45: No-Tonsil-Stone Zone

00:00SPEAKER- Three by three squares, huh, Brad?

00:02SPEAKER- I guess, I mean, according to you.

00:04SPEAKER- Look, you gotta optimize your adjoining squares,

00:07SPEAKERadjoining tiles, and your road frontage.

00:09SPEAKERIt's all, it's just simple math, really.

00:12SPEAKER- Are you the mayor?

00:12SPEAKER- I read this in Nintendo Power in like 1991.

00:15SPEAKERSo I'm an expert, sir.

00:16SPEAKER- Did the populace of Dogtown place their faith in you

00:19SPEAKERat the ballot box?

00:20SPEAKER- I mean, look, if there were fair and honest elections,

00:23SPEAKERthey sure as hell would have.

00:24SPEAKER- Oh, boy.

00:25SPEAKERAll right, this is getting too real for me.

00:27SPEAKER(laughing)

00:29SPEAKER- We're talking about the Super Nintendo version

00:30SPEAKERof SimCity, if anybody doesn't know.

00:32SPEAKERI was streaming a little bit of that the other night.

00:35SPEAKERDo you know that Will Wright had nothing to do

00:36SPEAKERwith that game?

00:38SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, that reads-

00:39SPEAKER- That version of SimCity was developed in Japan.

00:41SPEAKERIt sure doesn't run especially well.

00:44SPEAKER- That would have been before EA bought Maxis, right?

00:46SPEAKERSo it's like-

00:47SPEAKER- I guess that's right, actually.

00:49SPEAKER- Probably Nintendo rolled up a dump truck load

00:51SPEAKERfull of cash for the hottest PC franchises,

00:53SPEAKERand was like, "Hey, we want to make a SimCity

00:56SPEAKERon the Nintendo, Super Nintendo Entertainment System."

00:59SPEAKER- Oh, wow, Maxis wasn't acquired until 1997.

01:02SPEAKERGeez. - Yeah.

01:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know a whole lot about drawing graphics

01:05SPEAKERto screens from that era of video games,

01:08SPEAKERbut you sure can see a lot of tiles

01:10SPEAKERbeing drawn to screen slowly as you scroll around your town.

01:14SPEAKER- There were a couple of times, so I watched,

01:16SPEAKERI was kind of in and out last night

01:16SPEAKERwhile you were streaming that,

01:17SPEAKERbut I noticed there were a couple of times

01:19SPEAKERwhere you were hitting the CPU hard enough

01:21SPEAKERthat entire swaths of the screen just didn't render.

01:24SPEAKER- Yeah, it thinks.

01:25SPEAKERIt's got load times.

01:26SPEAKERWhen you're cycling through city layer or island layouts

01:30SPEAKERat the beginning of the game,

01:30SPEAKERthere's straight-up load times,

01:32SPEAKERor rendering time or something is happening.

01:34SPEAKERIt's a cartridge game that-

01:37SPEAKER- So the thing that struck me more than anything else

01:39SPEAKERabout playing that, 'cause I fired it up,

01:41SPEAKERit was one of the first things I fired up

01:42SPEAKERwhen I got the MiSTer, 'cause I loved that game

01:44SPEAKERwhen I was a kid.

01:45SPEAKER- It's great.

01:46SPEAKER- And I was shocked at how hard it is to control

01:51SPEAKERwith the gamepad, how slow everything feels.

01:54SPEAKERYou're not doing 400 APM there,

01:57SPEAKERgetting your city in shape.

01:58SPEAKER- Super Nintendo mouse support would have been appreciated,

02:00SPEAKERbut they didn't think ahead.

02:03SPEAKER(upbeat music)

02:24SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

02:35SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."

02:37SPEAKERI'm Will.

02:38SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

02:39SPEAKER- And joining us today is PC Gamer's own Wesley Fenlon.

02:43SPEAKER- Hello, I'm Wes.

02:44SPEAKERI didn't get in the trifecta there, but I'm Wes, hey.

02:49SPEAKER- Just trying to think of a way to work that in,

02:50SPEAKERbut it didn't quite...

02:52SPEAKERYeah, there's some sync issues here, you know?

02:54SPEAKERIt's, you know, our brains are wired for light speed latency

02:59SPEAKERand we get router latency here, so...

03:01SPEAKER- We think at the speed of light, right?

03:03SPEAKER- Wes, how you doing, man?

03:04SPEAKERHow's quarantine life treating you?

03:06SPEAKER- You know, I'm really psyched to be here

03:07SPEAKERbecause at this point, just any new human interaction

03:10SPEAKERthat I haven't had in the past few days is super exciting.

03:15SPEAKERSo yeah, it's, you know, the life's okay.

03:18SPEAKERI am keeping myself busy with stupid, unnecessary projects

03:23SPEAKERto improve things around the house,

03:24SPEAKERwhich is why I'm here today.

03:26SPEAKER- I was just about to say, I have to compliment you.

03:28SPEAKERI think you have one of the, since you're on a webcam here,

03:30SPEAKERyou have one of the more well-manicured rooms

03:32SPEAKERas a backdrop on a webcam of most of the people

03:36SPEAKERthat I webcam with these days.

03:37SPEAKER- What you can't see is the hole through the door

03:40SPEAKERwhere I nailed a slightly too long nail in

03:42SPEAKERfor one of my pictures.

03:44SPEAKERClassic, classic mistake there.

03:46SPEAKERNot gonna mess that one up again,

03:48SPEAKERbut got a nice hole in my door now.

03:50SPEAKER- I assumed you were gonna say that like you had piled up

03:53SPEAKERall the stuff that's usually on the floor.

03:55SPEAKERSo it's up out of, in between you and the camera.

03:58SPEAKERSo it's out of frame, but--

03:59SPEAKER- There's heaps of laundry everywhere, yeah.

04:02SPEAKER- Exactly.

04:02SPEAKER- Yeah, so you just have to very carefully stage manage

04:04SPEAKERwhat your webcam can see, everything else is disposable.

04:08SPEAKER- So we're here today, you're here today

04:12SPEAKERbecause Brad and I like stupid, unnecessary projects.

04:15SPEAKER- Yes.

04:16SPEAKER- And we threw an offhand comment out a few weeks ago

04:21SPEAKERabout, you know, we were doing something,

04:23SPEAKERbut it's not as ridiculous as rolling your own router.

04:25SPEAKERAnd then you popped up in Twitter and we started talking

04:28SPEAKERand you were like, well, I just rolled my own router.

04:30SPEAKERAnd I went and read the article

04:31SPEAKERthat you wrote about that experience on PC Gamer.

04:33SPEAKERYeah, and I expected that to come with a lot of caveats.

04:37SPEAKERSo, I mean, I guess my first question is why, Wes?

04:43SPEAKER- Yeah, so my first answer is boredom.

04:47SPEAKER- Great, all right, I'm with you.

04:48SPEAKER- And I wanted something to do.

04:50SPEAKERBut the longer answer is I upgraded to gigabit fiber

04:55SPEAKERlike maybe six months ago.

04:57SPEAKERAnd at first it seemed pretty good.

04:59SPEAKERI was getting, I don't know, like 700 megs or so.

05:03SPEAKERAnd I was like, that's good enough.

05:04SPEAKERAnd then it just started to like,

05:07SPEAKERthe problems just started to slowly add up

05:09SPEAKERand annoy me more and more.

05:11SPEAKERAnd the big one was for some reason,

05:14SPEAKERwhenever I or my roommate started doing like a big download

05:18SPEAKERfrom Steam or something, started downloading a game,

05:20SPEAKERnot only were we not getting anywhere near the speeds

05:23SPEAKERthat I knew Steam was able to put out,

05:26SPEAKERbut it would actually like kill every other device

05:29SPEAKERon the network and just like nothing could connect

05:32SPEAKERall of a sudden.

05:33SPEAKERAnd I didn't know if it was the AT&T modem,

05:36SPEAKERif it was something weird with my router,

05:38SPEAKERlike what the hell was going on,

05:39SPEAKERif it was even like the wiring in the house.

05:42SPEAKERBut after trying to troubleshoot that stuff,

05:44SPEAKERmy best guess was my router,

05:47SPEAKEReven though it was like a $250 Netgear,

05:50SPEAKERlike pretty high end router,

05:52SPEAKERI felt like the CPU in it was my bottleneck

05:55SPEAKERor the memory or something in that router

05:58SPEAKERwas just not up to handling the gigabit connection.

06:01SPEAKERAnd once we put too much data on it,

06:02SPEAKERit just crapped out basically.

06:05SPEAKER- So I had that exact same experience

06:07SPEAKERwhen I got AT&T fiber a couple of years ago.

06:10SPEAKERAnd you have to use the AT&T modem

06:13SPEAKERand you can do pass through and all that stuff.

06:16SPEAKERBut I was using the AT&T router

06:18SPEAKERand passing through to one of the first gen

06:21SPEAKERof what became the Google home router.

06:23SPEAKERSo it was like one of those old TP-Link ones

06:26SPEAKERthat you can mesh.

06:27SPEAKERBut I was seeing like 700, 800 megabits per second

06:31SPEAKERversus the 989 that I get when I just use the AT&T router

06:35SPEAKERor when I set up, when I got a more capable router.

06:37SPEAKERSo yeah, I think that's like the fiber I think tends

06:42SPEAKERto show a lot of the weakness in real infrastructure.

06:44SPEAKER- I followed the exact same path

06:46SPEAKERwhen I got my fiber like three years ago.

06:48SPEAKERThat's how I ended up with a pretty high end

06:50SPEAKERlike prosumer almost enterprise level router

06:52SPEAKERis yeah, gigabit, even if you have a router

06:55SPEAKERthat can keep up with the throughput,

06:56SPEAKERit just tends to start exposing a lot of the edge cases

07:00SPEAKERthat these consumer routers can't handle.

07:02SPEAKER- Yeah, so I guess I was like a little behind the curve

07:04SPEAKERof you guys, but I decided to do the more outlandish solution

07:08SPEAKERto it, which was take a computer that I had recently built

07:12SPEAKERand just turn it into a router 'cause I had it there, so.

07:16SPEAKER- Now you're talking.

07:17SPEAKERLet me ask you, before you got to that point,

07:20SPEAKERdid you actually look into like what is out there

07:23SPEAKERat the consumer level these days for gigabit

07:26SPEAKERand you know, that's intended to handle

07:28SPEAKERlike sort of more robust network conditions.

07:30SPEAKERIs there anything?

07:32SPEAKER- Yeah, so what I looked at and like,

07:33SPEAKERso I had another like more minor issue I was trying to solve

07:37SPEAKERwhich was where I had my router placed was like in the garage

07:41SPEAKERwhere the connection came into the house

07:44SPEAKERand then I had a secondary router upstairs

07:46SPEAKERin like the back half of the house

07:47SPEAKERto handle like the bedrooms

07:49SPEAKERand switching between the two manually

07:52SPEAKERwas kind of a pain to connect to.

07:54SPEAKERSo I already kind of wanted to like switch to mesh

07:56SPEAKERor do something like that to make my wifi situation better,

08:01SPEAKERbut it was, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on it.

08:04SPEAKERSo I was like, okay, how do I,

08:07SPEAKERI started looking at stuff like Ubiquiti makes the,

08:11SPEAKERlike this Amplify Alien that's like a really high end,

08:15SPEAKERI think it's a wifi six router.

08:17SPEAKERIt can also support mesh stations if you want to add to it,

08:20SPEAKERbut that thing was like three or 400 bucks, I think.

08:23SPEAKERAnd I was looking at like, wow,

08:24SPEAKERdo I want to do like a unify mesh system?

08:27SPEAKERAnd if I do that, what would be the actual router,

08:32SPEAKERyou know, sending data out to all that stuff.

08:34SPEAKERDo I want to buy what like what you have Brad?

08:37SPEAKERAnd eventually I decided, well, I have the stuff here.

08:40SPEAKERIt's probably not as efficient as spending like

08:44SPEAKERtwo or 300 bucks on a mini PC,

08:46SPEAKERbut I can spend $20 on a network card

08:50SPEAKERto add to this computer I already have and just roll with it.

08:53SPEAKERAnd then in the future,

08:55SPEAKERthat opens me up to be able to like add my own access points

08:58SPEAKERand do like a mesh setup and kind of like roll my own way,

09:00SPEAKERinstead of being stuck into like the Google home setup

09:04SPEAKERor TP link or net gear.

09:06SPEAKERLike I forget, there's a bunch of them out at this point.

09:08SPEAKER- Hero, yeah, there's a bazillion.

09:11SPEAKERI mean, the interesting thing about rolling your own

09:13SPEAKERwith hardware you have is it also lets you try it

09:16SPEAKERfor like very little startup cost.

09:18SPEAKERAnd if it sucks, then you can bail out pretty cheaply.

09:22SPEAKERAnd if it doesn't,

09:23SPEAKERthen when you're ready to move on to something

09:25SPEAKERthat's maybe more efficient or whatever,

09:26SPEAKERyou can jump over to that.

09:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

09:29SPEAKER- What kind of specs are you running in that machine?

09:31SPEAKER- So I built a little computer in an Encase M1,

09:36SPEAKERwhich is about, I don't know,

09:38SPEAKERlike the size of a big toaster, I guess,

09:40SPEAKERnot even a toaster oven.

09:42SPEAKERAnd it has an old i5, let's say old i5 6500.

09:46SPEAKERSo that's about probably four years old at this point.

09:49SPEAKERSo it's quad core, it's like 3.2 gigahertz.

09:52SPEAKERAnd compared to my old, the Netgear router

09:56SPEAKERhad like a one gigahertz dual core CPU in it,

09:59SPEAKERwhich I would think would be enough to handle routing stuff.

10:02SPEAKERBut I figured if I'm gonna go overkill,

10:06SPEAKERlike operation overkill,

10:07SPEAKERI might as well go with like a proper quad core CPU.

10:10SPEAKERI had this thing, it seemed like if I put this in there,

10:13SPEAKERat the very least,

10:14SPEAKERI would determine that the CPU was not the problem.

10:18SPEAKERLike worst case scenario, my problems persisted.

10:21SPEAKERAnd I go, okay, well, even a quad core 3.2 gigahertz

10:24SPEAKERisn't getting the job done.

10:26SPEAKERBut thankfully it has been getting the job done really well.

10:29SPEAKER- And just to be clear,

10:30SPEAKERlike looking at what other people have done

10:32SPEAKERthat have done similar projects on like the,

10:34SPEAKERour home lab subreddit and some places like that,

10:37SPEAKERlike it seems like you can buy

10:39SPEAKERa really inexpensive micro ATX board

10:42SPEAKERthat has like a dual core Celeron built into it

10:45SPEAKERand probably be like, and four gigs of RAM and be good to go.

10:49SPEAKERLike you don't need-

10:50SPEAKER- Yeah, definitely.

10:51SPEAKER- You don't need your i9-9900 with 32 gigs of RAM

10:56SPEAKERto make this thing work for a normal house.

10:57SPEAKER- Maybe if you're doing some 10 gig,

10:58SPEAKER10 gig around your house or something like that,

11:01SPEAKERyou might need something a little juicier.

11:02SPEAKERBut yeah, for the most part,

11:04SPEAKERthe mini PCs that people kind of will adapt for these,

11:08SPEAKERif they're not building their own,

11:09SPEAKERseems like a lot of them are running

11:11SPEAKERaround the two gigahertz, like Celeron or Adam CPU,

11:16SPEAKERdual core or quad core.

11:17SPEAKERAnd I think that's powerful enough.

11:20SPEAKER- Yeah, if you ever dig into the specs

11:21SPEAKERof what's in a consumer router,

11:23SPEAKERand then you look at the type of stuff you're talking about,

11:24SPEAKERlike you realize even those tiny little mini PCs

11:27SPEAKERare so much more powerful than what you're spending

11:29SPEAKERa pretty equivalent amount of money on

11:32SPEAKERin a consumer package.

11:33SPEAKER- Well, but I mean, the consumer router is running,

11:36SPEAKERI mean, they're not running modern ARM cores

11:38SPEAKERin the sense that like an Android or iPhone

11:41SPEAKERis running a modern ARM core now,

11:43SPEAKERbut they're running like the difference between the DDW,

11:46SPEAKERor sorry, the 54G, the DD 54G,

11:50SPEAKERWRG 54G, whatever it was. - WRG 54G, yep, the classic.

11:53SPEAKER- Yeah. - Yeah.

11:54SPEAKER- Yeah, the original router, right?

11:56SPEAKERThe original G router.

11:57SPEAKERAnd like a modern, you know, Netgear gamer router

12:02SPEAKERwith speed fins and the whole thing is,

12:05SPEAKERit's pretty substantial in terms of--

12:07SPEAKER- Sure, sure, but I think you're still kind of overpaying

12:09SPEAKERfor what you're getting inside one of those things, right?

12:11SPEAKER- Yeah, the positive for me, I would say,

12:14SPEAKERis if you were someone who messed around

12:17SPEAKERwith trying to install Tomato or DDWRT

12:20SPEAKERon one of those ancient black and purple routers,

12:23SPEAKERthe experience of using something like PFSense today

12:27SPEAKERis so much better, it's hilarious.

12:30SPEAKERLike I spent so much time just cursing at those routers,

12:34SPEAKERtrying to make them good, and they were never good.

12:37SPEAKERI just couldn't do it.

12:38SPEAKER- So I did run, in fact, actually I still have the other,

12:42SPEAKERso I have two nodes, like you, I have a node in the garage

12:44SPEAKERand I have a node in my office so that we have wifi

12:47SPEAKERin my daughter's room in the bathroom

12:49SPEAKERon the far edges of the house.

12:51SPEAKERAnd the one in the office still runs DDWRT.

12:57SPEAKERIt got to such a point that I was afraid

12:59SPEAKERto run it as a router because I was afraid to upgrade it

13:02SPEAKERbecause the upgrade process is so fraught on those projects

13:07SPEAKERthat if you mess something up, then your router is dead.

13:09SPEAKERSo then the choice is keep a spare router or just get the,

13:13SPEAKERand this is why I switched to Google Home, frankly,

13:15SPEAKERfor the main router and stuff in the house

13:16SPEAKERis because I was tired of having to constantly futz

13:20SPEAKERwith the thing that makes all the internet

13:22SPEAKERin the house work, and it was too high risk, you know,

13:25SPEAKERtoo, look, the seven-year-olds will go ham on you

13:30SPEAKERif they lose Netflix, so it's a tough crowd.

13:33SPEAKER- I don't have to worry about that.

13:35SPEAKERBut yeah, I wanted something a little bit more robust

13:39SPEAKERthan I felt like the mesh networks would give me

13:42SPEAKERwithout spending enough money.

13:44SPEAKER'Cause I was like, okay, if I buy the high-end mesh,

13:46SPEAKERthat'll probably suit me, but I felt like the low-end stuff

13:50SPEAKERwas maybe gonna be a little dicey once I add in the fact

13:53SPEAKERlike I run a home server with Plex,

13:55SPEAKERI like to be able to stream it remotely,

13:57SPEAKERback when I used to go places outside my house,

14:00SPEAKERand so I wanted something that was gonna go to handle that,

14:03SPEAKERno problem.

14:04SPEAKER- Well, and there's, A, there's something really nice

14:08SPEAKERabout having access to all of the settings, right?

14:10SPEAKERThis is something that Brad talks about.

14:12SPEAKERI do feel a little tiny bit of envy.

14:15SPEAKER- Oh, I see, the truth comes out, huh?

14:16SPEAKER- But I'm also relieved to not have to futz

14:19SPEAKERwith the settings, I don't have to have a, you know,

14:22SPEAKERmy nut server isn't connected to my router

14:25SPEAKERto turn it off in case of failures.

14:28SPEAKER- I seem to remember it's only been a couple of weeks

14:29SPEAKERsince you had choice words for people who insist

14:31SPEAKERon running the fancy routers.

14:36SPEAKERSo, okay, so where did you start?

14:39SPEAKERYou started, you had hardware, so you started with hardware

14:41SPEAKERand then looked at what you could put on that, I assume.

14:42SPEAKER- Yeah, you know, so I didn't really look around

14:45SPEAKERa whole lot because I had heard of PFSense for so many years

14:49SPEAKERand kind of just in my head that was like,

14:51SPEAKERthis is what like hardcore Linux people use

14:54SPEAKERwhen they are really serious about networking,

14:56SPEAKERthey run this, and so I kind of had it in my head

14:58SPEAKERthat if I was gonna upgrade to something

15:00SPEAKERthat I built myself, that would be the route to go,

15:03SPEAKERand there are a couple other options,

15:06SPEAKERlike Brad, you were talking about,

15:07SPEAKERyou are a little familiar with OpenSense,

15:10SPEAKERwhich is a fork of PFSense,

15:13SPEAKERand I don't really know what the difference in the two is

15:16SPEAKERother than I know OpenSense has a totally different UI,

15:20SPEAKERlike they wanted to make some interface changes.

15:22SPEAKERI'm sure there's some other differences here and there,

15:24SPEAKERbut they're obviously because one's forked to the other,

15:27SPEAKERlike there's a lot of core similarities there.

15:29SPEAKER- The gist I've gotten from just kind of reading

15:31SPEAKERmessage board comments is that PFSense is more stable,

15:35SPEAKERbut maybe a little more set in its ways,

15:36SPEAKERit's kind of been around for a long time

15:38SPEAKERand it has a way of doing things,

15:39SPEAKERand I've gotten the sense that OpenSense

15:41SPEAKERis a little more modern in both UI and capability,

15:44SPEAKERbut by updating it more often,

15:47SPEAKERyou get some of the problems that come along with that

15:50SPEAKERin terms of maybe not stability,

15:51SPEAKERbut certain functionality not being quite there yet

15:54SPEAKERand that sort of thing.

15:55SPEAKER- I don't know what you get from being on the cutting edge

15:58SPEAKERof homebrew router software, probably some cool stuff,

16:01SPEAKERif you know how to take advantage of it.

16:03SPEAKER- I was gonna say, do you, like one of the things,

16:06SPEAKERso it's kind of like a managed install,

16:08SPEAKERkind of like a Raspbian or like a, you know, something,

16:11SPEAKERis it like, is this something you download an image

16:13SPEAKERand you put it on the hardware and then detects the hardware

16:15SPEAKERand then you have a slick front end

16:17SPEAKERand if you want to dig into the comp files, you can,

16:20SPEAKERis that what we're looking at?

16:21SPEAKER- Yeah, it was actually, the thing I would tell people

16:25SPEAKERwho are kind of like on the fence about this idea

16:27SPEAKERis I am not an expert when it comes

16:30SPEAKERto networking stuff at all.

16:31SPEAKERSo I was, I found the idea of doing this intimidating,

16:35SPEAKERbut once I actually looked at what the install process

16:38SPEAKERlooked like, just like on the PFSense Netgate website,

16:42SPEAKERit looked really simple and it actually was,

16:44SPEAKERit only took me maybe half an hour

16:46SPEAKERto get the whole thing up and running.

16:48SPEAKERYou spend very little time on the command line,

16:51SPEAKERso when you first are just going, like you run that image,

16:55SPEAKERyou do a couple steps on the command line,

16:56SPEAKERpretty much all you're typing in is like,

16:59SPEAKERdo you want to proceed?

17:00SPEAKERYes.

17:01SPEAKERDo you like want to, I think you have to bind

17:05SPEAKERlike which network interface you want for your LAN

17:08SPEAKERand your WAN and that's basically just typing in

17:13SPEAKERlike number zero through four or whatever.

17:16SPEAKERSo you're just typing in a couple things

17:17SPEAKERand it kind of does everything for you.

17:19SPEAKERThen once you get through that initial setup process,

17:21SPEAKERyou do everything through a web UI,

17:24SPEAKERthe same way you would manage like any Netgate router

17:27SPEAKERthat you just bought off the shelf.

17:32SPEAKERThis is Wi-Fi too, right?

17:34SPEAKERI assume you could do a hardware only,

17:35SPEAKERlike an ethernet only router,

17:36SPEAKERor you could plug a Wi-Fi card,

17:38SPEAKERdid you just plug a normal Wi-Fi card in

17:40SPEAKERor is there something special you have to get?

17:41SPEAKERI actually just built the ethernet router

17:43SPEAKERbecause I already had a pretty decent Netgear router

17:47SPEAKERthat wasn't cutting it for me

17:49SPEAKERfor handling all the actual routing traffic,

17:51SPEAKERbut it had pretty good Wi-Fi signal.

17:53SPEAKERSo I figured, okay, I'll just take that thing,

17:56SPEAKERmove it to a more central location in my house

17:59SPEAKERand just set it to access point mode.

18:01SPEAKERI don't know really what it's like running PFSense

18:05SPEAKERas your actual like a whole home Wi-Fi router,

18:09SPEAKERwhat kind of Wi-Fi card you would need

18:11SPEAKERto output proper signal.

18:14SPEAKERI'd be interested to see

18:15SPEAKERif people have good setups like that,

18:18SPEAKERbut I didn't run into anything like that

18:19SPEAKERin researching it a little bit

18:21SPEAKERand I figured it would be a lot easier to just go ethernet

18:24SPEAKERand then use my router since I had it anyway.

18:28SPEAKERAnd is PFSense built on a common Linux,

18:31SPEAKERlike is it Ubuntu or Debian or something like that?

18:33SPEAKERIt's free BSD based actually.

18:36SPEAKEROh, okay.

18:37SPEAKERYeah.

18:38SPEAKEROh, wow.

18:39SPEAKERYeah, which is why unfortunately it won't work

18:41SPEAKERon the Raspberry Pi unless you,

18:43SPEAKERI think it is possible to like compile it yourself

18:46SPEAKERor something or like you run free BSD on the Raspberry Pi

18:49SPEAKERand then it is possible,

18:51SPEAKERbut like it's gonna be a whole ordeal.

18:54SPEAKERYes, this is going off on a tangent,

18:56SPEAKERbut I have spent too much time installing free BSD

18:58SPEAKERon Raspberry Pis and finding that the support

19:00SPEAKERis poor to non-existence.

19:03SPEAKERWell, but I mean, there's a really interesting,

19:06SPEAKERthat means that there's a potentially interesting use case

19:08SPEAKERwhere you can install PFSense inside a jail

19:10SPEAKERon like a FreeNAS box and just put an extra network card

19:12SPEAKERin your FreeNAS box and turn your FreeNAS box

19:14SPEAKERinto your router if you wanna really live on the edge.

19:17SPEAKERI thought about doing that, but like I thought,

19:19SPEAKERI wondered if that was doable and I asked some people

19:22SPEAKERwho said, maybe you should put that separately somewhere else

19:25SPEAKERlike having the router running on the thing

19:28SPEAKERthat is also a client of the router

19:30SPEAKERis maybe crossing the streams a little too much.

19:34SPEAKERThink of the speed, Brad.

19:36SPEAKERI think it is possible, but yeah,

19:38SPEAKERit's kind of like how deep down the rabbit hole

19:42SPEAKERof one device running virtual systems

19:46SPEAKERto then run your entire home network do you wanna go?

19:50SPEAKERAnd I didn't wanna try it, that sounded too hard to me.

19:53SPEAKER- I guess I'm kind of skipping ahead here a little bit,

19:55SPEAKERbut I'm curious what, like how secure,

19:59SPEAKERso on a lot of the, one of the benefits

20:00SPEAKERof doing managed installs like this

20:02SPEAKERwhere you just download the image

20:03SPEAKERand then go through the startup script

20:04SPEAKERis that theoretically you can just hit an update button

20:07SPEAKERand they are, the provider is vetting

20:10SPEAKERlike package interactions and things like that.

20:13SPEAKERSo you don't do the thing where you accidentally,

20:15SPEAKERwhere you type package update, package upgrade,

20:18SPEAKERand you fuck up your dependencies

20:20SPEAKERand then you spend three days trying to figure out

20:22SPEAKERhow you jacked up your router.

20:24SPEAKERAnd the managed install makes that a little bit more,

20:28SPEAKERif they manage that stuff for you,

20:30SPEAKERthat makes it a lot more compelling for me.

20:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, they have a download button

20:34SPEAKERlike right on the dashboard for new versions of PFSense.

20:40SPEAKERAnd I actually haven't updated mine yet

20:41SPEAKER'cause I'm on like the stable 2.4.5 release,

20:45SPEAKERwhich came out, I don't know, four months ago or something.

20:48SPEAKERThere is one update since then,

20:50SPEAKERbut like I feel like I'm gonna check out the patch notes

20:54SPEAKERhere and there when they do updates,

20:55SPEAKERbut I'm not gonna click that update button

20:58SPEAKERunless I feel like there's some new feature I need

21:01SPEAKERor some security issue that I need to patch

21:04SPEAKER'cause it seems like it just runs pretty damn well right now.

21:09SPEAKERSo I'm not too worried about trying to stick

21:12SPEAKERwith every update, you know?

21:13SPEAKER- I mean, I guess the question isn't,

21:15SPEAKERis it the most secure thing in the world?

21:16SPEAKERIs it more secure than the ASUS router

21:20SPEAKERthat gets a firmware update every two years,

21:22SPEAKERwhether it needs it or not, right?

21:23SPEAKER- Right, yeah.

21:24SPEAKERI think most of the security for these,

21:26SPEAKERI mean, of course there's inevitably gonna be

21:29SPEAKERlittle vulnerabilities here and there,

21:30SPEAKERbut I think the big advantage PFSense has and OpenSense

21:34SPEAKERis how configurable they are for your firewall setting.

21:38SPEAKERYou can make your firewall and your NAT

21:41SPEAKERand all that stuff as intense or not intense

21:44SPEAKERas you want it to be, and that's sort of like,

21:47SPEAKERthat's the real learning curve I think is like,

21:49SPEAKERI've been playing some games and I'm like,

21:50SPEAKERI have strict NAT now, even though I have UPnP enabled,

21:55SPEAKERlike, how do I fix that and how do I have to--

21:58SPEAKER- How do you make, you want it promiscuous, man.

22:01SPEAKERGet it as promiscuous as you can for games.

22:02SPEAKER- Open as NAT, exactly.

22:05SPEAKERYeah, so I've had some issues there, but--

22:07SPEAKER- What are the default settings like

22:08SPEAKERwhen you first get, you finish the install,

22:10SPEAKERyou end up at the web interface?

22:12SPEAKERHow is it set up initially?

22:14SPEAKER'Cause I've got a Ubiquiti edge router

22:18SPEAKERand the philosophy of that thing seems to be

22:20SPEAKERthat it does absolutely nothing

22:22SPEAKERthat you don't explicitly tell it to do,

22:23SPEAKERlike up to and including when you boot it out of the box,

22:26SPEAKERit does not have a DHCP server running.

22:28SPEAKERYou have to plug directly into it

22:31SPEAKERand manually configure an IP to even connect to it.

22:34SPEAKER- You have to configure routing tables

22:36SPEAKERon that thing even, don't you?

22:37SPEAKER- I think, so once you enable DHCP manually

22:39SPEAKERand get access to it, there is a kind of setup wizard

22:42SPEAKERyou can choose to run, but like I said,

22:44SPEAKERyou have to manually do that.

22:46SPEAKERIt will set up some of that stuff for you

22:47SPEAKERafter you tell it to, but I'm just wondering,

22:49SPEAKERI'm wondering because this is a similarly

22:51SPEAKERlike hardcore kind of situation,

22:53SPEAKERif it's also that bare bones out of the box

22:55SPEAKERor if it's a little more kind of ready to go.

22:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm trying to remember now,

22:59SPEAKERI didn't have to do anything crazy that was,

23:02SPEAKERlike I would not know how to set up a routing table

23:05SPEAKERor what that would even look like.

23:08SPEAKERSo I didn't really have to do that.

23:09SPEAKERI think it gives you pretty basic setup

23:13SPEAKERwhere you're like, you can plug in,

23:14SPEAKERchoose your DNS servers.

23:17SPEAKERThat's kind of on like the general page.

23:20SPEAKERA lot of the stuff is already set up.

23:22SPEAKERYou can choose what you want for your IP range.

23:27SPEAKERLike I set up on 10.0.0.1

23:32SPEAKERbecause I didn't want it to conflict with the AT&T modem.

23:37SPEAKERAnd then I think I had to set up,

23:40SPEAKERtell it to run a DHCP server,

23:43SPEAKERbut like that was like a checkbox basically.

23:46SPEAKERI like said, yes, do that.

23:47SPEAKERAnd then it kind of just started running

23:49SPEAKERon the IP range I set.

23:51SPEAKERSo there's a lot more power user stuff you can get into,

23:55SPEAKERlike setting up all your static IPs

23:57SPEAKERand configuring the firewall in a lot more detail,

24:01SPEAKERbut by default, I feel like it works pretty well

24:04SPEAKERout of the box with like, I don't know,

24:05SPEAKER20 minutes of setup or something.

24:08SPEAKER- Do you have normies using this

24:09SPEAKERor is it just huge nerds like you?

24:13SPEAKER- My roommate is not a,

24:16SPEAKERI would not say he's a networking like power user.

24:18SPEAKERHe would not try to do something like this by himself,

24:21SPEAKERbut he was playing Project M, the Smash Bros mod,

24:27SPEAKERlike a super special, there's melee mod over.

24:30SPEAKER- So huge nerd.

24:31SPEAKER- Net play, yeah.

24:32SPEAKERDifferent, you know, different style of nerd

24:34SPEAKERthan we're talking about here.

24:35SPEAKERBut yeah, he was playing that over net play

24:36SPEAKERand like the ports needed to be opened.

24:38SPEAKERAnd so I just basically sent him a link

24:41SPEAKERto like the port forwarding guide for PF sense.

24:45SPEAKERAnd he was able to do that in like five minutes.

24:48SPEAKERSo not too bad.

24:48SPEAKER- Is that the mod that adds rollback?

24:51SPEAKEROr is that the one that got rollback recently?

24:52SPEAKER- It probably does.

24:54SPEAKERI mean, they like rebalance the whole game.

24:56SPEAKERYou know, it's like if you wanted melee

25:00SPEAKERto be a perfectly balanced fighting game

25:02SPEAKERand they've been modifying it for what,

25:06SPEAKER15 years now or something.

25:07SPEAKER- Sure, sure.

25:08SPEAKER- This is me shaking my head.

25:09SPEAKER- Yes, I know.

25:11SPEAKERThat's the right response.

25:13SPEAKERThis is kind of a subjective question,

25:14SPEAKERbut have you just like noticed day-to-day

25:16SPEAKERof just from using your internet,

25:17SPEAKERany real difference in like throughput or responsiveness

25:20SPEAKERor latency or?

25:22SPEAKER- Absolutely, yeah.

25:23SPEAKER- Okay.

25:24SPEAKER- I mean, so when I did this,

25:26SPEAKERI was having a lot of issues where, you know,

25:28SPEAKERthe network would crash when you're downloading games.

25:30SPEAKERAnd even when it seemed like everything should just be fine,

25:34SPEAKERI was maybe getting like 600 megs, like top speed.

25:40SPEAKERSometimes I was just getting like 300

25:42SPEAKERfor no discernible reason.

25:45SPEAKERAnd since I've installed this PF sense router,

25:48SPEAKERit's been rock solid.

25:50SPEAKERSpeeds are more like 800 to 980 megs.

25:55SPEAKERSo like I'm getting pretty much as much

25:57SPEAKERas the fiber can give me.

25:59SPEAKERAnd we've had one instance where our internet went down

26:03SPEAKERand I think it was just AT&T going down

26:06SPEAKER'cause there was nothing I could see

26:07SPEAKERthat was wrong on my end.

26:09SPEAKER- So I was gonna say there are some other alternatives

26:11SPEAKERif you don't want to do the managed install

26:13SPEAKERthat PF sense or Open Sense give you.

26:16SPEAKERThere was that guide on home lab by a user whose name

26:22SPEAKERI don't, I didn't save unfortunately,

26:23SPEAKERbut we'll post a link in the show notes.

26:26SPEAKERBasically went through this whole process,

26:27SPEAKERbuilding the whole router from scratch,

26:29SPEAKERincluding adding Wi-Fi 6 cards

26:32SPEAKERor probably AC cards at the time.

26:34SPEAKERBut I think it had an update that said

26:35SPEAKERyou could do Wi-Fi 6 now and showing how to do that

26:38SPEAKERusing Ubuntu as, Ubuntu, one of the LTS versions.

26:45SPEAKERAnd it seemed like it was, it's interesting,

26:48SPEAKERbut it seemed like it would be a really challenging thing

26:53SPEAKERto keep safe and secure.

26:56SPEAKERLike this is one of those places that for me,

26:59SPEAKERlike I kind of like having Google be the person

27:02SPEAKERor at least AT&T be responsible for the thing

27:04SPEAKERthat is shielding my internal network

27:07SPEAKERfrom the wilds of the outside world.

27:11SPEAKERIt's nice to know that there's somebody

27:12SPEAKERwho's smarter than me, presumably working on that.

27:16SPEAKER- Yeah, I like the fact that PF sense

27:20SPEAKERand by extension Open Sense are the core of that technology

27:25SPEAKERis made by like an enterprise routing company.

27:28SPEAKERYou know, like this is their business.

27:31SPEAKERThey sell the hardware and they make the software

27:33SPEAKERto go with it.

27:34SPEAKERSo I figure not only is it gonna be a lot easier to run

27:38SPEAKERthan like building everything through Ubuntu,

27:42SPEAKERunless you know Ubuntu like the back of your hand,

27:44SPEAKERbut it's probably gonna be as secure if not more secure

27:49SPEAKERthan your average home router is gonna be.

27:51SPEAKER- And also by being built on top of FreeBSD like that,

27:55SPEAKERthat OS by virtue of being monolithic

27:57SPEAKERand also like 30 years old is known to be like pretty secure

28:00SPEAKERand like pretty hard to get out of the box.

28:01SPEAKERSo like you've got a lot of layers of protection there.

28:03SPEAKERThis reminds me of Will a few episodes ago

28:06SPEAKERwhen you talked about having that unsecured Windows 2000

28:08SPEAKERmachine just plugged straight into the internet.

28:10SPEAKER- Oh God.

28:11SPEAKER- Like the thing, well, you can tinker with all kinds

28:13SPEAKERof stuff behind your firewall,

28:15SPEAKERbut the thing that is facing the public internet,

28:18SPEAKERlike you don't want to get in there

28:19SPEAKERand mess around with that stuff too much.

28:21SPEAKERYou want to let the professionals handle that.

28:23SPEAKER- Yeah, that is, look, my ISP at the time

28:27SPEAKERwith that Windows 2000 machine sent me a note that was like,

28:30SPEAKER"Hey, we're gonna turn off your internet

28:31SPEAKER'cause you got like 17 worms

28:33SPEAKERon the public facing IP address."

28:36SPEAKERAnd I was like, oh, I mean, but this was in like,

28:39SPEAKERthis was in 2000.

28:40SPEAKERI don't think I had seen a consumer router.

28:43SPEAKERThe first time I saw a consumer router was in probably 2001,

28:48SPEAKER2002 when Linksys started rolling out those 802.11b,

28:53SPEAKERyou know, the blue and gray boxes.

28:54SPEAKERAnd that was, up until that point you had,

28:57SPEAKERyou, I probably, my ISP said,

29:00SPEAKER"Hey, you can only have one computer on this connection.

29:03SPEAKERYou just plug the computer straight into the modem."

29:05SPEAKERIt's just, it's just good science.

29:06SPEAKER- That's how it works, yeah.

29:07SPEAKER- Yeah.

29:08SPEAKER- Wes, since you mentioned Netgate

29:10SPEAKERand their hardware business, did you look into,

29:12SPEAKERI mean, I know you have hardware on hand

29:13SPEAKERthat you were intending to use,

29:14SPEAKERbut since you wrote an article, did you look into it?

29:16SPEAKERSo some of their embedded little boxes that they sell

29:19SPEAKERand do you have any opinions on those?

29:20SPEAKER- Yeah, I looked at them a little bit and it seemed like,

29:24SPEAKERI was definitely trying to aim for like the higher end

29:27SPEAKERof the power scale just to be, to be overkill.

29:30SPEAKERBut it seemed like their hardware kind of ranged

29:33SPEAKERfrom one box that seemed maybe a little underpowered to me.

29:39SPEAKERThey have one that's $180 that is,

29:44SPEAKERdoesn't really seem like it's meant

29:45SPEAKERto be able to hit gigabit speeds.

29:47SPEAKERAnd then they have one that's $400 that's like a big step up

29:53SPEAKERand would be more like for a, you could use it at home,

29:55SPEAKERbut like kind of more like a small office piece of hardware.

29:58SPEAKERSo I was like, I don't, I don't know that,

30:01SPEAKERI feel like what I want is somewhere

30:03SPEAKERin between the two of those things, you know?

30:05SPEAKER- Yeah, it seems, it seems from the little bit

30:07SPEAKERI've looked at, it seems like to get the kind of performance

30:09SPEAKERyou're talking about, you're getting up

30:10SPEAKERinto quite a few hundreds of dollars to a thousand or more.

30:14SPEAKER- Yeah, the thing that I think I, like I haven't used it,

30:17SPEAKERbut what I would probably recommend people to look at

30:19SPEAKERis a brand called Protectly, Protect LI.

30:23SPEAKERAnd they do something that looks quite a bit

30:25SPEAKERlike the Netgate systems, but they're just little,

30:28SPEAKERsmall form factor, fanless systems.

30:31SPEAKERThey do like a two port and a four port

30:33SPEAKERand then bigger ones and they run on Celeron,

30:36SPEAKERyou know, dual core CPUs and they start at like 200 bucks.

30:40SPEAKERAnd if you configure one with what seems like

30:43SPEAKERa pretty good configuration with like, you know,

30:46SPEAKERit's small SSD in there, like four gigs of RAM,

30:49SPEAKERit's gonna come in at like $250 or so,

30:51SPEAKERwhich seems like a pretty reasonable amount to spend on.

30:54SPEAKER- I'm glad, I'm glad you brought these up

30:56SPEAKERbecause before I got that Ubiquiti router,

30:57SPEAKERI was thinking about going the PF sense route

31:00SPEAKERa couple of years ago and I just pulled up Protectly

31:03SPEAKERand I was looking at these exact boxes back then.

31:05SPEAKER- I think these are a pretty popular choice

31:07SPEAKERfor PF sense.

31:09SPEAKER- So at least back then, you could find a bunch of these

31:12SPEAKERon like AliExpress coming out of like Shenzhen,

31:15SPEAKERI think with a badge with some different brands on them,

31:17SPEAKERbut they're, yeah, these little fanless boxes

31:19SPEAKERwhere the whole thing is just a giant heat sink.

31:21SPEAKER- Yeah, and if you look on Amazon,

31:22SPEAKERyou'll see a lot of similar, like similar systems

31:26SPEAKERthat are in that 200, $300 range,

31:28SPEAKERobviously like Chinese computers,

31:31SPEAKERgreat value for what you're getting.

31:33SPEAKER- The thing that I struggled with a lot of those

31:37SPEAKERlooking at them was trying to identify what routing,

31:40SPEAKERwhat network card they had in them.

31:42SPEAKERAnd most of them just don't expressly say

31:45SPEAKERwhat the network card is.

31:47SPEAKERAnd because they're not like American companies

31:50SPEAKERwith marketing budgets, when you go to their website,

31:53SPEAKERthey do not have like good documentation

31:56SPEAKERthat breaks any of that stuff down.

31:57SPEAKERSo it was just really hard to figure that information out.

32:00SPEAKERAnd most people in the PF sense community anyway,

32:03SPEAKERreally recommend Intel cards over Broadcom or Realtek.

32:08SPEAKERSome of that is probably like,

32:12SPEAKERit's just sort of community, like mumbo jumbo,

32:15SPEAKERyou know, like people have been saying Intel is better

32:17SPEAKERfor long enough that everyone thinks Intel is better.

32:20SPEAKERBut I think there's some driver stuff there too,

32:23SPEAKERfor FreeBSD that is legit.

32:25SPEAKER- A lot of these on the open source operating systems,

32:27SPEAKERjust straight up hardware support

32:29SPEAKERis an actual concern for sure.

32:32SPEAKERI was gonna say like, when you're looking at these,

32:36SPEAKERwhen you're looking at these different,

32:37SPEAKERwhat like, what's the power,

32:38SPEAKERhave you looked at the power consumption for this thing?

32:40SPEAKERLike it's gotta be pretty hefty.

32:42SPEAKER- For mine?

32:42SPEAKER- Yeah, for running BSD.

32:44SPEAKER'Cause like BSD is power management is not,

32:46SPEAKERit's not like BSD is turning CPU cores off

32:49SPEAKERwhen they're not getting used, right?

32:50SPEAKERYou're...

32:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I've just decided to not care about it for a while.

32:56SPEAKER- There's one solution.

32:57SPEAKER- We'll see what the power bill looks like over time.

33:01SPEAKERBut like, when I look at the dashboard,

33:04SPEAKERmy CPU usage on this thing,

33:06SPEAKERand this just shows you like how overkill it is.

33:08SPEAKERIf I run like speed test

33:10SPEAKERand I'm hitting like almost full gigabit,

33:12SPEAKERit's at like 11%.

33:14SPEAKERThat's the highest I've seen it go.

33:16SPEAKERNormally it's at like 5% and it's running pretty cool.

33:19SPEAKERSo I don't think it's using,

33:23SPEAKERconsidering it sits right next to my home server,

33:25SPEAKERwhich is also running 24/7,

33:27SPEAKERI feel like this one is probably a drop in the bucket

33:29SPEAKERin power usage compared to that,

33:31SPEAKERwhich is running Plex movies and stuff all the time, so.

33:35SPEAKER- Yeah, I can see that.

33:36SPEAKER- It's probably a few bucks, you know.

33:38SPEAKER- Are you doing, I know when you get into

33:42SPEAKERlike this kind of,

33:43SPEAKERthere's a bunch of functionality you can add.

33:45SPEAKERLike you could run a VPN,

33:47SPEAKERlike theoretically if you ever left the house again,

33:49SPEAKERyou got a VPN that lets you VPN into the house.

33:51SPEAKEROr set it up as an end node for your corporate VPN.

33:56SPEAKERSo when you need to connect to the company VPN,

33:58SPEAKERyou can do that as a house rather than as a client.

34:01SPEAKER- And doing that kind of stuff

34:02SPEAKERis where having the higher end CPU actually matters.

34:06SPEAKERSo I don't have any of it set up yet,

34:07SPEAKERbut I think eventually I'm gonna try out the VPN stuff.

34:11SPEAKERAnd the VPN, it runs open VPN,

34:14SPEAKERis what's built into PFSense.

34:16SPEAKERFrom what I've read, it can only do single core.

34:19SPEAKERSo that's where having a faster CPU

34:21SPEAKERactually can be pretty significant.

34:24SPEAKERAt least two to three gigahertz,

34:26SPEAKERI think is what you want for the single

34:28SPEAKERcore performance there.

34:30SPEAKERAnd that's where you also need more RAM.

34:33SPEAKERNow when I say more RAM, like four gigs is probably plenty.

34:38SPEAKERMine has 16 in it because I had two eight gig sticks,

34:41SPEAKERbut I'm using 4% of the memory right now.

34:45SPEAKERIf I ran open VPN and also one of the popular

34:51SPEAKERplugins for this is, well there's two,

34:54SPEAKERthere's one called Snort and one called Suricata,

34:58SPEAKERthinking they're both like for packet sniffing basically.

35:02SPEAKERSo if I ran one of those,

35:04SPEAKERthat would probably use a gig or two of RAM by itself.

35:09SPEAKERVPN would use like a gig.

35:11SPEAKERSo that's where four gigs is like an actual

35:14SPEAKERlike possible situation where you're hitting,

35:17SPEAKERas opposed to me right now,

35:18SPEAKERI'm using like 200 megabytes or something.

35:21SPEAKER- I would love to talk to you down the road

35:23SPEAKERabout your VPN performance provided we ever actually

35:25SPEAKERdo get to leave the house again.

35:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm excited to try that out.

35:29SPEAKER- So I run a VPN on my router and A, it's fantastic.

35:34SPEAKERIt is super worth whatever effort you have to put into it

35:36SPEAKERbecause being out in the world and just being able

35:38SPEAKERto connect to your home network and have access

35:39SPEAKERto 100% of the resources on your network from anywhere

35:43SPEAKERis worth its weight in gold, even though it has no weight,

35:46SPEAKER'cause it's not a tangible thing.

35:48SPEAKERBut the thing I was gonna say is like, you're right.

35:51SPEAKERLike I've got gigabit up and down here.

35:53SPEAKERSo theoretically, all other things being equal,

35:56SPEAKERI should be able to get like roughly, you know,

35:58SPEAKER900 megabits from my house or whatever,

36:01SPEAKERexcept that the encryption involved in VPN bottlenecks,

36:05SPEAKERthat's pretty severely, not terribly,

36:08SPEAKERbut like my performance through my VPN tops out

36:11SPEAKERat something like 400 megabit through a 900 plus

36:15SPEAKERmegabit upstream because my router is not fast enough

36:18SPEAKERto crunch the encryption faster.

36:20SPEAKER- Still pretty good for a VPN. - It's fine.

36:22SPEAKERLike I'm not complaining.

36:22SPEAKERLike it's 400 megabit is totally fine.

36:24SPEAKER- But what if it could be better?

36:26SPEAKER- Right, exactly.

36:26SPEAKERLike academically looking at that and going like,

36:28SPEAKERwell, this is a pretty fast router,

36:30SPEAKERbut I am kind of limiting my VPN speeds here.

36:32SPEAKERSo like, I'm curious with you being on like a real beefy

36:34SPEAKERCPU like that, like if you could hit much higher speeds

36:38SPEAKERthan that through that encrypted tunnel,

36:40SPEAKERI wouldn't be surprised if you could.

36:41SPEAKER- Yeah, I would like to try that out.

36:42SPEAKERAnd I think another really important factor there

36:45SPEAKERis having a CPU that can do the AES-NI, the new instruction,

36:51SPEAKERwhich I think if you're getting any Intel CPU,

36:54SPEAKERother than like some super low end embedded

36:57SPEAKERor something that's ancient,

36:59SPEAKERlike you're going to find there.

37:01SPEAKER- It's like post Sandy bridge or something for that, right?

37:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm trying to remember.

37:02SPEAKERI had to look into that when I built the FreeNAS machine too,

37:04SPEAKERbecause there are encryption considerations there as well.

37:07SPEAKERAnd I want to say it's anything from the last,

37:10SPEAKERthrowing out a number here, like five, six years,

37:12SPEAKERI want to say at least.

37:15SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, cause mine is at least four years old.

37:17SPEAKERSo, and I think it's well within the new era.

37:20SPEAKER- It's definitely anything from like Skylake or newer,

37:23SPEAKERI would say, and probably even further back than that.

37:26SPEAKER- Yeah, so not something that you're probably

37:28SPEAKERgoing to run into unless you're trying to build,

37:30SPEAKERbuild or buy like a really cheap system.

37:34SPEAKEROr if you're like, oh,

37:35SPEAKERI have a core two duo Dell in my closet from,

37:40SPEAKERfrom work 12 years ago.

37:42SPEAKERLike, let me turn that into a router that might not cut it.

37:49SPEAKER- I was looking up to see which ones,

37:50SPEAKERit looks like it's even Haswell.

37:52SPEAKER- Okay.

37:52SPEAKER- It's way back.

37:53SPEAKERIt's like Westmere, some Westmere processors.

37:56SPEAKER- What is Westmere?

37:57SPEAKER- Sandy bridge processors, Ivy bridge Haswell, Broadwell.

38:00SPEAKER- You just made that one up, right?

38:01SPEAKER- Everything supports it.

38:02SPEAKER- Which one?

38:03SPEAKER- Westmere?

38:04SPEAKERWhat is that?

38:05SPEAKER- Westmere.

38:05SPEAKER- Is that actually a thing?

38:06SPEAKER- Westmere is Gulf town.

38:08SPEAKERSo it's like the, it's the post.

38:11SPEAKER- Oh, you mean formerly Nehalem sea.

38:14SPEAKER- It's it's the die.

38:15SPEAKERIt's the Nehalem die shrink.

38:16SPEAKERYeah.

38:17SPEAKERSo it's like also Arendelle also a big, big,

38:21SPEAKERbig fans of those from a way back in a frozen one.

38:24SPEAKER- Big ups to.

38:25SPEAKER- Not so much as frozen two, it turns out, but you know.

38:28SPEAKER- These could all just be airplanes also, Intel names.

38:33SPEAKER- They ran out of rivers in, in Oregon and Washington.

38:36SPEAKERDidn't they?

38:36SPEAKERIsn't that what I feel like once that happened,

38:38SPEAKERthey had to change the mountains and all bets were off.

38:40SPEAKERSo, and then they're just like, I don't know,

38:42SPEAKERjust put a word in front of Lake Tiger Lake.

38:44SPEAKERSure.

38:45SPEAKERI feel like we should do, we should do an episode about,

38:47SPEAKERabout computer project names, code names,

38:49SPEAKERbecause I feel like so many of them are so boring.

38:52SPEAKER- Oh, I mean, some of them are really boring,

38:54SPEAKERbut some of them also have really fantastic backstories.

38:56SPEAKERAnd of course the moment I say that I can't think of a

38:58SPEAKERsingle one that has a good backstory, but yeah.

39:02SPEAKER- But it's always just like,

39:03SPEAKERoh, let's name it after national parks or cities,

39:06SPEAKERor like mundane features you could possibly think of.

39:09SPEAKER- One of the plugins I use on PF sense has like a perfectly

39:14SPEAKERnonsense name, which is a PF blocker NG.

39:17SPEAKERI don't know what that,

39:18SPEAKERmaybe the NG stands for the next generation, man.

39:21SPEAKERIt probably is.

39:22SPEAKERIt's probably next generation, but that one is a,

39:26SPEAKERit's a very,

39:27SPEAKERit's basically PF sense is equivalent of running a pie hole

39:30SPEAKERon your network.

39:32SPEAKERIt's a different form of blocking,

39:34SPEAKERbut it's basically for pretty broad spectrum,

39:37SPEAKERad blocking, whitelist blacklists.

39:40SPEAKERYou can load in all kinds of pre-configured lists you want

39:44SPEAKERcustomize your own, of course.

39:46SPEAKERAnd as much as like being in media and ad blocking makes me

39:50SPEAKERfeel tremendous guilt.

39:52SPEAKER- Yes, I have similar, similar hang ups.

39:54SPEAKER- Also like you can barely fucking browse the internet

39:57SPEAKERanymore if you're not blocking at least some stuff like

40:00SPEAKERmobile sites are just impossible.

40:03SPEAKER- Do you know about tonsil stones Wes?

40:05SPEAKER- Oh no, let's not, let's just not.

40:08SPEAKER- I've seen some,

40:09SPEAKERI've seen some like fucked up legs with like the weird,

40:12SPEAKERlike sock marks on them and just,

40:14SPEAKERI don't want to see that, man.

40:15SPEAKER- I thought we declared this podcast on no tonsil stones.

40:18SPEAKER- Oh, I mean, I did.

40:20SPEAKERThat's why I put the pile in a few months ago.

40:22SPEAKERI saw, I got the tonsil stone ads five times in one day or

40:25SPEAKERsomething. I was like, no, I say no more.

40:27SPEAKER- I can't believe we're doing this again.

40:30SPEAKERHow does, how does,

40:31SPEAKERhow does PF says handle a plugin like discovery and also

40:34SPEAKERinstallation?

40:34SPEAKERDo they have some kind of like central repository where it's

40:37SPEAKERjust kind of one click install or you have to go out.

40:40SPEAKER- It has a package manager where there might be ones that

40:44SPEAKERdon't show up on this list that other people have made that

40:47SPEAKERaren't like in the official repository or whatever.

40:50SPEAKERBut if you go to the package manager,

40:51SPEAKERthere's like maybe 30 that you can just like scroll through

40:55SPEAKERand you click install and it installs in like two minutes.

40:59SPEAKERAnd then it's just up and running.

41:00SPEAKERAnd it even has nice like widgets for your front dashboard.

41:03SPEAKERIf you want to put a widget in for whatever package you

41:07SPEAKERjust plugged in. So yeah.

41:08SPEAKER- Are they, are they vetting those?

41:11SPEAKERThe ones that are official?

41:12SPEAKER- I feel like they must be just because there aren't all

41:15SPEAKERthat many of them.

41:17SPEAKER- Like you said, they have built a business on this thing.

41:20SPEAKERSo it is certainly in their interest to keep an eye on that

41:23SPEAKERstuff.

41:24SPEAKER- Yeah. There's so few of them.

41:25SPEAKERThere's nothing in here that looks like sketchy.

41:27SPEAKERLike I'm installing some,

41:29SPEAKERsome weird pop-up blocker.

41:32SPEAKER- China owns your machine now, like mode.

41:36SPEAKER- I'll report back in a year.

41:37SPEAKERIf it turns out that China has actually been on my router

41:41SPEAKERthe whole time.

41:43SPEAKER- Have you had any emergencies? Like,

41:44SPEAKERhas anything gone wrong and you've had to like recover yet

41:46SPEAKERor not? It's too soon to say.

41:48SPEAKER- Nothing so far. It's been totally solid.

41:51SPEAKERI haven't even, I don't think it's even been turned off yet.

41:54SPEAKERLike I haven't had like a power surge or anything.

41:56SPEAKERCause actually I,

41:58SPEAKERI realized I need to go into the motherboard and set it to

42:02SPEAKERturn on after.

42:05SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

42:05SPEAKER- Like a reboot or whatever to turn itself back on.

42:08SPEAKER- And the power goes out.

42:09SPEAKER- I figured I will do that when it gets powered off for some

42:13SPEAKERreason. And it hasn't, it hasn't gotten powered off yet.

42:16SPEAKERAnd it's been a couple months. So eventually I'll,

42:19SPEAKERI'll do that.

42:19SPEAKER- It does seem compelling to have like bog standard hardware

42:24SPEAKERin there that if something goes wrong,

42:25SPEAKERyou can just open the box and swap out the memory and be

42:28SPEAKERback up and running and not like,

42:30SPEAKERlike I literally have a spare router in the garage just in

42:33SPEAKERcase shit goes bad.

42:34SPEAKER- Yeah. I do not know how to troubleshoot the hardware of a

42:38SPEAKERnet gear router.

42:39SPEAKERLike I could take the plastic off and be like, well,

42:42SPEAKERit hasn't exploded. So I'm out of guesses, you know,

42:45SPEAKERbut like with the computer,

42:47SPEAKERI can open it up and test the Ram and that kind of thing.

42:52SPEAKER- I assume does PF sense to automate,

42:53SPEAKERlike backing up all your settings to like one file.

42:56SPEAKERLike I like free NAS has that where you can just dump your

42:58SPEAKERsettings to like a JSON file or XML file or something.

43:04SPEAKER- Yeah. I haven't actually, I haven't actually looked,

43:07SPEAKERbut it's got to have somewhere.

43:09SPEAKERIt's got to have a backup. I hope, yeah.

43:12SPEAKERI should probably, should probably look into that.

43:14SPEAKER- Should I ask you've got on the, on the show notes here.

43:17SPEAKERYou're like your to-do list for this thing is a PFA TT

43:22SPEAKERbypass, some kind of true branch mode.

43:24SPEAKER- Yeah. So are you on also on U-verse fiber, Brad?

43:29SPEAKER- I am not.

43:30SPEAKERI am familiar with their kind of mandated hardware situation

43:33SPEAKERand how much people seem to dislike it.

43:37SPEAKER- So they have this weird thing where you can DMZ plus the

43:42SPEAKERdevices behind your router,

43:44SPEAKERwhich theoretically is supposed to just like pass everything

43:47SPEAKERthrough, but it does have,

43:49SPEAKERsome people just run into something where like on certain

43:51SPEAKERmodels, it just is fucked up basically. It doesn't work.

43:54SPEAKERAnd it's like, oh, I have gigabit,

43:55SPEAKERbut when I DMZ plus on my modem,

43:58SPEAKERI only get like 50 megabit or something.

44:00SPEAKERThankfully I didn't run into that issue,

44:02SPEAKERbut it does still have some limitations with like how many

44:07SPEAKERconnections you can have passing through it in total that

44:11SPEAKERobviously would be less than something as powerful as the

44:14SPEAKERrouter I built. So somebody has developed a,

44:19SPEAKERlike a system to basically enable a true bridge with the

44:24SPEAKERAT&T modem, which if I understand correctly,

44:27SPEAKERyou're basically able to remove it from the chain in terms

44:31SPEAKERof it doing anything functional, but AT&T,

44:35SPEAKERthey have a system set up to where like they need to be able

44:38SPEAKERto see that modem.

44:39SPEAKERThey're not going to let you roll your own modem.

44:42SPEAKERSo they're like, they're pinging it or something like that.

44:46SPEAKERSo they, somebody set up a thing with PF sense,

44:48SPEAKERwhere you can basically take that ping or,

44:52SPEAKERor whatever it is from AT&T and route it to the modem that

44:56SPEAKERyou have connected to your box.

44:59SPEAKERBut it's just like literally only that bit of data goes to

45:03SPEAKERthe modem and just the modem is just like, yeah,

45:06SPEAKERI'm still here. Everything's good.

45:08SPEAKERAnd then your router actually does all the work.

45:10SPEAKER- So you just plug your modem in on the inside,

45:12SPEAKERthe network side of the,

45:14SPEAKERyour existing modem slash router into the inside part of

45:16SPEAKERyour network. And well, that's really neat.

45:19SPEAKERCause that's the problem. I like that's,

45:21SPEAKERthat is literally why I gave up was like, well, fuck it.

45:22SPEAKERI'm just going to run the AT&T router because it's fine.

45:25SPEAKER- Yeah, so I haven't really looked into this.

45:28SPEAKERCause it seemed a little bit daunting,

45:31SPEAKERbut I think eventually I'm going to, I'm going to try it out.

45:34SPEAKERLike next,

45:35SPEAKERbasically next time something doesn't work right.

45:37SPEAKERAnd I can't figure out what it is and I get pissed off.

45:40SPEAKERI'm just going to be like, it's time to, it's time to do this.

45:42SPEAKERTime to take it out of the equation and see if it fixes it.

45:45SPEAKER- So I was going to, I'm sorry, I was just going to say,

45:47SPEAKERso somebody has come up with a similar method for the edge

45:49SPEAKERrouters, like the one I have to bypass AT&T stuff.

45:52SPEAKERAnd like, to me,

45:54SPEAKERgenerally that's one of the great things about running these

45:56SPEAKERopen source type projects is that if something irritates

45:59SPEAKERyou, it is 100% certainty that it is already irritated.

46:03SPEAKERSome other people are capable of actually doing something

46:06SPEAKERabout it.

46:07SPEAKERSo like, if you're willing to put up with the, you know,

46:09SPEAKERjust the fiddliness of implementing stuff like this,

46:14SPEAKERlike you can circumvent all kinds of stuff that you couldn't

46:16SPEAKERwith a consumer solution.

46:17SPEAKER- And I would say similarly to that,

46:18SPEAKERlike we've all been there where we've had something like a

46:23SPEAKERLinksys router that's not working right.

46:26SPEAKERAnd you're Googling the problem and all you find is like the

46:31SPEAKERLinksys forums and like 500 other people screaming,

46:35SPEAKERlike, please help me about this one particular variant.

46:39SPEAKERYou're like typing in a seven letter string that identifies

46:43SPEAKERthat one router.

46:44SPEAKERAnd you're like trying to troubleshoot this one specific

46:46SPEAKERdevice that sucks with something like PF sense,

46:50SPEAKERbecause it's open source, if people have problems,

46:53SPEAKERthey all are going to go to this one community.

46:58SPEAKERAnd so you're not, you don't have this like weird,

47:01SPEAKERjust like spread out nexus of people having issues with

47:04SPEAKERspecific router models.

47:05SPEAKERLike all the problems go to one place.

47:07SPEAKERIt all goes to a subreddit or like a community of people

47:10SPEAKERwhose lives are dealing with like network stuff.

47:14SPEAKERLike they enjoy it.

47:15SPEAKERSo I feel like the troubleshooting here is so much easier

47:19SPEAKERand better documented than it is with a consumer router that

47:23SPEAKERweirdly, even though it's more complex technology,

47:26SPEAKERit's a lot easier to, to get solutions.

47:29SPEAKER- A lot of those baseline problems just no longer exist in

47:32SPEAKERthose communities because it is an open thing that a lot of

47:34SPEAKERpeople have been banging on for so long that like a,

47:36SPEAKERlike a closed, like a black box ASUS or whatever,

47:40SPEAKERbut you can't look into that. You know,

47:41SPEAKERyou can't see what it's doing under there.

47:42SPEAKERThat's screwing up your multicast traffic or whatever

47:45SPEAKERproblem it has. Whereas like with something like this,

47:48SPEAKERpeople have peered in there and they've,

47:49SPEAKERthey figured out a lot of stuff a long time ago.

47:51SPEAKERSo like coming into the project is already going to work a

47:53SPEAKERlot better, even before you needed to do any troubleshooting.

47:56SPEAKER- How's the community? I mean, there's,

47:58SPEAKERthere's kind of like there's a spectrum,

48:01SPEAKERa spectrum of communities that starts with like, yeah, man,

48:04SPEAKERjust ask your questions and we're cool.

48:06SPEAKERAnd then goes up to here's a five page template of all of the

48:10SPEAKERthings that have ever been connected to your network that

48:12SPEAKERyou need to like submit before we're going to answer a

48:14SPEAKERquestion about, you know, turning on DHCP.

48:19SPEAKER- That's the question. That's it. That's all I got.

48:22SPEAKER- If, yeah, the, I love the foreign people who are like,

48:25SPEAKERif this question has ever been asked before,

48:28SPEAKERlike get the hell out.

48:29SPEAKER- Yeah, fuck you.

48:30SPEAKER- Why didn't you find the thread from seven years ago?

48:35SPEAKERAny one of those communities.

48:36SPEAKER- Three message boards ago.

48:37SPEAKER- They're all going to have their gray beards and I don't

48:41SPEAKERknow, man, I think you can rest assured that a lot of people

48:43SPEAKERthere quietly have the same feeling you do about that stuff.

48:46SPEAKER- I ran into that a little bit when I was,

48:48SPEAKERbefore we did the show, I was like,

48:50SPEAKERtrying to find some more specifics of people talking about

48:53SPEAKERthe Intel versus Broadcom and like found a classic flame war

48:57SPEAKERthread where one guy was like real tech is better than Intel

49:01SPEAKERand then just everybody's shitting on him for like posts

49:04SPEAKERand posts and posts.

49:05SPEAKER- So normal open source community,

49:07SPEAKERthat is what you're saying.

49:08SPEAKER- Normal open source community,

49:08SPEAKERbut the Netgate site itself seems to have pretty good

49:11SPEAKERdocumentation for all the basic stuff you can do through the

49:15SPEAKERinterface. And then I found the Reddit community,

49:18SPEAKERlike pretty decent in terms of having threads where people

49:21SPEAKERare actually recommending hardware and stuff.

49:24SPEAKERThankfully I haven't had to actually go out and like ask my

49:26SPEAKERown questions yet.

49:27SPEAKERSo we'll see if I change my tomb on that at some point.

49:32SPEAKER- I guess that's,

49:33SPEAKERI think that I think we've kind of hit all the high points.

49:35SPEAKERI'm interested to hear what you do with this in the future,

49:39SPEAKERif anything,

49:40SPEAKERother than just like leaving it as a normal router and a VPN

49:44SPEAKERand I hate to say this.

49:48SPEAKEROh, I do have one other thing.

49:50SPEAKERWe talked about Raspberry Pis early on.

49:52SPEAKERYou don't want to use a Raspberry Pi for a router because of

49:56SPEAKERthe way they're wired up.

49:57SPEAKERLike the buses that connect the network port and the,

50:01SPEAKERbecause you need two ethernet interfaces to do a router.

50:05SPEAKERThe other one has to come across the USB bus and it's going

50:07SPEAKERto be, it's going to get you at 480 megabits because of the

50:10SPEAKERway it's hooked up.

50:11SPEAKER- So that is true right up to the four,

50:13SPEAKERbut they did finally overcome that limitation with the

50:15SPEAKERRaspberry Pi four.

50:16SPEAKER- Oh, it's sports three.

50:18SPEAKER- My understanding is it has full gigabit throughput that

50:21SPEAKERthe Nick is no longer going through the USB bus on that

50:23SPEAKERthing.

50:24SPEAKER- But your second,

50:26SPEAKERyour second Nick is going to be going through the USB bus.

50:28SPEAKER- Yeah. So, so I mean, it finally has USB three,

50:31SPEAKERso I guess that's better, but I don't know if that,

50:33SPEAKERI don't know if a USB three ethernet adapter could achieve

50:35SPEAKERthe speeds you need there or not.

50:37SPEAKER- Like, I guess if you live,

50:38SPEAKERif you have like 100 megabit internet or something,

50:41SPEAKERand you're just looking for a little project,

50:44SPEAKERcertainly a lot cheaper to buy a Raspberry Pi than to build

50:47SPEAKERan Intel system.

50:48SPEAKER- Yeah, but like you said, I mean,

50:49SPEAKERthey're also the Intel, I still,

50:51SPEAKERI think we still haven't decided if it's NUC or Nuke,

50:53SPEAKERthe NUC.

50:54SPEAKER- It's Nuke, it's how the Intel people always said it.

50:56SPEAKERYes.

50:56SPEAKER- I still hear people say an Intel NUC, but.

50:58SPEAKER- Well, those people can.

51:01SPEAKER- I mean, you can get a decent one of those.

51:03SPEAKERThose are x86 based for like a hundred dollars and change.

51:06SPEAKERSo there are other options out there.

51:10SPEAKER- They get an inexpensive and like the gigabyte,

51:14SPEAKERthere's a gigabyte Celeron, like dual Celeron,

51:17SPEAKERlike those seed, shit,

51:19SPEAKERmy ad blocker just blocked the link that I clicked.

51:22SPEAKERBut the seed Odyssey boards, which are like x86 quad core,

51:29SPEAKERI guess what would have been a penny of a Celeron J4105s

51:32SPEAKERare like 200 bucks with two network cards and a micro slot

51:37SPEAKERand all that stuff.

51:38SPEAKERThere's hardware that is ready to go basically, so.

51:42SPEAKER- Yeah, I think the next step for me,

51:43SPEAKERand I'm really glad to have this device partially

51:47SPEAKERbecause it's now separated entirely from my wifi experience.

51:53SPEAKERSo I can have a really good router

51:55SPEAKERthat should last a long time.

51:57SPEAKERLike I can't see, I guess the next step would be

52:00SPEAKERif I need to go beyond gigabit.

52:04SPEAKER- Or you want to reduce power.

52:05SPEAKERLike my guess is you're gonna look at the 20 bucks a month

52:07SPEAKERit's gonna cost to run this and you're gonna be like,

52:08SPEAKERI might spend 200 bucks on a low power board, I don't know.

52:12SPEAKER- Yeah, but like, I think even then I would basically

52:14SPEAKERkeep the same PF sense set up,

52:17SPEAKERbut then I'm looking forward to like, okay,

52:19SPEAKERonce wifi six is well-established,

52:22SPEAKERprices come down a little bit,

52:23SPEAKERthen maybe I build my own mesh network

52:27SPEAKERwith like some unify access points or something.

52:30SPEAKERAnd when you're buying just access points

52:32SPEAKERinstead of a bundled router, like they're pretty cheap.

52:37SPEAKERYou know, you can get really good ones

52:38SPEAKERfor a hundred bucks or something.

52:40SPEAKER- That is, to me, that is one of the best things

52:42SPEAKERabout getting into slightly higher end networking gear

52:45SPEAKERis decoupling the wifi from the router slash firewall

52:48SPEAKERfeels so liberating.

52:50SPEAKERLike I've got a pretty standard AC access point,

52:55SPEAKERlike A, wifi six coming along,

52:56SPEAKERB, like after I bought the one I have,

52:58SPEAKERI kind of wished I had gotten like the slightly higher tier

53:00SPEAKERone with more antennas and blah, blah, blah.

53:02SPEAKERBut point is, like you said, like once your router

53:04SPEAKERis in place, you just kind of forget it's over there.

53:07SPEAKERAnd then as wifi standards mature

53:09SPEAKERor you want more capabilities or whatever,

53:11SPEAKERyou just buy more wifi stuff bolted onto the network

53:14SPEAKERinstead of having to throw the whole

53:15SPEAKERkind of the baby out with the bathwater and start over.

53:17SPEAKER- Totally, yeah.

53:19SPEAKER- So real quick, before I know we're about to wrap up,

53:23SPEAKERI've been resisting the urge

53:25SPEAKERto bring up some of the PF sense, open sense drama.

53:28SPEAKERI don't know if you, did you come into contact

53:30SPEAKERwith any of that stuff at all as you researched this?

53:32SPEAKER- I want you to dish right now.

53:34SPEAKER- I mean, there's a straight up press release here

53:36SPEAKERon the open sense website.

53:38SPEAKER- Press release drama, Jesus Christ.

53:40SPEAKER- Apparently it ended up in court apparently.

53:42SPEAKERI didn't realize it had gone that far.

53:44SPEAKERPF sense slanders open sense with fake domain

53:47SPEAKERand Nazi imagery.

53:48SPEAKER- Wow, holy shit, I didn't expect to have,

53:51SPEAKERtalk about Godwin's law today.

53:54SPEAKER- Netgate slash PF sense acts in bad faith,

53:57SPEAKERsomething, something.

54:00SPEAKERYeah, I haven't looked into this stuff too much,

54:02SPEAKERbut when I thought about running one of those a while back,

54:05SPEAKERapparently there was some very bad blood

54:07SPEAKERwhen open sense forked from PF sense.

54:09SPEAKER- I guess when you take your hobby seriously enough,

54:12SPEAKERat some point it just escalates to slander

54:17SPEAKERand Nazi symbols, I don't know.

54:18SPEAKER- Like there's some accusation

54:20SPEAKERof their domain being hijacked.

54:23SPEAKER- Wow.

54:24SPEAKER- Having a bunch of kind of FUD type material

54:27SPEAKERput on there for a bit.

54:28SPEAKER- I guess it's like the problem when you piss off

54:30SPEAKERlike networking nerds is they know how to fuck up

54:33SPEAKERyour internet presence.

54:35SPEAKER- Oh wow, I just ended up on the vandalized page

54:39SPEAKERon the wayback machine.

54:41SPEAKERWe have features, but that's not what's important.

54:43SPEAKERWhen we fork a stable enterprise proven software project,

54:46SPEAKERwe strip out most of the important functionality.

54:50SPEAKERI don't know.

54:50SPEAKER- So they were just offended that they forked it

54:52SPEAKERand changed the shit that they had bundled up in there.

54:54SPEAKER- They literally embedded the Hitler downfall meme video

54:57SPEAKERon here.

54:58SPEAKER- Jesus.

54:59SPEAKER- And made the run.

55:00SPEAKER- Well, okay, I don't know if, okay,

55:01SPEAKERso I don't know if embedding the downfall meme is,

55:04SPEAKERI mean, I guess there is Nazi imagery in the downfall meme,

55:07SPEAKERbut I don't, that's like reading that press release,

55:10SPEAKERI was like.

55:11SPEAKER- People are kind of stretching that a little bit,

55:12SPEAKERit's a different joke, yeah.

55:13SPEAKER- Yeah, well it's, yeah, it's like different than like,

55:16SPEAKERyeah, hey, Open Sense, great routing, also we're Nazis.

55:20SPEAKERSo, you know, hey, come join us.

55:22SPEAKERIt's a different message there.

55:23SPEAKER- Looking into this a little bit right before we started,

55:25SPEAKERI ended up on the PF Sense subreddit

55:27SPEAKERand found a post from a couple of years ago entitled,

55:29SPEAKER"Feature Request, Less Drama."

55:31SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, that sounds great.

55:33SPEAKER- Apparently, as contentious as open source projects can get,

55:36SPEAKERthis one is really up there, it sounds like.

55:40SPEAKER- Thankfully none of this has manifested

55:41SPEAKERin my router itself.

55:43SPEAKER- That's the thing, everything I've read

55:44SPEAKERjust makes it sound like both of those projects

55:46SPEAKERare perfectly fine and do exactly what they're supposed to.

55:49SPEAKER- Yeah, if you're interested in building one of these,

55:52SPEAKERI would say just look at like some screenshots of the two

55:55SPEAKERand go based on the UI that you like more,

55:58SPEAKERbecause unless you're a really heavy user

56:02SPEAKERwho's gonna get into the super technical capabilities

56:06SPEAKERof both of them and like determine the one thing

56:08SPEAKERthat one of them does better,

56:10SPEAKERjust go on the one that looks nicer to you

56:12SPEAKERand you'll be fine.

56:13SPEAKER- Could we, before we let Wes go,

56:15SPEAKERcan we have five minutes to talk about deleting CPU's?

56:19SPEAKER- I'd be delighted. - Yeah.

56:20SPEAKER- Well, I get Wes to care, apparently,

56:21SPEAKERI didn't realize this till we had him on for this,

56:23SPEAKERbut I guess he's the guy who actually follows through

56:26SPEAKERon all the computer projects that I am interested in

56:29SPEAKERand then back off of.

56:31SPEAKERBut yeah, what has it been, like two years now

56:34SPEAKERthat I've been talking about,

56:35SPEAKERborrowing that bracket from you to--

56:37SPEAKER- Yeah, I was like, "Yeah, you can borrow this thing."

56:39SPEAKERWe were gonna, you were gonna do it on the live stream maybe

56:41SPEAKERand then just like, not exactly a pressing, timely project,

56:46SPEAKERso it just kind of slid.

56:48SPEAKERYeah, I did it a couple of years ago,

56:49SPEAKER'cause I got a, it was a 7700K.

56:52SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I have.

56:53SPEAKERI'd read, it's seen people talking about like,

56:56SPEAKERhow shitty the thermal paste they put on them is,

56:59SPEAKERand how-- - And the cooling

57:00SPEAKERis terrible, man.

57:01SPEAKER- Yeah, and how hot they run,

57:03SPEAKERand so if you de-lit it and put on some liquid metal shit,

57:06SPEAKERit's like 10 to 20 Celsius cooler operation,

57:10SPEAKERwhich is pretty massive.

57:12SPEAKERSo I bought the Derbauer de-litter

57:18SPEAKERand ran it through, put my CPU through it,

57:21SPEAKERwas scared shitless that I was gonna destroy it,

57:25SPEAKERbut it was actually, it's a pretty easy process,

57:27SPEAKERlike you just be careful and put it back in and--

57:31SPEAKER- I was gonna say, so when I do,

57:32SPEAKERwe de-litted stuff at Maximum PC years ago a few times,

57:35SPEAKERand it was always, like the only reason it wasn't terrifying

57:38SPEAKERwas 'cause if we fucked it up, we would've just called Intel

57:40SPEAKERand they would've sent us a new CPU.

57:42SPEAKER- Were you using like a vice grip and like a hammer?

57:46SPEAKERHow were you doing that?

57:47SPEAKER- We had a bench vice and it almost looked

57:50SPEAKERlike a ROM puller, like it was a thing that you put up

57:53SPEAKERand there's gaps on the edges

57:55SPEAKERwhere you could get up under there

57:56SPEAKERand then you kind of heated it a little bit

57:57SPEAKERand just kind of popped it off.

58:00SPEAKERBut the scary part, and I think the only place

58:02SPEAKERwe ever had problems was on cinching the coolers back down,

58:06SPEAKERbecause it was before they did,

58:09SPEAKERit was, I mean, it was before they had the stops

58:11SPEAKERon the screw downs, now you can't,

58:17SPEAKERyou kind of can't over-tighten a CPU these days.

58:20SPEAKERI'm sure somebody can, but you have to really work at it.

58:23SPEAKERAnd back then you could cinch it down

58:25SPEAKERand just, you'd hear a bad sound,

58:27SPEAKERjust a very, very faint bad sound.

58:30SPEAKERAnd then the parts that make your CPU smart

58:32SPEAKERare smushed in with the parts

58:34SPEAKERthat do not make it smart anymore.

58:36SPEAKER- Was that sound of the die cracking by any chance?

58:39SPEAKER- That was the sound of the dreams dying.

58:42SPEAKER- The die dying?

58:44SPEAKER- It turns out it doesn't take much of a mush

58:46SPEAKERto mess up a die when you're talking

58:47SPEAKERabout a really fragile piece of silicon

58:50SPEAKERthat's fully exposed to the elements.

58:52SPEAKERThere's a reason those die, those heat spreaders

58:53SPEAKERare on there.

58:54SPEAKER- So yeah, what you just described

58:56SPEAKERis what made me back off of that.

58:57SPEAKERI was not worried about the de-litting,

58:58SPEAKERlike that contraption that Wes has

59:00SPEAKERmakes it look like it's fairly foolproof, right?

59:03SPEAKERIt looks like it would be pretty hard to screw up.

59:05SPEAKER- It feels wrong, you're like, wait,

59:07SPEAKERso I just put this thing in, then I like turn a screw

59:09SPEAKERand then it'll just pop it off and it's-

59:11SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and it just pops off,

59:13SPEAKERbut it was the guesswork about, like Will said,

59:16SPEAKERputting it back in the board.

59:17SPEAKERAnd like, the thing that really stopped me

59:18SPEAKERwas the number of people that were like,

59:20SPEAKERdon't bother gluing the heat spreader back down,

59:22SPEAKERjust put it on there loose,

59:22SPEAKERthe clamp will hold it in place, it'll be fine.

59:24SPEAKER- That's what I did, and it's fine.

59:26SPEAKER- It's right, I'm sure it's crossed.

59:28SPEAKER- Oh wait, you put the heat spreader back on?

59:31SPEAKER- You have to, you put it back on,

59:33SPEAKERbut I didn't like glue it back or anything,

59:35SPEAKERit's just sitting on.

59:37SPEAKER- So when we did it at Max PC,

59:38SPEAKERwe just left the naked chip on

59:40SPEAKERand put the cooler on top of that,

59:41SPEAKER'cause that's the way, when you're used to de-lid,

59:44SPEAKERthat's how you, that's why you de-lid,

59:45SPEAKERis you get that loss, yeah.

59:48SPEAKER- That is Maximum PC, yeah.

59:49SPEAKER- It was fuck wild back then.

59:51SPEAKER- It's a little bit safer these days, I guess,

59:53SPEAKERboth the de-lidding itself and the re-installation,

59:57SPEAKERbut like, I looked at people's advice,

59:58SPEAKERand basically what I did is you put it back in,

1:00:00SPEAKERand then you offset the heat spreader by like,

1:00:04SPEAKERjust, you know, like a centimeter or something upwards,

1:00:08SPEAKERso that when you tighten down the bracket,

1:00:11SPEAKERit'll kinda just pull it down a little bit.

1:00:14SPEAKER- Oh, like squinch it over?

1:00:15SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly. - It was that kind of

1:00:16SPEAKERguesswork is what actually put me off of doing it,

1:00:18SPEAKERand then at some point it was just like,

1:00:19SPEAKERah, you know what, this chip is not gonna be viable forever,

1:00:21SPEAKERlike, I'm gonna get a new CPU sooner or later,

1:00:24SPEAKERit's just, let's just not bother.

1:00:25SPEAKER- Well, I still have the thing lying around somewhere,

1:00:27SPEAKERwe can do like a COVID safe, like handoff,

1:00:30SPEAKERI'll like throw it up to your window or something.

1:00:33SPEAKER- You slide it under his gait, it works great,

1:00:36SPEAKERwe do it all the time. - That's right, yeah.

1:00:38SPEAKER- I have a de-lidded Nehalem in the garage, I'm sure,

1:00:41SPEAKERin an old motherboard that was my daily driver

1:00:45SPEAKERfor like five years, probably, when we started testing, so.

1:00:48SPEAKER- That would make a fun picture if you took it apart,

1:00:51SPEAKERI bet.

1:00:52SPEAKER- I couldn't, I'll, next time I clean the garage,

1:00:54SPEAKERI will definitely find that.

1:00:55SPEAKERWesley Fenlon, Wes Fenlon, thank you so much for coming by

1:00:58SPEAKERand telling us about your stupid, unnecessary project,

1:01:01SPEAKERwe appreciate it.

1:01:02SPEAKER- Now you have to build a NAS.

1:01:04SPEAKER- Yeah, he has a NAS, Wes was a NAS lead leader,

1:01:06SPEAKERhe had a NAS before I did.

1:01:07SPEAKER- So I have a, I mean, it's not like a,

1:01:09SPEAKERit's not a NAS running one of the managed software,

1:01:15SPEAKERit's a Synology or something,

1:01:16SPEAKERit's just like a Ubuntu one I built,

1:01:18SPEAKERbut right now, I've been, for the past four months,

1:01:22SPEAKERtalking with a Chinese case company

1:01:25SPEAKERthat has like a really compact eight bay NAS case

1:01:28SPEAKERfor a micro ATX board, and like I got in touch with them

1:01:32SPEAKERin March at the beginning of COVID fever setting in,

1:01:35SPEAKER'cause I was like, I need to do a project,

1:01:37SPEAKERlike it's time to do a project, and they're like,

1:01:39SPEAKERyeah, we have this really cool case, we'll send you one,

1:01:42SPEAKERbut like there are no shipments right now,

1:01:44SPEAKERand so I've been waiting for the boats

1:01:46SPEAKERto start coming back to bring one,

1:01:48SPEAKERand I might have it in two or three weeks,

1:01:51SPEAKERso I will let you guys know how that goes.

1:01:55SPEAKER- You look at, I'm starting to think about Proxmox

1:01:58SPEAKERand Unraid, 'cause I'm feeling the urge

1:02:00SPEAKERto move off of Freeness sooner rather than later,

1:02:04SPEAKERwhich is almost certainly gonna be a boondoggle.

1:02:06SPEAKER- Freeness is getting pretty good again, but I get it.

1:02:09SPEAKER- Yeah, look, there's a lot of stuff running in jails,

1:02:13SPEAKERit'd be so much easier if I just run it in Ubuntu

1:02:14SPEAKERand like set up some Ubuntu VMs, and anyway.

1:02:19SPEAKERWes, what are you working on these days?

1:02:21SPEAKERThis is the section where we plug things.

1:02:24SPEAKER- Not much other than watching a lot of '80s anime movies

1:02:29SPEAKERin my spare time play in the new hot samurai game Sekiro

1:02:34SPEAKERfrom a year ago.

1:02:37SPEAKER- The other new hot samurai game, yeah, love that.

1:02:39SPEAKER- And at PC Gamer, I'm just doing cool stories

1:02:43SPEAKERand editing stuff for people

1:02:45SPEAKERand trying to write good articles now and then.

1:02:48SPEAKER- Work from home life treating you well.

1:02:49SPEAKERI guess I would imagine you guys, you as an outfit,

1:02:52SPEAKERwere probably tech savvy enough to adapt pretty quickly.

1:02:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I was actually work from home before that,

1:02:58SPEAKERso really it's only been like a mental adjustment.

1:03:01SPEAKERIt was like, I used to work from home

1:03:03SPEAKERand then I would go out in the evenings

1:03:04SPEAKERand go do something to get out of the house.

1:03:06SPEAKERAnd now I like, I have another computer set up

1:03:09SPEAKERin my dining room that's like my office

1:03:11SPEAKERand I basically use that one during the day

1:03:13SPEAKERand then I turn it off at 5.30 and then I come in here

1:03:17SPEAKERand I use the other computer and that's my life.

1:03:20SPEAKER- That sounds good, man.

1:03:23SPEAKERAre you just West Fenland on Twitter?

1:03:24SPEAKER- Wesley Fenland, yeah, full name on Twitter.

1:03:27SPEAKER- Thank you so much for coming by, Wes.

1:03:29SPEAKERThis has been awesome.

1:03:30SPEAKERWe'll have to have you back sometime.

1:03:30SPEAKER- Thanks for having me, yeah.

1:03:31SPEAKERI'll build some more cool shit so I can sneak back on.

1:03:33SPEAKER- Definitely, now is the time where we thank the patrons

1:03:39SPEAKERas always, this podcast is supported by your patronage

1:03:42SPEAKERand we appreciate it.

1:03:43SPEAKEREvery single person who's backing the show

1:03:45SPEAKERor just sharing the show with their friends.

1:03:48SPEAKERBut as this is the last normal episode of the month,

1:03:50SPEAKERit is time for the executive

1:03:52SPEAKERand associate producer shout outs.

1:03:54SPEAKERSo thank you so much to David Allen, Kurt Brownridge,

1:03:58SPEAKERAndrew Cotton and Jacob Chappell,

1:04:00SPEAKERour executive producer level patrons

1:04:02SPEAKERand our associate producer level patrons,

1:04:04SPEAKERGraham Banks, Thomas Shea, Sam Buck, Jad Rita,

1:04:07SPEAKERDan Brockman, Dave Ullian, The Bunny Fiend,

1:04:11SPEAKERArthur Geese and CJ Revita.

1:04:15SPEAKERThank you all so much.

1:04:16SPEAKER- Yes, absolutely.

1:04:18SPEAKERCouldn't do it without you.

1:04:19SPEAKER- Yeah, you know, the patron,

1:04:22SPEAKERthe discord wanted to open an investment channel today.

1:04:26SPEAKER- Whoa, yikes.

1:04:27SPEAKER- And I was like, this is a bad idea

1:04:30SPEAKER'cause what's gonna happen here

1:04:31SPEAKERis people are gonna give advice

1:04:32SPEAKERand then somebody's gonna lose up.

1:04:33SPEAKERLike if you guys want to just hate each other a lot

1:04:35SPEAKERafter the end of like six weeks,

1:04:37SPEAKERlet's just start a Neptune's pride channel

1:04:39SPEAKERand we'll get a big Neptune's pride game going

1:04:41SPEAKERand everybody will be so angry at the end of like six weeks

1:04:44SPEAKERthat the whole thing will just shut down.

1:04:46SPEAKERSo we dodged that bullet, I think.

1:04:49SPEAKER- I was gonna say, we might have to start addressing

1:04:51SPEAKERour own liability in this situation.

1:04:54SPEAKER- Look, there are a bunch of good ideas in there,

1:04:57SPEAKERbut there's an occasional bad one.

1:04:59SPEAKER- So Brad and Will made a tech pod are not responsible

1:05:01SPEAKERfor any financial losses you may occur.

1:05:04SPEAKER- Yeah, we are not brokers.

1:05:07SPEAKERWe're not financial, this is not an investment.

1:05:11SPEAKERAll the other, just, I'm gonna go find a Merrill Lynch ad

1:05:14SPEAKERand copy and paste the copy from the end of that

1:05:16SPEAKERand just put it at the end of the podcast

1:05:18SPEAKERas a full disclaimer.

1:05:18SPEAKER- Just go find a place, it'll be fun.

1:05:21SPEAKER- It's a lovely, the level of conversation

1:05:27SPEAKERcontinues to astound me in there.

1:05:28SPEAKERI know we say this almost every week,

1:05:30SPEAKERbut it is wonderful the projects that people are sharing.

1:05:33SPEAKERPeople are posting desk pictures constantly,

1:05:35SPEAKERwhich I no longer feel great shame for my situation.

1:05:40SPEAKERI pulled half of the computers under my desk's cables

1:05:44SPEAKERup into cable racks now so I can vacuum

1:05:47SPEAKERunder 30% of the desk.

1:05:50SPEAKERAnd then the other one I think I'm just never gonna do

1:05:51SPEAKER'cause it seems like it will cause more problems for me

1:05:55SPEAKERthe next time I need to move or unplug something.

1:05:57SPEAKER- Oh my God, dude, if you wanna, oh.

1:06:00SPEAKER- If you can divide the number of computers

1:06:02SPEAKERunder your desk in half, are we talking four or more?

1:06:06SPEAKER- Three, but only two, so I have a two PC stream set up

1:06:10SPEAKERand I can do two VR players at the same time

1:06:14SPEAKERin the same space, so I've made some choices

1:06:18SPEAKERthat aren't great.

1:06:19SPEAKER- And I thought I had a lot of computers in my house.

1:06:22SPEAKER- Well, it's only that in the FreeNAS box right now

1:06:24SPEAKERand there's a couple of Raspberry Pis doing some stuff,

1:06:26SPEAKERbut that's it.

1:06:27SPEAKER- That's respectable, that's about what I've got going on.

1:06:29SPEAKER- Maybe we should do a full on desk set up episode

1:06:32SPEAKERat some point.

1:06:32SPEAKER- I'm down for that, I think people got real excited

1:06:35SPEAKERabout the nano suction tape stuff

1:06:39SPEAKERthat I talked about last week.

1:06:40SPEAKER- Yeah, but I was gonna say real quick,

1:06:42SPEAKERyour concerns are not unfounded about tidying.

1:06:46SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:06:47SPEAKER- I'm trying to figure it out, there's got to be a name

1:06:49SPEAKERa la Moore's law, some kind of law for like

1:06:53SPEAKERan inverse relationship between how tidy and compact

1:06:56SPEAKERand hidden all your shit is and how accessible it is

1:06:59SPEAKERwhen you need to do something with it.

1:07:01SPEAKER- Yep.

1:07:02SPEAKER- I am at the point where if I want to unplug

1:07:04SPEAKERan HDMI cable from my splitter,

1:07:07SPEAKERI need to move a piano across the room.

1:07:10SPEAKER- Oh, Jesus.

1:07:10SPEAKER- Oh no, pull the desk out about three feet,

1:07:13SPEAKERcrawl under there on my back, slowly sit up,

1:07:18SPEAKERwind my arm around behind the cable rack

1:07:22SPEAKERand very gently pull those cables.

1:07:24SPEAKER- So I don't think I've ever heard of this,

1:07:27SPEAKERI'm gonna suggest that we call this the shoemaker treatise.

1:07:30SPEAKER- Okay, all right.

1:07:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I feel like there was a moment

1:07:34SPEAKERback when I was at Maximum PC where I was like,

1:07:36SPEAKERI'm gonna bind, I'm gonna put all the cables

1:07:38SPEAKERthat come from my computer up the table leg

1:07:41SPEAKERand I'm gonna Velcro into it.

1:07:43SPEAKERAnd then I was like, Velcro is a pain in the ass,

1:07:44SPEAKERit gets all dusty and gross, I'm just gonna zip tie it on.

1:07:47SPEAKERAnd I got them all zip tied up there, I ran them all up,

1:07:49SPEAKERit was one incredibly fat cable snake,

1:07:51SPEAKERit was like three inches around and it looked awesome

1:07:54SPEAKERand it was really cool.

1:07:55SPEAKERThe next day my HDMI cable died

1:07:57SPEAKER'cause I cinched it down too hard with the zip tie

1:08:00SPEAKERand I had to break the whole fucking thing apart

1:08:02SPEAKERand I just left it and it was tied there two weeks ago

1:08:07SPEAKERwhen I redid my desk still from 10 years ago, so.

1:08:11SPEAKER- This could explain so much,

1:08:12SPEAKERthis is like your messy desk super villain origin story.

1:08:16SPEAKER- Here we are.

1:08:17SPEAKERAnyway, that's it for us this week.

1:08:19SPEAKERWe will have a patron exclusive episode

1:08:21SPEAKERbetween now and the end of the month,

1:08:23SPEAKERhopefully if everything goes well or if not,

1:08:24SPEAKERit'll be the start of next month.

1:08:26SPEAKERWe appreciate you all and thanks again Wes for coming by,

1:08:30SPEAKERit's been great to talk to you again, man.

1:08:31SPEAKER- I appreciate you guys.

1:08:33SPEAKER- Hey, thanks man.

1:08:34SPEAKERBye everybody, see you next week.

1:08:36SPEAKER(upbeat music)

1:08:53SPEAKER(upbeat music)