burnttoastnice

This thread before:

 
This thread after:

 
...
 

Out of curiosity I'm checking what devices at home have open ports, as well as checking out what things I can run off my smart TV. It was my absolute last thought that the device would have an open webserver, which even responded to my request, albeit with a 404 message.
 

 
I'm currently scanning from ports 1000 down to see if any other ports are open.
 

My ancient 7260 chip allows me to tell it I'd like 5GHz instead, you could see if your existing wireless adapter has something similar hidden away somewhere...
 

 
How close are you to the router exactly? Could be your WiFi adapter refusing to do 5GHz because it's far away. If you can get an extended antenna for it then that could be an option.

Ex-COBOL programmer here.
 
You have *no idea* how verbose COBOL is, or for that matter, how well it scales, until you've sat down and done it for some time.
Swapping out an established mainframe, that's been running for 30+ years, is not trivial.
And anyone who has ever tried, knows this.
There are a million little "if A and B but not Q or R but sometimes L" subroutines in place in old COBOL systems, that redoing them without wrecking the entire system...
 
...well it's easier to keep the COBOL system in place, and re-hiring all the retired programmers.
 
For the record, I wouldn't touch COBOL again for under 7 figures.
But then again I wouldn't touch Assembly again for all the money in the world. Fact. You can't spend it if you're insane. 

Weren't your nukes also operating off those giant floppy disk?
It's like you guys are allergic to progress. I get the whole "if it ain't broke don't fix it", but come on. It's plain negligence at this point.

Every system has a shelf life. If you paid for it in 1970, you might not need to replace it in 1980 or 1990 - but if you are still using it in 2020, something is wrong. The cost for maintenance now must dwarf what it would cost to implement a modern system. 
 
That said, I think there is a bit of fairness that needs to be given to the states. The number of people applying for unemployment right now is orders of magnitude more than ever before. If you see the graph, it looks like a flat line and then a massive spike in the last 2 weeks. That would stress any system. 
 
But I still think it's laughable that COBOL programmers are what we need in 2020. 

Buuuuuuuulllllllllllllllllllshit. no chance in cold hell that a system this old just happened to be in the process of getting updated in the months that the infection hit.

Source:
CNN (qoute source)
Medium (media source)
Newser
 
Summary:
States such as Connecticut, Kansas, and New Jersey have been found to still be using 40+ year old COBOL based systems which are struggling to handle the large influx of requests and claims due to the pandemic
 
Media:


Quotes/Excerpts:
 
 
My Thoughts:
These are cases of If it ain't broke, don't fix it taken to the extreme and it has severely bit them in the rear. It's time for, at least the government, to upgrade to more modern systems, or task for the creation of a new programming language to replace the aging COBOL.

Windows.......

Actually that seems to be no longer the case. For example the smart doorbell Ring, you pay for it and yet you're still the product.

Not too long ago Google provided 4000 Chromebooks to students in the States for "educational purpose", however it seems like there is much more than just teaching kids.
Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/two-children-sue-google-for-allegedly-collecting-students-biometric-data/
https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/privacy/google-class-action-says-kids-data-collected-from-school-chromebooks
Thoughts: While obviously it is not the first time google infringed privacy rights state wide but I think this is a new low (excluding some other reports from facebook). I guess Google didn't take any hints from COPPA.

Intel is in the position AMD were in 2011 with the FX CPUs where they had clockspeeds, high heat output and lower IPC than Intel. Basically, the mighty have fallen.

Time for Intel to shine - i9 FX19990KFC

Hang on.
 
One company is running away with IPC while the other keeps refreshing the same architecture and pushing clocks? That sound familiar to anyone?

One thing worth keeping in mind is AMD seems to be a bit optimistic with its numbering schemes.  Just because a cpu has a 3xxx name doesn’t always mean its zen2, and a 4xxx number doesn’t mean the cpu is actually zen3 

Good christ 

Personally I'm just happy Zen 3 will still be on an AM4 socket. 2017-2021(+?) socket support is really solid 5 years of people not needing to buy a new motherboard to get a decent CPU upgrade, especially for those that bought a good motherboard to begin with.

For once, it may actually be worth while to upgrade from a 2700x to something in the new lineup. Which, I think I will 100% do. Now I'm hype!
 
AVX512 support. Looks like Intel will be a dead in the water choice anymore.

That's probably going to be the i3 10350K tbh. Or 11350K. Or i3 42690GZYM edition. Based on current naming trends

Intel is pushing really aggressively in the clock speed direction, but if AMD just randomly crapped out a super high clocked dual core or something as the "world's first 6GHz CPU," it really would be the best way to dunk on clock-chasing competition.

Reducing Single Points of Failure in Redundant Storage
 
In lots of the storage builds that exist here on the forum, the primary method of data protection is RAID, sometimes coupled with a backup solution (or the storage build is the backup solution). In the storage industry, there are load of systems that utilize RAID to provide redundancy for customers' data. One key aspect of (good) storage solutions is being resistant to not only drive failures (which happen a LOT), but also failure of other components as well. The goal is to have no single point of failure.
 
First, let's ask:
 
What is a Single Point of Failure?
 
A single point of failure is exactly what it sounds like. Pick a component inside of the storage system, and imagine that it was broken, removed, etc. Do you lose any data as a result of this? If so, then that component is a single point of failure.
 
By the way, from this point forward a single point of failure will be abbreviated as: SPoF
 
Let's pick on looney again, using his system given here.
 
Looney's build contains a FlexRAID software RAID array, which is comprised of drives on two separate hardware RAID cards running as Host Bus Adapters, with a handful of iSCSI targeted drives. We'll just focus on the RAID arrays for now, since those seem like where he would store data he wants to protect. His two arrays are on two separate hardware RAID cards, which provide redundancy in case of possible drive failures. As long as he replaces drives as they fail, his array is unlikely to go down.
 
Now let's be mean and remove his IBM card, effectively removing 8 of his 14 drives. Since he only has two drives worth of parity, is his system still online? No, we have exceeded the capability of his RAID array to recover from drive loss. If he only had this system, that makes his IBM card a SPoF, as well as his RocketRaid card.
 
However, he has a cloud backup service, which is very reliable in terms of keeping data intact. In addition, being from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, he has fantastic 100/100 internet service, making the process of recovering from a total system loss much easier.
 
See why RAID doesn't constitute backup? It doesn't protect you from a catastrophic event.
 
In professional environments, lots of storage is done over specialized networks, where multiple systems can replicate data to keep it safe in the event of a single system loss. In addition, systems may have multiple storage controllers (not like RAID controllers) which allow a single system to keep operating in the event of a controller failure. These systems also run RAID to prevent against drive loss.
 
In systems running the Z File System (ZFS) like FreeNAS or Ubuntu with ZFS installed, DIY users can eliminate SPoFs by using multiple storage controllers, and planning their volumes to reduce the risk of data loss. Something similar can be done (I believe) with FlexRAID. This article aims to provide examples for theoretical configurations, and will have some practical real-life examples as well. It also will outline the high (sometimes unreasonably high) cost of eliminating SPoF for certain configurations, and aim to identify more efficient and practical ones.
 
Please note: There is no hardware RAID control going on here, all software RAID. When 'controllers' are mentioned, I am referring to the Intel/3rd party SATA chipsets on a motherboard, an add-in SATA controller (Host Bus Adapter), or an add-in RAID card running without RAID configured. The controllers only provide the computer with more SATA ports, and it is the software itself which controls the RAID array.
 
First, lets start with hypothetical situations. We have a user with some drives who wants to eliminate SPoFs in his system. Since we can't remove the risk of a catastrophic failure (such as a CPU, motherboard or RAM failure), we'll ignore those for now. We can, however, reduce the risk of downtime due to a controller failure. This might be a 3rd party chipset, a RAID card (not configured for RAID) or other HBA which connects drives to the system.
 
RAID 0 will not be considered, since there is no redundancy.
 
Note: For clarification, RAID 5 represents single-parity RAID, or RAID Z1 (ZFS). RAID 6 represents dual-parity RAID, or RAID Z2. RAID 7 represents triple-parity RAID, or RAID Z3.
 
Note: FlexRAID doesn't support nested RAID levels.
 
[spoiler=Our user has two drives.]
Given this, the only viable configuration is RAID 1. In a typical situation, we might hook both drives up to the same controller and call it a day. But now that controller is a SPoF!
 
To get around this, we'll use two controllers, and set up the configuration as shown:
 

 
Now, if we remove a controller, there is still an active drive that keeps the data alive! This system has removed the controllers as a SPoF.

[spoiler=Our user has three drives.]
With three drives, we can do either a 3-way RAID 1 mirror, or a RAID 5 configuration. Let's start with RAID 1:
 
Remembering that we want to have at least 2 controllers, we can set up the RAID 1 in one of two ways, shown below:
 

 
In this instance, we could lose any controller, and the array would still be alive. Now let's go to RAID 5:
 
In RAID 5, a loss of more than 1 drive will kill the array. Therefore, there must be at least 3 controllers to prevent any one from becoming an SPoF, shown below:
 

 
Notice that in this situation, we are using a lot of controllers given the number of drives we have. Note also that the more drives a RAID 5 contains, the more controllers we will need. We'll see this shortly.

 
[spoiler=Our user has four drives.]
We'll stop using RAID 1 at this point, since it is very costly to keep building the array. This time, our options are RAID 5, RAID 6 and RAID 10. We'll start with RAID 5, for the last time.
 
Remembering the insight we developed last time, we'll need 4 controller for 4 drives:
 

 
This really starts to get expensive, unless you are already using 4 controllers in your system (we'll talk about this during the practical examples later on). Now on to RAID 6:
 
Since RAID 6 can sustain two drive losses, we can put two drives on each controller, so we need 2 controllers to meet our requirements:
 

 
In this situation, the loss of a controller will down two drives, which the array can endure. Last is RAID 10:
 
Using RAID 10 with four drives gives us this minimum configuration:
 

 
Notice that for RAID 10, we can put one drive from each RAID 1 stripe on a single controller. As we'll see later on, this allows us to create massive RAID 10 arrays with a relatively small number of controllers. In addition, using RAID 10 gives us the same storage space as a RAID 6, but with smaller worst-case redundancy. Given four drives, the best choices look like RAID 6and RAID 10, with the trade-off being redundancy (RAID 6is better) versus speed (RAID 10 is better).

 
[spoiler=Our user has five drives.]
For this case, we can't go with RAID 5, since it would require 5 controllers, and can't do RAID 10 with an odd number of drives. However, we do have RAID 6 and RAID 7. We'll start with RAID 6:
 
Here we need at least 3 controllers, but one controller is underutilized:
 

 
For RAID 7, we get 3 drives worth of redundancy, so we can put 3 drives on each controller:
 

 
In this case, we need two controllers, with one being underutilized.

[spoiler=Our user has six drives.]
We can now start doing some more advanced nested RAID levels. In this case, we can create RAID 10, RAID 6, RAID 7, and RAID 50 (striped RAID 5).
 
RAID 10 follows the logical progression from the four drive configuration:
 

 
RAID 6 becomes as efficient as possible, fully utilizing all controllers:
 

 
RAID 7 also becomes as efficient as possible, fully utilizing both controllers:
 

 
RAID 50 is possible by creating two RAID 5volumes and striping them together as a RAID 0:
 

 
Notice that we have reduced the number of controllers for a single-parity solution, since we can put one drive from each stripe onto a single controller. This progression will occur later as well, when we start looking at RAID 60 and RAID 70.

Because then all the 5 ports on that switch would be sharing 1 gigabit bandwidth. If you instead run multiple, separate cables, they'll all have 1 gigabit bandwidth all to themselves.

This would honestly be pretty cool to have.

You mean like the one built in to windows?

ISP's will likely never give you "great" equipment. They use whatever they have a mass supply of so that troubleshooting and configs are all the same. WIthout looking into any of the actual specs of the two devices I'm 99% sure you're better off plugging your netgear back in.