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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • In terms of language you are correct. But in terms of SI usage it seems to me OP is expressing it correctly. The SI unit prefixes have a name, a symbol and a multiplier. The prefix is a concept that encompasses all three of those attributes. So “kilo” is one way of identifying the 10^3 unit prefix, but the name kilo is not the prefix itself. It’s just the name we use to refer to it. And the symbol k in km is certainly the unit prefix portion of that unit of measure.









  • No problems here with AT&T fiber. Yes, you do need their box (the bypass isn’t even possible yet on their new model that they seem to be installing everywhere now). But the IP passthrough works well enough for me so that my router gets the public IP and I can connect to it using any service I’ve tried to host. I make the best of it by using their wifi (which on the BGW320 is pretty decent) for untrusted devices & iot stuff.

    Oh, and I use DDNS, but I have never had the public IP change on me.



  • With what @infinitevalence recommended I think the M700 is a good inexpensive option if you don’t mind doing some work on the case to hack in another ethernet port. Something like this would even get you 2.5Gbe: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804495748525.html

    It’s Realtek, but there appear to be OpenBSD drivers. That exact one will not work with the headers hanging off the back of the card (that end of the card is right behind the power button in the front corner of the PC). But if they were desoldered and replaced with vertical headers it would work perfectly. There might be something similar with different connectors, or a 1Gbe Intel card available.

    I have a spare M700 that I just opened up to take some measurements. There is ~4mm space above most of the m.2 wifi card with the drive caddy installed, or ~18mm with the caddy removed. Even with the caddy installed there is that ~18mm open space above the back 5-6mm of the card, so a vertical connector there would work , but would conflict with the install/removal of the drive caddy since it slides toward the front of the case to remove. further modification would be needed to use them together.

    At the back there is ~50mm side-to-side space between the fan exhaust and ethernet port. Only 32mm if you only take up the space of the accessory video port. In that width you have ~15mm vertical space (above the row of ports at the bottom), and ~32mm depth (from the inside of the case back to the back of the SATA connector for the 2.5" drive). You would basically just need to enlarge the optional extra video/serial port opening.

    You could even fit a multi-port interface at the back, up to 50mm wide. But you wouldn’t be able to use the case screw any more since it’s in that space. And you would need to cut the tab it screws into off the case’s top cover. But the case should still close ok because of the way it slides into place.

    Now I’m thinking about ordering that adapter for my own machine to hack in a 2.5Gbe port.




  • The PC Engines APU2 boards are really great for this in terms of routing performance per watt, but the prices are up. If you can find a used one it might be possible. I use one for routing and a Lenovo ThinkCentre M700 tiny as a server. The M700 is around double the power consumption at idle, but they are both pretty low power. On 120v the APU2 is ~5w, and the M700 is ~10w when idle.

    There are a couple of Celeron N2830 fanless mini-pc router options on aliexpress for under €100. It’s 2 core vs the APU2 4 core CPU, but it’s faster per-core, so it should do basic gigabit routing without too much trouble (the APU can do it with OPN/pfSense, but only with some tuning).

    And that’s where I think you may have some trouble. I expect OpenBSD will be slower on the network than those FreeBSD-based distributions. And they max out at gigabit on the APU2 platform. But you could always decide later to switch the OS if you need gigabit performance.