Samsung UE28E850R - Official image

Samsung U28E850R 4k 28″ – Quick Review

In my never-ending-quest to find desktop utopia, I decided it was time to move on from my Dell UP2414Q, and select something bigger. All the reviews (and the wirecutter seems to be typical) suggest that the Dell P2715Q is the class of the field. However, given the exchange rate this was beyond my budget, even after literally emptying out my change jar. So, casting my net further I found the memorably named Samsung U28E850R.

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QNAP TS-251 Three-quarter view

QNAP TS-251 Quick Review

I know the cool-kids love Synology; but I’ve made a habit of being a contrary git, so of course I prefer QNAP. According to my embarrassingly large inbox, I purchased my original QNAP TS-210 in 2009. It’s been through at least three sets of disks, served hundreds of hours of music and stored 15 years of photos. Not least of all, it was a key part of a demo environment in a book wot I wrote. It has had regular updates from QNAP, for which I’ve not paid a penny.

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EVPN – the basics

PACKETS AND STUFF

So I decided to take a deep dive into eVPN, I’ll mostly be looking into VLAN-aware bundling, as per RFC 7432 – and mostly because I think this will fit more closely, with the types of deployments most of the customers are used to – good old IRB interfaces and bridge-tables!

As everyone knows, VPLS has been available for many years now and it’s pretty widely deployed, most of the customers I see have some flavour of VPLS configured on their networks and use it to good effect – so why eVPN? what’s the point in introducing a new technology if the current one appears to work fine.

The reality is that multipoint layer-2 VPNs (VPLS) were never quite as polished as layer-3 VPNs, when layer-3 VPNs were first invented they became, and still are the in many cases the “go to” technology for layer-3 connectivity across MPLS networks, and…

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Tile Tracking with Lego Minifig shown to scale

Tile Bluetooth Tracker – Quick Review

I recently stumbled on a clutch of Tile Bluetooth trackers in an airport departure lounge. I’d just disappeared down a Bluetooth LE devices security rabbit hole and was using the RamBLE app to discover what was about (who knew there were so many Samsung Smart TVs around?). I’ve been aware of the Tile and it’s companion app  for a while. As they didn’t work with Android until recently, I had resisted purchase. With a imminent family holiday to a large European theme park with a child with a history of legging it; I purchased a pack of four Tiles for £50.

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