Homebrew Network Card With No CPU

A modern normal network card will have onboard an Ethernet controller which, of course, is a pre-programmed microcontroller. Not only does it do the things required to keep a computer on the networ…

How DEC’s LANBridge 100 Gave Ethernet A Fighting Chance

When Ethernet was originally envisioned, it would use a common, shared medium (the ‘Ether’ part), with transmitting and collision resolution handled by the carrier sense multiple access…

On Cloud Computing And Learning To Say No

Do you really need that cloud hosting package? If you’re just running a website — no matter whether large or very large — you probably don’t and should settle for basic host…

SatCat5: UART, SPI And I2C Via Ethernet With FPGA-Based Design

To the average microcontroller, Ethernet networks are quite a step up from the basic I2C, SPI and UART interfaces, requiring either a built-in Ethernet MAC or SPI-based MAC, with tedious translatio…

Ethernet For Hackers: Transformers, MACs And PHYs

We’ve talked about Ethernet basics, and we’ve talked about equipment you will find with Ethernet. However, that’s obviously not all – you also need to know how to add Ethern…

Dial-Up Is Still, Just Barely, A Thing

In an era dominated by broadband and wireless cellular networks, it might come as a surprise to many that dial-up internet services still exist in the United States. This persistence is not a mere …

Restoring Starlink’s Missing Ethernet Ports

Internet connectivity in remote areas can be a challenge, but recently SpaceX’s Starlink has emerged as a viable solution for many spots on the globe — including the Ukrainian frontline…

Ethernet For Hackers: Equipment Exploration

Last time, we talked about the surface-level details of Ethernet. They are fundamental to know for Ethernet hacking, but they’re also easy to pick up from bits and pieces online, or just from…

Underwater Sensor Takes Single Pair Ethernet For A Dip

The 10BASE-T1 Ethernet standard is also known as ‘single pair Ethernet’ (SPE), as it’s most defining feature is the ability to work over a single pair of conductors. Being fairly …

Replacement PCB Replicates Early 80s Modem

It’s certainly been a few decades, but plenty of us remember a time before widespread access to broadband internet, when connections were generally made over phone lines using acoustic modems…

Steampipe: All SQL All The Time

Although modern Linux has slightly shifted, the old Unix mantra was: everything’s a file. With Steampipe, a better saying might be: everything’s a SQL table. The official tagline is &#8…

Ethernet For Hackers: The Very Basics

Ethernet is ubiquitous, fast, and simple. You only need two diffpairs (four wires) to establish a 100Mbit link, the hardware is everywhere, you can do Ethernet over long distances easily, and tons …

Modeling Network Latency

The selfhosting community is an interesting and useful part of the Internet dedicated to removing one’s own services and data from the cloud and hosting it on their own servers, often on hard…

$50 10Gbps Mesh Network Uses USB4

You want to build a cluster of computers, but you need a high-speed network fabric that can connect anything to anything. Big bucks, right? [Fang-Pen] developed a 10 Gbps full-mesh network using US…

Remembering ISDN

We are definitely spoiled these days in terms of Internet access. In much of the world gigabit speeds are common and even cheap plans are likely to be measured in 100s of megabits. But there was a …

OpenWRT To Mark 20 Years With Reference Hardware

The OpenWRT project is now two decades old. The project has come a long way since Linksys was forced to release the GNU-licensed code for the original WRT54G router from which the project takes its…

802.11ah Wi-Fi HaLOW: The 1 Kilometer WiFi Standard

The 802.11ah WiFi (HaLow) standard is fairly new, having only been introduced in 2017. It’s supposed to fall somewhere between standard WiFi used in domiciles and offices and the longer range…

A Web Server, The Sixteen Bit Way

If you were to talk about sixteen bit computing in retrocomputing circles, misty-eyed reminiscences of the ST or Amiga would emerge. Both fine platforms, but oddly the elephant in the 16-bit room h…

Mailblocks Makes Your Phone Work More Like The Post, Kinda?

Phones can be distracting, with notifications popping up all the time to snare our attention and maybe even ruin our lives. [Guy Dupont] wishes to be no slave to the machine, and thus built a solut…

The WebStick Is A Small, Cheap NAS

The ESP8266 was one of the first chips that provided wireless functionality at a cost low enough to be widely popular for small microcontroller projects. This project uses one to provide rapid, sma…