...]
- Möglichkeit: DNS-Nameserver ändern (Empfehlung) [...]
- Möglichkeit: Alternative Domains (kurze Haltbarkeit) [...]
Alle möglichkeiten sind nach Browser oder Betriebssystem sortiert.
#onlinefilter #streaming #warez #cuii #isp #dns #sperren #yazumo
Streaming / Warez
Bildquelle: Saurons Auge von TheDigitalArtist
[...] Canna.to. Der Betreiber hat bereits unter canna.tf eine weitere Domain eingerichet, um sein rechteverletzendes Musik-Portal weiterhin zugänglich zu machen. Gleiches gilt für das Forum unter board.canna.tf. Gestern gaben wir in einem Beitrag bekannt, dass Canna.to als nächstes dran ist. Wir erläutern jetzt, wie das im Detail vor sich geht. [...]
Ausweichdomains können sehr viel schneller gesperrt werden
Wird ein Antrag einmal genehmigt, erfolgt ohne dieses aufwändige Verfahren zeitnah die Sperre der Ausweichdomains. Von daher ist nicht klar, wie lange sich canna.tf halten wird. Wir erinnern uns an den zeitlichen Ablauf bei serien.sx und serienstream.sx. Dort verbarrikadierte man die neu eingerichteten Domains vergleichsweise schnell. [...]
Canna Power muss sich etwas einfallen lassen
Für die Internet-Anbieter bedeutet das Verfahren allerdings, dass es eine Art Gleichbehandlung passiert. Zwar nehmen noch nicht alle Anbieter daran teil. Es ist aber nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis weitere Provider dazu kommen. Je mehr es sind, desto schwieriger wird ein Wechsel – jedenfalls für diejenigen, die nicht in der Lage sind, sich technisch selber zu behelfen. Das Vorgehen hat auch den Inhalt, dass niemand mit einem Wettbewerbsnachteil rechnen muss, weil ja demnächst wahrscheinlich so gut wie alle Internet-Anbieter sperren werden. Den ISP wegen der Sperre zu wechseln, wäre für die Kunden sinnlos. [...]
#tarnkappe #streaming #warez #cuii #isp #dns #sperren #canna #yazumo
Streaming / Warez
[...] Der Prüfungsausschuss der Clearingstelle Urheberrecht im Internet (CUII) bestimmte am 9. März einstimmig, dass das fast 22-jährige Download-Portal canna.to blockiert werden soll. Bei den teilnehmenden Internet-Anbietern wird Canna Power aufgrund der DNS-Sperre schon bald nicht mehr erreichbar sein. Oder aber sie waren schneller als wir mit unserer Berichterstattung.. ;-) [...]
Ab wann schaltet man die Sperre scharf?
Die Bundesnetzagentur teilte heute auf telefonische Anfrage hin mit, die Sperre veranlasse die CUII selbst. Da „der Ball bei der CUII liege“, könne man nicht sagen, ab wann Canna Power nicht mehr erreichbar sei. [...]
#tarnkappe #streaming #warez #cuii #isp #dns #sperren #canna #yazumo
Re #selfhosting.. I checked with provider Colt, because I saw their label on some utility shaft lids in neighbouring roads sidewalks. So in a quick call, they promised to call be back, which they did within the hour. Came back with prices though.. so yes, they are in the area, just across the road, some 200m away on the other side though. I can see that street corner just fine from my livingroom. Digging a trench and putting fibre in though would cost a mere 33k €€€, which I'd have to pay for (obviously) on top of the three-digit monthly fee, to repay them over a period of 2,3 or 5 years (my choice). Steep numbers front and back, whichever way I turn them, so sadly I won't be able to get symmetric fibre for cheap where I am.
