TP-Link offer reasonably priced 10G switches, but the fans in the actively cooled models leave a lot to be desired. I guess it’s like they always say, more ports, more problems.
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Category Archives: Technology
How To Fix TP-Link TL-SX1008 Switch Fan Noise
Posted by Jarrod Farncomb
on September 3, 2021
39 comments
2x Intel Xeon E5-2670 vs AMD 1950X Threadripper – CPU Benchmark
Posted by Jarrod Farncomb
on November 14, 2017
22 comments
Fixing Plex on the QNAP NAS
Posted by Jarrod Farncomb
on June 5, 2017
5 comments
Cloudflare Argo Benchmark and Speed Test
Posted by Jarrod Farncomb
on May 21, 2017
15 comments
A few days ago, Cloudflare announced Argo, their new solution for a faster, more reliable, more secure Internet. My first thought was of course to perform an Argo benchmark to see how well it works.
I’ve previously taken a look at the Cloudflare Pro plan, and I’ve been paying for it ever since despite it not actually being of that much use to me.
Argo however appears to be exactly what I’m interested in, a new way of squeezing out yet more performance, so let’s find out how Cloudflare’s new Argo service performs with some benchmarks!
Is Cloudflare’s Paid Pro Plan Worth It? Speed Test Results
Posted by Jarrod Farncomb
on January 4, 2017
34 comments
Cloudflare is a widely used content distribution network (CDN) which is freely available to help speed up your website by caching various contents at locations around the world.
While I have been taking advantage of the free plan on this website for a number of years I’ve often asked myself “is the Cloudflare Pro plan worth getting?”. At $20 USD per month it costs the same as the server itself. With limited resources available online, I decided to upgrade myself and find out if the pro plan made much of a practical difference to my website.
I’ve performed some basic benchmarks on a number of different file types at different file sizes on this website both on the free plan, and on the Pro plan after I upgraded in August 2016. We’ll take a look at the results and see if any of the Pro features helped speed up load times.
Is an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) Worth It?
Posted by Jarrod Farncomb
on October 8, 2015
2 comments
Recently in my area there have been some power outages and I have seen people complaining about not being able to use the computer or Internet during this time. When I advise investing in an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) they tend to have a few questions about whether or not purchasing a UPS to use in their home is worth it or not, let’s take a look.
Gzip vs Bzip2 vs XZ Performance Comparison
Posted by Jarrod Farncomb
on September 17, 2015
30 comments
Gzip, Bzip2 and XZ are all popular compression tools used in UNIX based operating systems, but which should you use? Here we are going to benchmark and compare them against each other to get an idea of the trade off between the level of compression and time taken to achieve it.
For further information on how to use gzip, bzip2 or xz see our guides below:
How to Create a Website or Blog with WordPress
Posted by Jarrod Farncomb
on August 30, 2015
No comments
WordPress is a free web application that allows you to create a fantastic looking website or blog. There are thousands of additional themes and plugins allowing you to easily customize your website to get the unique look and functionality that you’re after. So how can setup your new website using WordPress? Let’s take a look.
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New Server Upgrade – A Scalable Solution
Posted by Jarrod Farncomb
on May 27, 2015
3 comments
For some time now I have wanted to move this website over to a newer server in order to improve overall website load times around the world. First I’ll cover the old server, what I was looking for and how I decided on a provider.
Reverse DNS explained
Posted by Jarrod Farncomb
on March 25, 2015
No comments
DNS is traditionally used to resolve a domain name to an IP address, this is known as forward resolution. Reverse DNS (rDNS) is the opposite of this whereby an IP address is resolved to a domain.
rDNS uses the arpa (address and routing parameter area) top level domain (TLD). The in-addr.arpa domain is used for IPv4 while ip6.arpa is used for IPv6 addresses.
This all sounds very backwards, let me explain…