Other tech news
Apr. 19th, 2020 12:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lovingbothA couple of years after the first one failed, one of the mains networking plugs that I bought in 2011 failed. Hmm, obviously I need to replace them, but with what?
Looking, the best answer seemed to be with the TP-Link TL-WPA4220KIT which gives a single ethernet port with one plug and two ports plus wifi in another. The speed over the mains is supposed to be higher than the current ones, but given the speed of the internet connection (100 Mbs via Virgin) and the router (100 Mbs) that's not significant, especially as the ethernet ports on these are all 100 Mbs.
OK, if I have two of the single ones and two of the others, it means I don't need a switch in one room, and the additional wifi points will help with the moans.
And it turns out that getting two 'one each' kits is about the same price from Amazon as getting one 'one of the simple ones, two of the others' is, even before the cost of getting a second simple plug.
Except that they are out of stock of the 'one each' kits, and other sources are either much more expensive or talking about three weeks delivery.
Fortunately, it turns out that I bought a Netgear wifi router for £1.49 at some point in the last couple of years, so that sorted out having two ethernet ports and better wifi upstairs until Amazon get stock again.
After setting that up, Amazon delivered much faster than they were expecting.
It still astonishes me that adding a tiny signal to the mains supply works as well as it does...
In other news: Never be the first on your block...
Partly because L is using another PC (running Debian Stable, accessing the files on this one over the wired ethernet) I fell prey to the temptation to install the beta of the next Ubuntu MATE version. (She would have moaned a lot about any changes, especially any of the problems, but having this one continue to file serve was extremely unlikely to change anything from her PC's perspective.)
It's actually gone quite well. Some stuff was removed in the process and won't reinstall, but nothing really important, and it's probably down to the way one thing wasn't set up properly and that should be fixed by the proper release next week. Probably...
Looking, the best answer seemed to be with the TP-Link TL-WPA4220KIT which gives a single ethernet port with one plug and two ports plus wifi in another. The speed over the mains is supposed to be higher than the current ones, but given the speed of the internet connection (100 Mbs via Virgin) and the router (100 Mbs) that's not significant, especially as the ethernet ports on these are all 100 Mbs.
OK, if I have two of the single ones and two of the others, it means I don't need a switch in one room, and the additional wifi points will help with the moans.
And it turns out that getting two 'one each' kits is about the same price from Amazon as getting one 'one of the simple ones, two of the others' is, even before the cost of getting a second simple plug.
Except that they are out of stock of the 'one each' kits, and other sources are either much more expensive or talking about three weeks delivery.
Fortunately, it turns out that I bought a Netgear wifi router for £1.49 at some point in the last couple of years, so that sorted out having two ethernet ports and better wifi upstairs until Amazon get stock again.
After setting that up, Amazon delivered much faster than they were expecting.
It still astonishes me that adding a tiny signal to the mains supply works as well as it does...
In other news: Never be the first on your block...
Partly because L is using another PC (running Debian Stable, accessing the files on this one over the wired ethernet) I fell prey to the temptation to install the beta of the next Ubuntu MATE version. (She would have moaned a lot about any changes, especially any of the problems, but having this one continue to file serve was extremely unlikely to change anything from her PC's perspective.)
It's actually gone quite well. Some stuff was removed in the process and won't reinstall, but nothing really important, and it's probably down to the way one thing wasn't set up properly and that should be fixed by the proper release next week. Probably...