MikroTik CAPsMAN v2 (WifiWave2) with VLANs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Running ArchiveTeam Warrior in Podman on Rocky Linux 9

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

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

Taming Noise on HPE ProLiant ML-series Tower Servers

 Posted on June 13, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  156 words  |  

As mentioned earlier, my homelab server is a HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen11 which is a single-socket Intel Sapphire Rapids-based server. One problem with this server is how much noise it generates. I swear, the ML110 Gen10 was much quieter. It’s a big trouble especially since right now I’m “houseless” meaning I’m living with my brother and have my ML110 in a bedroom closet. However, with the default power settings it’s still very noisy especially when running a cluster of Tor relays. [Read More]

Bypassing Frontier Connecticut GPON 802.1X with MikroTik

 Posted on June 6, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  261 words  |  

I’ve made it back eastwards! Yay! While my family looks for NYC hosing, I’m living in Stamford, CT in my brother’s townhouse/condo. The condo has Frontier FiberOptic. But as Connecticut is a former AT&T market, unless you’re on XGS-PON which I’m not, GPON is based off AT&T Fiber with the infamous 802.1X requirement. Initially, I used a Wi-Fi to Ethernet bridge but after having performance issues, I moved the Cat6 drops to near my equipment and “bypassed” the Frontier gateway. [Read More]

Enabling Path MTU Discovery in MikroTik, or why my PPPoE/6rd was slow

 Posted on February 29, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  233 words  |  

For many years, I’ve stuck with OPNsense, first initially since until a couple of years ago I was a die-hard FreeBSD user. But more importantly, by default Linux-based firealls play poorly with CenturyLink’s 6rd. I’ve been wanting to use a MikroTik as my core router instead of OPNsense for many years, but whenever I tried, 6rd browsing was just so slow for some reason. A few days ago, I got myself a MikroTik CCR2004-16G-2S+ and intially went IPv4-only. [Read More]

A MikroTik RouterOS v7 IPv6 BGP Config

 Posted on February 25, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  373 words  |  

As my long-awaited sequel to my MikroTik RouterOS v7 BGP configuration, I will do a RouterOS v7 configuration, but this time with IPv6. The setup will have: R1 with AS1 and R2 with AS2 1::/64 that R1 will advertise 2::/64 that R2 will advertise 3::/64 for the point-to-point link between R1 and R2 3::1 for R1 and 3::2 for R2 The ether1 interface for the R1 and R2 point-to-point links The ether2 interface for the internal, to-be-advertised subnet To setup BGP, first set your IP addresses, on R1: [Read More]