Mastodon vs Bluesky is a new standards war

 Posted on December 7, 2024  |  3 minutes  |  508 words  |  Neel Chauhan

With Bluesky’s apparent rise after the elections, I’ve heard a lot of criticism about Bluesky on the Fediverse. I’m starting to feel the Mastodon vs Bluesky war is a new standards war, one that is analogous to the cellular standards war. While Gen Z readers are used to LTE and 5G phones which is based off the historically more popular GSM branch, there was another cellular technology CDMA which was a fierce rival and chosen by carriers like Verizon pre-4G days. [Read More]

MikroTik CAPsMAN v2 (WifiWave2) with VLANs

 Posted on November 24, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  356 words  |  Neel Chauhan

After a disasterous experiment with Ubiquiti UniFi APs, I decided to sell them on /r/homelabsales (because I’m not allowed to return) and buy MikroTik wAP ax APs. Interestingly, the Wi-Fi experience on MikroTik beats the UniFi one despite technically being “inferior” and the EU model. But one issue with CAPsMAN is how hard it is to configure, especially with a home network full of VLANs (actually three at home). So how do you configure it? [Read More]

I'm sorry, but I just hate Ubiquiti UniFi gear

 Posted on November 22, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  324 words  |  Neel Chauhan

About two months ago, I was thinking “why not get Wi-Fi 7” and got myself two Ubiquiti UniFi U7 Pro access points? Just to realize the experience sucked. In fact, my family has faster browsing on a subjectively “inferior” access point, the MikroTik wAP ax which is being used now, as well as the prior HPE Instant On AP25. Ubiquiti is often compared to Apple, and the UniFi dashboard goes look pretty damn good. [Read More]

openSUSE Tumbleweed and Sony WF-1000XM5/WH-1000XM5 Bluetooth Headphones

 Posted on November 1, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  185 words  |  Neel Chauhan

After my old Sol Republic earbuds died, all the headphones I daily drive are or have been made by Sony. This includes the WF-1000XM5 earbuds for going out and the WH-1000XM5 headphones I use on my desk or for plane travel. While Sony headphones generally work well with Linux (I’m looking at you, Apple and Beats), I recently switched my Linux desktop and laptop back to openSUSE Tumbleweed from Fedora. [Read More]

Bypassing AT&T Fiber/Frontier/AU 802.1X with MikroTik and bridge interfaces

 Posted on September 17, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  393 words  |  Neel Chauhan

Although I now live primarily in Verizon territory, my family has a second home in Frontier-land at least for a few more months. Frontier in Connecticut inherited AT&T’s 802.1X setup so if you’re not on XGS-PON, you are required to use Frontier’s router, in my case an Arris NVG468MQ. However, if you’re using a MikroTik CCR2004-series router, you can use that connected to the ONT and bridge 802.1X from the Arris. [Read More]

Tech is a cyclical industry: booms and busts are normal

 Posted on September 16, 2024  |  3 minutes  |  482 words  |  Neel Chauhan

It’s no secret that the tech job market really sucks. Even for me who still has a job, I’m not exactly keen on my department, I have many reservations about my product, I wanted to move on. But even when I tried applying for jobs, why should they hire me instead of someone who’s so desperate they’ll work for less? This just happened to me last week. This made me realize, tech is a cyclical industry. [Read More]

Have an ASN and IPv6 space? Build your own IPv6 tunnel!

 Posted on September 3, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  761 words  |  Neel Chauhan

For many years, Hurricane Electric was the de-jure IPv6 tunneling platform. If you wanted Netflix, just force Netflix on IPv4. For people without native IPv6, HE.net was truly a godsend. Then HE.net tunnels became more problematic, now we have multiple streaming services and other services blocking HE.net tunnels under the “public proxy” blanket ban. I remember the pre-COVID and the early-COVID era when only Netflix blocked HE.net tunnels when I lacked native IPv6 until summer 2020. [Read More]

Building my own HPE SAS cable from Amazon because HPE won't sell me one

 Posted on August 7, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  368 words  |  Neel Chauhan

Remember when Reddit /r/sysadmin said HPE support blows? Well it does. I got an open box HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen11 as a NAS. This is my second whereas my first is a compute server. To my surprise, there was no SAS cables in the open box server. When sourcing the official sources, I was in back and forth conversations with HPE and their “part suppliers” to no avail. And no, I did not get the right SAS cable. [Read More]

Running ArchiveTeam Warrior in Podman on Rocky Linux 9

 Posted on July 31, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  244 words  |  Neel Chauhan

I don’t remember where I heard about ArchiveTeam from, but when I did learn about it I knew I wanted to join in. I have run Tor relays for over a decade now but always wanted to participate in other volunteer-run services as well. I always felt good when my home servers serve more people than just me. I run an I2P node too, but CPU-and-GPU-heavy tasks like Folding@Home are out usually due to excessive power consumption and noise. [Read More]

My High School banned Phones... in 2011!

 Posted on July 8, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  186 words  |  Neel Chauhan

Today I read that many schools from NYC to LA want to ban smartphones in school. Well, let me tell you that my high school, Somers High School of Somers, NY (an rural-ish but rich NYC exurb) did actually ban phones back in 2011, and when I graduated in 2015 they still did. When it comes to mobile tech, the early-to-mid-2010s were almost like the stone age. Whereas most of my peers had an iPhone on Verizon, my family chose to go with Samsung phones on Sprint. [Read More]