Brightglaive

If it is 802.3af or 802.3at PoE, then no. If it uses the Cisco PoE then no. If it is just injecting power (with no regard for any PoE standard and no auto detection) on the unused pins in ethernet cabling...it might. CiscoPoE and 802.3af/802.3at have standards-based detection of a Powered Device (PD) to verify power is not being supplied to a non-PoE device.

Are you trying to separate the traffic or aggregate it? It's not very clear. Having a VPN server would mean aggregating all the external traffic through the VPN server/router aka many-to-one. But you seem like you want to break it back out and then possibly isolate it again? I would use a VPN in and then provide an IP address for the virtual private server and have authentication for each server or use a router and separate subnetting on the back end. or just use SSLVPN with a given port that directly routes to that ONE VPS server instance. Just my $0.02

LOL. I was actually a wireless engineer for Cisco systems for 10 years. You learn a lot. Simply put, USB adds overhead and delay. wireless speeds are theoretical and subject to real world interference and variables Other processes like routing/firewalling/IPS introduce some real bottlenecks when transmitting out the WAN port on the Linksys that can slow the data to MUCH lower speeds (10's of Mbps to Low hundreds of Mbps) WAN/MAN/internet connections are generally 100Mbps or less unless you have Gigabit fiber or a business gigabit or multigigabit internet connection (like OC-48 or 10GbaseX or 1000baseX fiber or copper) By way of explanation: AC600 is not really a speed per se. It's a combination of speeds based on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, rounded up or down to the next 50 or 100. It's a rating that encompasses all those pesky variables like channel width, frequency, coding rate etc. Originally there was one frequency band, one channel width, one guard interval, one data stream, 2 coding rates and 2 compression modulations so they would just say 11 or 5.5 or 2 or 1 Mbps for speeds (back in the day of 802.11b introduction.) Since 802.11 uses CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access/ Collision Avoidance), it basically listens for anyone transmitting and then if the channel is clear the client or AP will transmit. If it "hears" a transmission occurring it will back off and wait until the transmission is done. The time it waits to hear a transmission before starting to transmit is called a guard interval. I believe it is also used as a multiple to determine how long it will wait before checking again to see if any client or AP is transmitting if it hears a transmission. Channel width was originally 22 MHz wide. If you look at the center frequencies on a frequency chart of 802.11b you can see the frequencies vary by 5 Mhz. Channels 1, 6, and 11 are non-overlapping (and 14 where it is supported) 5 Ghz uses slightly smaller channels, 20MHz. it uses different coding rates and modulations to compress more data into transmission. That's why it could transmit up to 54 Mbps when it came out. 802.11n allowed you to cut the guard interval in half (to 400ns). It introduced newer, higher compression to the SAME 2.4 or 5GHz channels and allowed you to use channels that were twice as big as before (40MHz). if you put all those together you could theoretically achieve 150Mbps using a 40 MHz channel and the highest compression rates. 802.11n also introduced a revolutionary technology called MIMO or multiple in multiple out. Normally when you use a single antenna on a client and single antenna on the AP you get something like this: The left shows the direct transmission and the reflections or echos of the signal. This was called multipath distortion. The right shows the distortion of the signal that occurs. Antenna diversity (using 2 antennas) helped to get a clearer signal by switching the receiving antenna to whichever antenna had the better, more accurate, less distorted signal i.e a signal with less echos. MIMO used the idea of triangulation with multiple antennas to be able to determine when an echo was arriving by measuring the delay between when each antenna recieved a signal. Knowing what the signal is like between a transmitter and receiver on a given channel is called channel state information or CSI. Through the magic of algorithms and silicon the radio could now use the CSI to reconstruct the original transmission by combining the direct transmitted signal and it's echos. It could also use the CSI info to transmit a signal using a filter that adjusts the signal and takes into account all the multipath distortion in a given direction and which would cause it to arrive at the client as a clear transmission. This was called spatial beamforming. Yeah I know....It's a lot to take in, and a LOT of tech speak But stick with me, I'm getting to my point. If you then take some data, break it up into 2 separate streams and use that CSI stuff to transmit both of the streams as separately encoded transmissions at the same time on the same channel with 2 different antennas so that a client with 2 or more antennas can hear both of the different transmissions and reconstruct the original data, you have the idea of how spatial multiplexing works. This allows you to send 2 or more transmissions at the same time using the same channel and get more throughput if you use the same compression. Using beamforming and MIMO antennas with those special signal processors/algorithm allows each transmission to arrive as a clear distinct signal. More antennas = more streams. (the above diagram depicts 3 transmit antennas, 3 receive antennas and 2 streams or 3x3x2 MIMO) Multiple data streams increased the theoretical throughput to 300 Mbps with 2 streams and up to 600Mbps with 4 streams. 802.11ac expanded the channels to 80 and 160MHz (in some cases more than doubling and quadrupling throughput) and added the ability to address a stream to a particular client. POOF! you have Multi User-MIMO (or MU-MIMO) and 1733Mbps up to 2340Mbps per 5GHz radio. (ok that may be an oversimplification but this is getting too long) On a side note the various modulations and coding rates and guard intervals and channel widths and the correct combinations of each (and their resulting data rates) were defined and documented in the modulation and coding scheme or MCS. For 2.4GHz 802.11n defines 9 MCS levels for 1-4 streams, For 5Ghz 802.11ac defines 9 MCS levels for 1-3 streams. you can see them at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n-2009 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac

I would probably stick to an AC1900 or above rated AP. I use the WRT1900ACS by Linksys and the wireless works well for the 4 phones, sony blu-ray/streaming player, one 1080p HD LED LCD streaming tv and one UHD 2160p LED LCD streaming tv and the occasionally used 3 laptops and 3 tablets we have. Some of the devices connect on 2.4GHz (lower speed devices) and some connect on 5GHz (UHD and HD TVs, and blu-ray player and the 3 802.11ac phones). If you can afford the ultimate, an AC3200 or AC5300 rated access point will give the greatest separation with one 2.4 GHz radio and TWO 5GHz radios (that's AC600 or AC1000 on the 2.4 GHz radio and AC1300 or AC2166 on EACH 5 GHz radio). That's a total of 6 spatial streams on the 5GHz band and 4 spatial streams on the 2.4GHz band assuming no interference (Yeah, right! ). Technically that's ten devices that would have a dedicated portion of bandwidth assuming they are all 802.11n or 802.11ac compatible. If you're not using UHD TVs and don't regularly stream high or ultra-high definition video while gaming or have all 5ghz 802.11ac clients then an AC1200 access point may suffice. Depends on your budget and your true needs. I've always let 2 maxims guide me and they always land me in the upper middle area of hardware without getting the bleeding edge premium: 1. Buy the best item you can afford right now. 2. you get what you pay for.

LOL. AC600 is meant to define a level of throughput given a certain compression scheme and encoding scheme and a particular guard interval and channel width and number of radios on the AP and antennas per radio and number of antennas on the client and assuming one client on the AP with one spatial stream. <BIG BREATH> In truth, 802.11ac IS backwards compatible with 802.11a which means instead of using AC600 (256-QAM with a 5/6 coding rate, 400ns Guard interval, and an 80 Mhz wide channel) it can drop back to 802.11a 6Mbps rates if needed (BPSK modulation with 1/2 coding rate, with an 800ns guard interval, and a 20MHz channel). Throw in another client on that and it has to share bandwidth if you aren't using MU-MIMO. Of course on many APs you can specify what data rates are acceptable. So this may allow you to maximize your wireless throughput. However it may also cause client disconnects if you drop below the acceptable data rate. Similarly you can adjust the guard interval and channel widths, but if a legacy adapter comes in range this could throw a wrench in your carefully crafted wireless network settings. This also does not take into account Joe Blow next door who is running an 802.11a/g AP from 2001 that may be interfering with your 160MHz channel and 400ns guard interval and screwing with your 2 or 3 spatial streams. AC2600 means a maximum of 1733 Mbps. This assumes a 256-QAM, 5/6 coding rate, 160MHz Channel, 400ns guard interval with TWO spatial streams. This also assumes at least TWO 5GHz antennas on the AP and two 5GHz antennas on the client card. (It is likely the antennas on the EA8500 are 2 for 2.4GHz and 2 for 5GHz ranges) If your client only has a single antenna (1x1 MU-MIMO) your throughput drops to 867 Mbps with the channel, QAM and coding rate maxed and the short quard interval. If any of those other contributing factors change due to interference from older 802.11a technologies or non-802.11 sources (e.g. radar, 5GHz cordless phones, WiMax etc.) then your throughput will drop. Add more clients and the throughput to each client will drop. There are SO MANY variables. A site survey with a tool like WiFi Analyzer can help iron out some of those problems.Unfortunately it does not sniff out non-802.11 interference sources. I think Linksys said it best on the box in 2 places. "Actual performance may vary." and "Actual data throughput will be lower and may depend on the "type and number" (I assume this is what it says as it is cut off in the picture) of wireless products used and external factors." In fact it seems the right side of the box contains all the fine print that says (and I'm paraphrasing here): "the actual throughput you get will be lower and vary from the specification due to variables that can't be predicted for each user's environment (not the least of which are client hardware, configuration and radio frequency/structure interference.) Don't hold us responsible." Something else you should keep in mind is that Firewalling and Intrusion prevention services (IPS) and routing are likely going to be the limiting factors when going from wireless to wired connections and when going from LAN to WAN/MAN (that is to say your internet service provider) So in short, your coverage and speeds will vary. My suggestions to get the most bandwidth out of your wireless setup are as follows: 1. try and use clients that are 802.11ac. don't use older 802.11a client cards if possible. 2. Keep your lower bandwidth devices on 2.4GHz (where most 802.11b/g/n interference lives) 3. Site survey, site survey, site survey!!!! Be comprehensive when you do. 4. Use the widest channel width that does not have any overlapping interference that you can, use a short guard interval (400ns) and the highest QAM and coding rate possible (these are often dumbed down to Mbps or ACxxxx rates in the setup on consumer routers) 5. Make sure the clients and AP are not up against stone, concrete or metal surfaces. (hint: Ceiling mounting an access point or it's antennas in a central, open, point in your house may get you the best coverage and rates possible) Lastly remember even if your wireless is as fast as it could be you are STILL limited by your internet connection. So don't expect a gigabit wireless connection to be able to download at gigabit speeds or even at hundreds of Mbps if you are running firewalling/IPS and Routing and only have a common 16, 40, or 100Mbps download speed from your ISP. Most ISPs do not even provide a connection at 480Mbps or 600Mbps unless you are a business paying for a portion of a gigabit fiber internet link. (or for some reason your ISP or Google forgot to cap your download speed on google fiber ;-) )

What does the wireless spectrum look like in your area? How many walls/floors made out of what materials are between your wireless AP/router and the clients? Are there elevation differences with the clients? Have you done a wireless site survey? (open signal is a great tool for surveying for android/iOS). Have you tried limiting the number of wireless devices on your network? Have you tried using a wireless packet sniffer to collect traces? have you tried turning on each individual device and capturing some traces? I would start with the wireless site survey. Shut off AND/OR unplug ALL wireless devices except your AP and the iOS/Android Device you are surveying with. See what might be interfering with your signal and if you can get some clear spectrum by switching to non-used, non-overlapping channels. (Keep in mind the 40 or 80MHz wide channels may also be screwing with your bandwidth if your neighbor is not using the latest 802.11AC APs. Try keeping the channels at the standard 22Mhz size.) Make a small blue print of your entire house. Write down wireless signal strengths and latency in each room at the location you plan to use a wireless device at. Do it for all the floors of your house. Make sure you survey for BOTH 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrum and do it in the evening (that's when most people are home wirelessly streaming video to their TVS and surfing the web on their laptops). Then turn on the 32-inch tv and start a netflix video and do it again. Then try it with the other vizio tv on the 5GHz band. Then have someone start an internet gaming session on the PS4 and try again. Look for bluetooth or 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz interference (old DSSS or FHSS cordless phones are infamous for this) or non-network devices that use 2.4Ghz or 5GHz bands (some remotes and radio control vehicles do this now). Now this next bit may seem stupid or obvious but DON'T place your AP next to a microwave or next to any metal enclosure or stone/concrete/stucco wall. Check network cables and make sure there are no issues there. You should also consider that most consumer grade access points are designed for 10-devices or less. For lower bandwidth devices you might be able to get as many as 20 devices, but a PS4 and 2 smartTVs are generally NOT low bandwidth devices. Computers are generally not low bandwidth devices when in use. Hi-res video streaming can suck the life out of most wireless connections. Generally Ultra HD content requires between 12 and 27Mbps download from the web per stream. HD content can be between 4 and 12Mbps per stream. Make sure your internet WAN connection and your Wireless is up to the task. Check the latency from the ISP. Let us not forget that Apple devices tend to be "chatty" on the network. I've seen some Apple shops work very well with Apple AirportExtreme access points. Let's face it, usually Apple works better with Apple. You may also consider that if the coverage or interference is bad enough you may have to switch to multiple access points at lower transmit power to provide ideal coverage/device saturation/signal strength/latency.

On top of all that's been said, You should also consider this: Consumer grade internet is geared to the stereotypical end-user. For someone that wants to surf the web, most of the traffic is one-way... to the end-user. The only traffic going upstream is generally TCP acknowledgements and requests for more content. This requires VERY LITTLE upstream bandwidth. I've seen a 1Mbps up/18Mbps down work absolutely fine for a person that primarily surfs the Web. Generally asymmetric connections can have between 10 and 20 times faster download speed than upload speed. If that gives you an idea of the differences between the amount of upstream traffic a typical web user sends and the amount they receive. So your connection of 12Mbps-UP/ and 180 Mbps DOWN. doesn't seem so bad. Unless you are serving up content (E.g. a business with a file server, Web server, E-mail, or video streaming/ Web video publishing) or a HEAVY torrenter you shouldn't need very much upstream bandwidth. If you really decide you need MORE upstream bandwidth then you should move to a business account. Generally business account plans have more symmetrical UP/DOWN speeds. I don't know of any DSL or Cable providers that allow for 180Mbps download, so you are either teaming connections or using Fiber. If this is the case then your provider has probably has business plans that would fit your need for more upstream speed. Keep in mind that you will need to pay MORE for PREMIUM upstream speed because it takes away from the amount of asymmetric users an ISP can support and the overall bandwidth available in the system. That being said, you must be uploading a fair amount of very large video files of fairly High-res video if a 12-Mbps upstream is not enough. Look into getting a business account with your ISP. Consider Linus Media Group. They have some pretty industrial grade internet connections (I think I heard redundant one-gigabit connections somewhere.) Comments Linus?

If you've already done the book learning Ilyas then I'll echo xGGAx and leadeater: setup your own virtual box with router/switch emulators and use GNS3, packet tracer or eNSP. This will get you the hands-on that you need for practice. GNS3 is even free. No cost involved. You obviously have a computer...do it on that. GNS3 runs on Windows, MAC or Linux. Packet tracer runs on windows. eNSP runs on Windows too.

Having taught a CCNA course myself I would suggest a few things. If you want to get CCNA and are fairly familiar with the material then do the following: 1.)Get some books. I suggest the following: CCNA Routing and Switching Complete Deluxe Study Guide: Exam 100-105, Exam 200-105, Exam 200-125, 2nd Edition by Todd Lammle OR CCNA Routing and Switching Complete Study Guide: Exam 100-105, Exam 200-105, Exam 200-125, 2nd Edition by Todd Lammle (from http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-610847.html?sort=DATE&sortDirection=DESC) Todd Lammle is actually READABLE, engaging and interesting and writes as if he were talking to you directly. and for reference (or a sleep aid) I would suggest: CCNA Routing and Switching 200-125 Official Cert Guide Library from ciscopress (http://www.ciscopress.com/store/ccna-routing-and-switching-200-125-official-cert-guide-9781587205811) and CCNA Routing and Switching Portable Command Guide http://www.ciscopress.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=9781587204302 This will give you a great start. 2.)To practice you can use the simulators provided by Cisco Press or Sybex (Paid or Free). OR you can use GNS3 which is free (https://www.gns3.com/), but you will need IOS (or PIX/ASA OS) images and a little bit of compute power. You can find IOS images on the internet if you look in the right places In my CCNA classes that I taught I did mention GNS3 for practice. In the university courses I took for CCNP we used GNS3 exclusively for Router emulations. (Why the HELL is anyone STILL using IS-IS routing protocol?!?!?) GNS3 is great for building your own virtual routing/firewalling network and can directly interface with "real" switches or routers (I had 3 7200vxr routers being emulated on one linux server with an AMD sempron single core processor and 2 gig of ram) Unfortunately there was no switching emulation available at the time on GNS3 and I believe that switch emulation is still not supported 3.) get some note cards, a hole punch, a binder ring and a pen and make LOTS of your own flash cards. Especially IOS commands or command sequences. practice test questions, section review questions etc. 4.) Study your flash cards religiously

2 floors huh? 2.4GHz but not 5GHz coverage. What you're probably running into is the vertical coverage of the antenna. Most low gain antennas have a globe shaped coverage area. As you move up to higher gain antennas the vertical coverage gets flatter and flatter, kind of like squishing a balloon between 2 boards. So higher gain antennas are an unlikely solution...unless they have a "down tilt" meaning more coverage below the direct line of sight than above. But even this is not a guarantee. You still have to contend with fiberglass, wiring, water pipes and wood floors or concrete floors with rebar. Nothing kills signal like water, glass, concrete with rebar, or stucco with chicken wire. A better wireless solution would be to use a directional antenna, and then point it down toward the lower apartment from the Access Point. A can-tenna is a cheap low cost antenna many people used back in the day to get the best coverage for longer distance signals. A can-tenna (pringles can antenna) can amplify a signal up to 10dBi (deciBels isotropic). That's almost ten times better of a signal than the standard dipole antenna on some access points (allowing a client to connect to a 2.4GHz AP from 400ft. to almost a mile in open space where normally the signal is too weak at 300ft.). Most 2.4GHz dipole antennas power range is between 0 and 2.2dBi or on the 5GHz band between 0 and 5dBi. Cantennas are usually only for a single frequency so you would need to pick 2.4GHz or 5Ghz A wireless repeater is not a good idea in this case because it takes the signal received and retransmits it on the same frequency. Since wireless operates on CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access Collision Avoidance nothing can transmit during the time the repeater is repeating signals from the AP or the wireless network card/adapter. This would HALVE wireless bandwidth. If he's only getting 3Mbps it would lower throughput (not necessarily connection speed) to 1.5Mbps. Powerline ethernet adapters may work depending on how long the wire runs are between the apartments. However, this is questionable as someone else may already be doing it or if the apartments have separate metering or a powerline conditioner you may get no signal at all. A hard line from window to window may be preferable if the building/property manager/owner is amenable. If you spin it along the lines of it being no different than a cable or satellite feed and actually being a smaller cable in size than TV/Satellite coax they may find that more palatable. I'd check along that avenue first before shelling out any cash for powerline adapters or trying a DIY cantenna (as the cantenna does take a bit of know how and planning for the right frequency

It's a 66 punch down block. Basically a bare wire patch panel. Wires are basically punched down into a v-shaped metal connector. The connector usually connects the 2 sides of the punchdown block. It can accommodate up to 66 wires. It can be used for cat 5, cat 6, or telephone cat 3 wiring and each can coexist in the same block if it's a 1-to-1 punchdown.

Hey Matt, 1300Mbps would be great, but that is the top speed of the AP....not the client. The best on a single stream is around 667Mbps and you would need to have the Client adapter (which also has to support 802.11ac on USB 3.0, thunderbolt or PCIe so there are no bottlenecks on your computer) connect on 5GHz (assuming no interference from other 5GHz APs) on one stream (AKA channel), which then gets switched to another stream in the AP via 802.11ac wirelessly to another 802.11ac client adapter to a usb3.0/thunderbolt/PCIe to your target computer. Then you have to make sure you have storage on the client AND target computers that can pump out data (and write the data on the target storage) at that 667Mbps speed. Now 256-QAM compression, 1 Watt transmit power And MU-MIMO are supported on 802.11ac. But let's talk about wireless signals. 2.4GHz at 100mW was originally used in 802.11b due to the ability of it to penetrate most materials....Just like microwaves. ( 2.5Ghz is what your microwave uses to cook your potato and popcorn....albeit at over a thousand watts down to hundreds of watts). Now Metal and water will block signals. Other material (especially concrete and brick and stucco) tend to REEEEEEEAAAAAAALLLLLLLY block signals. Even sheetrock and wood can cause a wireless signal to degrade. 5GHz is even MORE prone to being blocked due to it's higher power and shorter wavelength. SO the closer your device to your access point and the less walls between it and your computer, the better your signal. Also if you're in the basement, a high gain antenna(if you use one....or three) might not provide enough vertical coverage for you to take advantage of that additional signal strength Lastly, just because your wireless and your computer are ULTRA-fast doesn't mean your Internet WAN connection is similarly speedy. Most internet connections top out around 25-50 Mbps download speed. Add on to that the overhead of routing, firewalling, and intrusion prevention and you're lucky if you get as much as 25Mbps. Higher throughput may be possible, but not usually in an all-in-one router/ap/firewall/switch/ IPS device. The higher the performance of the single use device, the higher the cost.

Short answer: Use a patch (AKA straight-thru) cable. Straight thru (aka patch cables) are used to connect a host (PC, Mac, XBox, PlayStation, router etc.) to a hub or switch. I'll refer to switches and hubs as simply switches hereafter (with switches being ubiquitous, hubs have mostly gone the way of the Dodo). Crossover cables are for connecting 2 Hosts (or 2 routers) directly together. The reason for this is transmit wires have to be connected to receiver on the other side and vice-versa. A TX-to-TX connection is like 2 kids pressing the transmit button on a set of walkie-talkies at the same time. RX-to-RX connection is like having both listen at the same time. If this was the case neither side gets heard and no information is passed. TX must be connected to RX and RX connected to TX. Now switches automatically make this connection (TX-to-RX and RX-to-TX) through the internal wiring/circuit boards in the switch. Network cards (NICs) do not generally do this. (Router-to router and switch-to-switch links are special cases.) This is why we connect router to switch and switch to host. The wiring of a straight through vs. crossover is in the picture below You can see that the "HUB" is wired with the RX on pins 1 and 2 and TX on 3 and 6 (exactly opposite of the PC). The circuitry in the switch/hub has a crossover built in (if you look carefully at the the straight thru portion of the picture.) That way the Host passes info to the switch and the switch can then pass it to another host or router. "Wait", you cry,"You said that the switches automatically crossover the wires internally. What happens when we connect 2 switches together??" This is where a crossover cable or a non-crossed over port is required. However, to avoid the issues and technical details needed to understand by the average consumer or to avoid issues in complex I.T. implementations many manufacturers have implemented a feature called Auto-MDI/MDI-X this will automatically detect if you are using a patch or crossover cable and adjust whether or not an internal switch crossover is used based on that. Nowadays though,at the public consumer level, with router, switch, and wireless access point built in to one device, the definitions get blurred. So summing up the long answer: Crossover cables are primarily used for directly connecting OLD switch-to-switch, switch-to-hub, or host-to-host (including router-to-router and PC-to-PC) devices. AND Use a straight-thru (aka Patch) cable to connect a "host" to any "switch port" (and avoid all the annoying details and specifications and explanations needed to determine if you can or should use a crossover cable LOL!!!)

My wife takes photos EVERYWHERE. Seems she can't go somewhere without taking a photo or video. She crashed her S5 and S6 with over 1600 photos on her existing SD card. She also takes longer videos with her phone and listens to MP3's and audiobooks. And no, she doesn't want to use a Digital SLR or standalone video camera or MP3 player. I finally had to tell her to offload them to our home server so she could use her phone again. In this case she could have all her digital photos, videos, MP3's, and audiobooks on ONE card.

I have no idea. The S7/S7Edge specs say "up to" 200GB Micro SD card. I only can find 2 options for a 200GB SDcard... both by Samsung. This could have been a "soft" limit or a "hard" limit at the time and may have changed. Considering the reputable 256 GB cards were barely announced in May of 2016....maybe the limit was only ever out-of-date marketing on the S7/S7Edge.

While the specs on the fairly newly-released Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge reveal a microSD card slot capable of supporting up to an impressive 200GB microSDXC behemoth of a flash card, Samsung's own website seems to hint that the 256GB microSDXC, Evo Select, Class UHI-3 card is also supported on the S7/S7Edge. See the "*" footnote on the "See More Features" section of the 256GB card at: http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/MB-MC256DA/AM The footnote reads, "Test Device: Samsung Galaxy S7. The above results are from internal tests with the average-actual data store capacity (93.1% of the labeled capacity). The results may vary based on testing conditions and host devices.
" This note would indicate that the phone recognizes memory in excess of the 200GB stated limit. 93.1% of 256GB is about 238.4GB But if we take a deeper dive the 93.1% capacity is easily explained by the differences in Decimal and binary Gigabytes. Storage manufacturers advertised capacity and and the capacity seen by operating systems and how they look at data is the missing 6.9%. The card is 256,000,000,000 bytes storage capacity. That's 256 Decimal gigabytes. A Decimal Gigabyte is 1000X1000X1000 or 1,000,000,000 bytes. Operating systems look at storage in binary-gigabytes or Gibibytes. A Gibibyte is 1024X1024X1024 or 1,073,741,824 Bytes. Unfortunately these two terms are often simply abbreviated to GB, which causes panic, confusion and anger when you think, "I didn't get all the storage space the SD card claimed it had!!" But it is there. If we divide 256,000,000,000 by 1,073,741,824 we get 238.418 Gibibytes or about 93.1% the "stated" capacity. The OS is programmed in binary and will see and report capacity in GiBibytes. The storage manufacturer reports the capacity in Decimal Gigabytes to make it look larger and more appealing to the customer. In short, the implication is that the phone recognizes the full 256 Gigabytes (AKA 238.418 Gibibytes) ....Freakin' AWESOME!!! PLEASE NOTE: I haven't personally tested this. I don't have the 256GB microSDXC UHS-I3 card to go in my S7 Edge or the US$199 to buy one. Maybe Linus or Luke may want to give that a try if they still have a functioning Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge.

You will likely need a router that is a LITTLE more sophisticated and "Business Grade" than a D-link or Netgear all-in-one (unless they are REALLY High end consumer grade or Business Grade versions.) I would consider a router that supports something like Gateway Load Balancing Protocol (GLBP) or Policy-Based Routing. GLBP, or some generic form of it, will be the easiest to setup and configure for your needs. On the other hand, the flexibilty and breadth of definitions in access control lists and how you configure them in the individual hardware you choose will determine how granular and effective your "load balancing" is if you use PBR. I know Cisco Systems has multiple routers that fit this bill and some are even available relatively cheap. I believe GLBP and PBR were supported on the 1700, 1800 2600 and 2800 series routers (and all the way up from there). They (PBR and/or GLBP) were also supported on certain 800 and 900 series routers and some older routers (1400 and 1600 series) in one form or another. Check the feature navigator for IOS on the Cisco website to be certain. (http://www.cisco.com/go/fn) Alternately you may be able to accomplish the same thing with PFsense (open source software) or a proxy server software and some hardware you already have. Just remember a hardware based solution (in the case of a proxy server) is usually always faster than a software-based router. PfSense may be the middle of the road for you here. Just my $0.02

the short explanation: I recommend you use all four pairs of wires and all cables in the walls should use a straight through cable wiring scheme. A straight through cable would have t-568a to t-568a wiring (or alternately t-568b to t-568b). A crossover cable would have t-568a on one end and t-568b on the other. Here is the LONG explanation: The additional wires are present and do keep the active pairs of wires from having excessive crosstalk (Sort of). Even if you are not using all 4 pairs of wires, I would recommend you still include them in an RJ45 plug (if you are creating a network cable) or in the punch down on a wall jack. The extra wires do help with getting the proper spacing and wire placement in an RJ45 male plug and it's nice for the next guy who may have to deal with the wiring job you're doing now. Let's be honest here...do you need them? Not technically for 100BaseT. 1000BaseT will require a connected blue and brown pair of wires. Are there reasons to keep them for 100baseT? Absolutely! Is it nice for the next guy if you terminate it correctly? Definitely! Am I the network cable plug and jack police? Not even remotely!! As for cabling, a lot of switches have what's called auto-MDI/MDI-X, which is a fancy term for the fact that the switch can determine whether or not you are using a crossover cable or a straight through cable. In 100BaseT cabling pins 1 and 2 are used for transmit (TX) and pins 3 and 6 and used for receive (RX). if the pins on the opposite side of the cable are the same (1-2 for TX and 3-6 for RX) you have a straight through cable. If pins 1 and 2 "crossover" to connect to pins 3 and 6 on the opposite end and pins 3 and 6 "crossover" to pins 1 and 2 you have a crossover cable. Straight through cables are used to connect from a computer to a switch or switch to a router. crossover cables are used to connect a computer directly to another computer or a switch to another switch. With auto MDI/MDI-X, The port will sense which pins are used for transmit and receive and switch them if needed. Normally TX on the host computer connects to RX on the switch and RX on the host connects to TX on the switch. If TX is connected to TX, it's just like 2 people trying to talk on a set of walkie-talkies at the same time. This is the job of the switch, to connect TX to RX/RX to TX on any computer or router connected to it. Any wiring in the walls should be wired as straight through cables. A straight through cable would have t-568a to t-568a wiring (or alternately t-568b to t-568b). A crossover cable would have t-568a on one end and t-568b on the other. Hope this helps

WOW! Once I got some storage in it or attached to it......That's kind of an easy answer. Video editing comes to mind easily. 3 gamers 1 computer also would work. Buy some storage or an external RAID Array and you could use it as a storage server. A massive web, file, or mail server also comes to mind OR my personal favorite, one hell of a Kicka$$ gaming computer once you add 2 Raid 0 SSDs and and two 6TB hard drives in Raid-1. Personally I would look at video editing, RAID array and Gaming setup with a virtualized 3gamer/1box arrangement.

I want an SSD for my system because I do not currently have one and am using a 1TB hitachi Ultrastar. Everyone should have an SSD because it allows for a quick boot into Windows/Linux and High speed access for video/sound editing and quick game loads (for gamers like me). It would also be nice to win it on my birthday which falls on the same day as the end of the drawing/contest.