Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

....but I've already assigned/reserved an IP (in DNS & DHCP) for my NetFlix player and updated the QoS rules on my router to give this IP a boost in priority.

I will very likely place the order later this month...but I probably won't pull the trigger on ordering faster DSL service until next month.

Link: http://www.netflix.com/NetflixReadyDevices?tb=what

Roku has a set top box for Netflix instant watching. I've been neglecting my Netflix subscription, because the selections I have out right now don't match my current mood....but I don't want to send them back unwatched.

Though a couple of the selections were ones that were my mood at the time I was reordering my queue. Since at least one of them could've been instant viewed....perhaps this is what I should've had then.

Guess I need to acquire more HDMI to DVI cables....since it looks like I'm going to acquire more devices in the future and they'll only have HDMI outputs...though at the rate I'm going...I might use up all 5 inputs of my DVI switcher.

One question I had was whether the Roku box does video up conversion....or whether there might be other devices down the road. But, reading the details...sounds like I may have to order the speed upgrade on my DSL service sooner than later.

While it says a minimum 1.5Mbps...it recommends at least 4.0Mbps for high quality video and audio. I think I can get that out of AT&T, but I'd have to upgrade to the next tier to see.

Wonder what happens when they get HD content....

It was last week that I ordered the upgrade of my 1.5m/384k DSL service to the next tier. Even though two tiers up were offered.

I was previously only getting a sync rate of 768k/384k for the 1.5m/384k service that I have been paying for about the last 22 months. For a few days when I first got the service, I was getting the full speed....but then it went away, and numerous calls (and various changes in my condo) didn't yield any improvement.

But, in the 3-5 business days for the upgrade...they now have me at (a sync rate of) 3.0m/512k, as ordered. Perhaps next year when get my annual increase, I'll consider pulling the trigger on trying to get 6.0m/768k. Should be able to get the upstream rate, and hopefully there'll be some further improvement on downstream.

Here are the DSL modem graphs for the last week:

Starting to look like 6.0/768 might be a real possibility for my DSL connection.

This morning (around 3am) another bump in speed. Sync rate is now 3008/512. No noticeable change in SN Margin, but Line Attenuation has gone up by another db.

DSLReport's Spectrum Tool shows an estimated downstream rate of 4660 now.

I may really look at moving more over to it now. Think I'll move the TiVo HD....though now that Amazon Unbox is going to have HD content, that might mean that I really should be looking at the 6.0/768 tier.

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Since it is still within the 3-5 business days for upgrade order completion, I guess they will continue to slowly inch up my speed and improve my line. Starting to make me really think that I should've gone for the 6.0/768 tier, since it looks like they might even be able to achieve acceptable levels for that.

This morning, the sync speed jumped to 2496/512 (from 1984/512). The latest DMT Spectrum plot gives an estimated downstream of 4044 (with estimated upstream at 818). And, cacti shows a slight improvement in SN margin, with no change in line attenuation.

Perhaps I'll revisit 6.0/768 in a couple of months.

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This morning I woke to find my DSL modem reporting a speed of 1984/512. Reran the spectrum analysis tool at DSLreports. I shows a theoretical 35xx/818....wonder if I could've really gotten the 6.0/768 tier to at least get the much higher upsteam speed. It would've only been $5 more per month. (The tiers were 1.5/384, 3.0/512, 6.0/768 and the prices were $25/$30/$35).

I graph the SN margin/Line Attenuation along with up/down speed from the modem in cacti....so I see that my SN margin has dropped quite a bit, and Line Attenuation has gone up a little. So I see it started shifting gears around 5:20am.

Using the speed tool, I still can't get the reported speed. But, there is a proportional improvement. But, latency has dropped quite significantly. Better than cable now. Well under 100ms.

Don't know when the current DHCP leases expire, but I reconfigured DHCP to tell my Broadvoice VoIP service to use DSL as its gateway now. Wonder if there's anything else I want shift around....

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Back when I first moved here, I wanted to get DSL.... they offered 3 tiers (that I knew of...) 1.5/384, 3.0/512, 6.0/768. Of course, I wanted the top one. But, they said for my area they could only offer me the lowest. But, it was better than dialup (and, I was using AT&T BusinessNet service, at the time). So, I pursued getting Cox HSI at first....because I wanted cable TV more than I wanted a landline. But, I was having trouble getting Cox at the time (though I have it now). So, I did order the DSL.

But, once I did get it...they locked me at 768/384 (for a week I did get 1.5/384, but then there was a storm and service became slow and unreliable...I called in for service and the phone tech. said nothing was wrong at their end, must be my side. During that trouble shooting they lowered locked me at 768k down. Moments before the field tech. showed up service started working again. He said something about replacing a line card or something just before coming over....I tried to get the 768k lock removed, but I couldn't convince anybody by email or phone that they had done this....and kept saying that I should get 1.5 and that it must be my line)....and efforts to upgrade weren't available. Even though DSLreports technician report tool said I could do ~2.0M down (and 690k for up).

More recently there had been upgrades in my area...and technician report had been reporting that I could get better downstream rates. Suggesting the next tier could be fully achieved. This mornings quick check say 3.1M.

So, once again I was browsing the AT&T site to see if I could order an upgrade in my speed. And, this time they showed offers of the 3.0/512 and 6.0/768 upgrade options. I wasn't that daring...I ordered the 3.0/512 tier.

Wonder how long the upgrade will take, and whether it'll mean that I can finally do VoIP over DSL (it works good now over Cox). But, the for consistency in speed and reliability...DSL has been the winner.

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Of course, I'm talking about my Ubuntu server (well, maybe not obvious....except that I'm not known for doing upgrades).

I had debated waiting for Hardy Heron's release before building this Linux server. Except that I had bought the box back in December, and delaying was preventing was delaying all that BOINC work that I've been doing.

There's other stuff I want to or have thought of doing with this server, but don't know where I actually stand on doing those sorts of things. If I had it to do over again, I don't think I would've gotten this box (it was knee-jerk response to replacing a dead server, which I was later able to resurrect...negating the ordeal of recreating things). OTOH, I probably would've continued on with buying something else....and I'm not sure if I would've been that happy with that purchase. Of course, it has delayed that purchase....and it may become too late to get it. Though perhaps Windows XP will continue to still be available after June 30th, and I'll make that one last upgrade in that department.

Anyways...other than taking much longer than expected to upgrade....either the upgrade servers are still badly hammered, or Cox is throttling me. Cox seems to be sluggish in general today. The download speed was dismal. And, then hidden in the terminal you don't see my default, it was asking if I wanted to proceed with the upgrade after everything had been downloaded.

Annoying enough when doing 'sudo apt-get upgrade', even more so here....because I wasn't expecting that I had to wait and interact (with a hidden screen) in the upgrade. Later there were dialogs that popped up on stuff that wanted input, mainly to decide if stuff I had configured in Gutsy could be unconfigured in the resulting upgrade to Hardy. Umm, I configured those services so that I could use them....

Finally it was done....it took forever to boot while it did fs checks on /home and /MMCVideo, but then everything looked fine.

Well, not totally. lm-sensors was changed, so I had to reconfigure that, and I'm not sure but the core temperatures seem to be higher now. The default is FireFox 3.0 beta....and all my extensions and themes got disabled. I've been avoiding upgrading to FireFox 3.0 on my other machines for this reason. Though people say that the new version is faster, and the memory leak is fixed, and some of the hanging/crashing problems on Mac OS X seem to be gone. But, I want it to work the way I've customized it....

So, I changed my shortcut to launch firefox-2 instead and reverted things.

Now other than network lag, which I hope will clear up on its own....the only main thing that doesn't seem to work in the update is vmware. Which probably just means I need to rebuild the kernel stuff again (or see if there's some hardy specific details to making that work). Not really a big deal though, since I never got around to running anything in vmware. It was on my list of things to try, but now I need more disk on this box.

I heard 8.04 was going to have support for PM SATA, wonder if that's true and if the PCIe PM SATA card that is in the box will now work, etc.

When I first moved into this place, I ran into a problem where I wasn't able to put all my computer equipment in one room. And, then it was further compounded by the fact that there is only one cable jack.

Though the room where I had intended all the computer equipment to go is where the demarc is located, so it probably would've been possible to add a splitter for the the cable modem there.

But, what I did was reconfigure my Linksys router to do WDS bridging and participate in the WDS bridging I was doing with a pair of Belkin F5D7130s.

So I had the cable modem and a pile of stuff at the front of my living room connected to it...and the Linksys router. My computer with one of the Belkins in the opposite corner of the living room and the other Belkin in my 'computer room'.

The VoIP ATAs at the front of my living room....

And, all was adequate.

But due to the SNAFU of getting cable service, I had gotten DSL service and I got out what was my spare Linksys router and set up the 'computer room' with that. So far I've kept the dual gateway home network....

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I survived....almost 7 hours without power. It got really cold. I was worried I'd have to sleep without heat....but I did find my old sleeping bag.

Unfortunately, I had trouble after power came back.

My Windows desktop lost its mind....guess I need a new CMOS battery for it.

My Linux server came up...but then went away. Just like its predecessor....extended power outage....the fans failed in it and it toasted itself. Hopefully it had some kind of safety shutoff, and replacing the CPU fan will get it going again. Though I don't know where I'm gonna score one....hopefully the computer store at work has one. Otherwise, I guess I'll put Amazon Prime to the test.

Not sure where things stand on improving my emergency preparedness or UPS replacement or other things....

Suppose I should figure out what I'm having for supper, just in case I lose power again....

Meanwhile Cox is still out