Author: Dave Farquhar

Asus dual WAN router with AT&T Internet

Dave Farquhar Servers and Networking
Asus dual WAN router with AT&T Internet

AT&T Internet uses its own residential gateway that isn’t very powerful or configurable. For a while I used an AT&T U-Verse connection as a failover for my home network, since I work from home and Spectrum outages meant I couldn’t work. So here’s how I configured an Asus dual WAN router with AT&T Internet, using AT&T U-Verse as a secondary connection, with Charter Spectrum on my primary. This will also work the same way with AT&T Fiber.

I switched back from Spectrum to AT&T exclusively. Here’s why. But you may want to set up failover between AT&T and another provider. It worked reasonably well for me, and it’ll probably work at least as well for you, too.

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How often should you replace your router?

Dave Farquhar Servers and Networking
How often should you replace your router?

How often should you replace your router? That’s a harder question than how often you should change the oil in your car, or how often you should replace your hot water heater. Unlike a laptop, I can’t really predict when your router is going to break. And a router may go obsolete for me faster than it goes obsolete for you. But I can give you some guidance.

Sometimes your ISP will provide a router. They may or may not charge for this. It’s worth making a phone call to see. If they charge you some kind of a rental fee, it’s cheaper to buy your own router. If they don’t charge you, and keeping it running and maintained is their problem, not yours, you might as well take them up on the offer. I think the potential to save $100 is worth a phone call.

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Leading Edge computers

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Leading Edge computers

Leading Edge is a little-remembered 1980s brand of computers. Based out of Canton, Mass., it was a pioneer of manufacturing low-cost PCs in the Far East and importing them for sale in the United States. Leading Edge computers were tremendously successful in the mid/late 1980s because they undercut companies like Commodore in price.

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What is fiber wifi?

Dave Farquhar ISPs
What is fiber wifi?

I was in St. Louis near the Washington University campus when a billboard caught my eye. It was advertising apartments, and the key feature it touted was “fiber wifi.” What is fiber wifi? Isn’t that kind of like saying “metal wood?”

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How to not let the bad guys Segment Smack your Linux box around

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

There’s a new vulnerability du jour in Linux called Segment Smack. The early writeups about it were really confusing, so I sorted it out and wrote it up for my employer. You can read it here.

The key takeaways, in my opinion: You’re almost guaranteed to have to reboot for this to take effect. Also, most of the writeups say there’s nothing you can do to mitigate except patch. Not quite true. I show you in the writeup how to block the attack long enough to free resources so you can patch. There’s nothing good you can do, but there is a quick fix available to you if you need it.

Marx president figurines for train layouts

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Marx president figurines for train layouts

In the 1950s, Marx produced hard plastic 60mm figures of U.S. presidents. Louis Marx meant for them to be an educational toy or collectible, but the Marx president figurines turn out to be a great accessory for train layouts too. Here’s how I use them.

If you’re more interested in collecting them, I hope you’ll still read on. I have some tips for finding them and restoring damaged figurines.

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How to log into an AT&T router

Dave Farquhar ISPs
How to log into an AT&T router

The residential gateway that AT&T provides with its U-Verse, Fiber, and AT&T Internet packages doesn’t have a logon button or logon screen like most other routers you’re used to. That can be confusing. So here’s how to log into an AT&T router.

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Can you use a Dell charger on an HP laptop?

Dave Farquhar Hardware
Can you use a Dell charger on an HP laptop?

Can you use a Dell charger on an HP laptop? Or vice versa? I don’t recommend it, but sometimes you can. In a pinch, that’s better than not being able to use your laptop at all. Here’s how to tell.

Interchanging chargers between Dell and HP laptops doesn’t always work, and in the worst case, can damage the computer. Be sure to check the voltage and polarity before you even try it.

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How long does toner last?

Dave Farquhar Hardware
How long does toner last?

Laser printer toner doesn’t dry out like inkjet ink does. But does toner go bad? Does laser printer toner expire? How long does toner last? In this blog post, I’ll explain why it can last a decade or more.

Laser printer toner doesn’t dry out, so the toner itself doesn’t go bad, and page count matters more than age when it comes to longevity. There are parts inside the toner cartridge that eventually go bad, but that generally takes 15-20 years.

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How to find my router IP

Dave Farquhar Servers and Networking
How to find my router IP

It’s hard to know how to find my router IP address, since it’s arbitrary. Usually your router lives at one end or the other of your network, but there’s no reason why it has to. So if someone decided to get tricky, here’s how to find it.

There was a time when knowing your router IP was a matter of survival, but these days networking normally configures itself, using a technology called DHCP. That puts your router IP address out of sight and out of mind. But it turns out there are several ways to find the router IP, and some of them work no matter what kind of computer you have.

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