Within the Hardware category we have the following:
October 6th, 2009 ··· andarius
I have been inclined to do bit more research on the AP I recently purchased. A D-Link DAP-2553. This unit has been performing extremely well since I got it and I have no complaints so far. I did however want to know more about it as is my nature. Digging around on the web and the oracle turned up very little. As I work in an RF related field I turned to an awesome resource for data on RF devices, the FCC.
Low and behold they have the full data on the AP as I had hoped/expected. Turns out this little puppy is fully Atheros, sporting an AR9132-AC1E as its network processing unit and an AR9106-AL1A dual band radio. The AR9132 is listed by Atheros as a 400 MHz NPU (Network Processing Unit) and of course being dual band the AR9106 operates in the 2.4 GHz (b/g) and 5 GHz (a) bands. Some nice data can be found at the Atheros site “here“.
September 17th, 2009 ··· andarius
I thought I would share this little tid-bit just in case some one else has the same issue I did…
I have decided to swap some hardware around as far as what is doing what. In the mix I will be moving my Via EPIA-M mini-ITX board back to duties as my firewall. One of the requirements for this however was a BIOS update so that it would boot after power loss. After some checking come to find out the BIOS I had was 1.0B and the current version is 1.16, slight gap there. So, step one is update BIOS, step two is load Endian Community and step 3 is import a backup from the running machine.
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September 12th, 2009 ··· andarius
Another item removed from my home in the break-in was my Linksys WRT-54G WiFi router. It was one of the nice versions to have being a 2.2 so I was pretty sad to lose it. It was running a recent version of dd_wrt and supported all the systems in my apartment except for my server photon. To get things up around the apartment in the aftermath I went to the office and retrieved my backup/toolkit router which is a WRT-54GC. I popped a spare external antenna on it and it has been serving me faithfully (though weakly) until last weekend.
I was hoping to hold out for N to leave draft but I think tribbles may invade the planet before that happens. To replace the little fella I finally broke down and purchased a D-Link WAP-2553 WiFi AP. The unit is dual band, operating in the 2.5 GHz and 5 GHz bands though not at the same time. The main reason for targeting a dual band is I can move to the less congested 5 GHz band should channel space become and issue. Other reasons for choosing this particular unit? Reviews, feature set, design, cost and GPL. Half reading are likely rereading the GPL part. That’s right boys and girls, it comes with a GPL OS on it, nmap claiming it is a Linux machine.
With the feature set the unit has out of the box I see no need to run any custom code on it. It does everything I want/need and more. A whole lot more. Later on should I decide to move it to a remote location it even supports PoE out of the box. Since it is an 802.11a/b/g/n-draft device I can move where ever I choose in the WiFi spectrum should my neighbors be knuckleheads. Granted I am more likely to shut them down it is nice to have options. 
I am not a hardware reviewer so I will leave unit performance at it works great. Configuration was simple and fast. Performance is excellent in terms of all of the clients associating and operating on it. Props to D-Link for putting this puppy out!
September 6th, 2009 ··· andarius
Recently I had an idea to replace my temporary firewall with a Nokia IP-650. I had read many posts on the internet of people using a Nokia IP-330 with Endian or other *nix based firewall distributions. Since an IP-330 is a bit low powered for me I looked for e higher end piece of gear, enter the IP-650.
A 50 dollar run through ebay landed an IP-650 on my doorstep shipping included. There seems to be little out there on the web about this unit aside from reviews using the default operating system. The internal hardware list was found in a product document I found after a large amount of searching. The system is Intel based hardware using a Pentium III at 450 MHz. It has dual redundant power supplies, multiple expansion slots and a 2u form factor. The motherboard has a full compliment of features under the case to include an additional Intel 10/100 ethernet port, audio I/O ports and USB. On the underside of the board which has the flash ROM is a 44 pin header similar to that used for laptop hard drives.
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February 25th, 2009 ··· andarius
Well, the replacement parts for the stolen server are in and up and running. photon ][ (or 2) is born.
The replacement parts are combined to make up the first server I have built for myself from all new parts. Well, almost all new. The hard drive ousing the OS is a use component. The list of gear breaks down as follows:
- Asus P5Q SE2 Motherboard
- Intel Core 2 Duo E7400
- 4 GB OCZ Gold Series PC8500 RAM
- 2 x Seagate 1.5 TB hard drives
- Athena Power 4u chassis
One difference in the actual parts and what is linked above is the rack mount chassis. The one I got came with a 600 watt PSU comapred to the 550 watt unit in the link.
The gear is up and running. If you are into that kind of data stand by a few more days for this weekend and I will get some load data posted. The load was done in a hurry so I could get out the door for some work related travel.
I will go ahead and let you know the obvious, of course it is much faster and powerful than the original IBM x330 1u server. Now to work out a more permanent solution for firewall duties.
