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ispgeek

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    comcast uncapped in my area w00t

    in XFINITY (Comcast Cable Communications)

    Posted

    well the tech from Comcast just left my house and said the reason for the uncapp is to compete with verizon..which is still an hour away.and to compete with dsl 8mb/s..packages.i was thinking something was wrong when i ran test any where from 10mb/s to 25mb/s 25mb/s of course from speak easy..10mb/s to 15mb/s from testmy.net .im just happy uncapped and speed burst to top..

    You are not uncapped...no modem is "uncapped",  You have just been given a better performance tier (or bin).  Enjoy your new faster speeds nonetheless....

    How to cancel your AOL account

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    This is a genuine script given to AOL staff to stop people cancelling their accounts

    from the http://cache.consumerist.com

    this is why all the reps you speak with at AOL sound the same.

    http://cache.consumerist.com/assets/resources/2006/09/script2.jpg

    :evil:

    Actually there is no need to talk with a rep at all.  There is a link on the main AOL page after signin.  They opt into one of three programs, one being the free no support deal and thats it...their done.

    Also calling them over this issue is not a problem either....they are fully expecting your call and will not give you one bit of hassle over it....I just went through it for a gift account that I had given someone a year ago...took me a sum total of 4 minutes on the phone and no hassles.

    AOL subscribers also received an email from the president of AOL about 45 days ago that contains all the information and how to do the switch.

    Feedback on my hardware plz

    in Networking and Hardware

    Posted

    Hi, I'm gonna order a new "custom" computer, and I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to parts other than graphic cards and cpus. I'm wondering if you could give me some feedback on what is good and what you suggest I change for the price.

    Here are the specs:

    CPU           Intel Core 2 Duo Conroe E6400 2.13GHz FSB 1066, 2MB CPU

    Memory         2048MB DDR II 667 Memory 240 Pin (Major Brand) (1024 x 2) (special)

    Mother Board  ASUS P5LD2 R2.0 Mother Board

    Hard Drive 1 Western Digital 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA II

    Hard Drive 2 Western Digital 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA II

    Optical Drive 1 LG 16X DVD RW +- Dual Layer

    Video         ASUS EN7300 GS GeForce PCI E, 256MB Turbo Cache DDR, DVI

    Audio         Onboard Audio

    Network Card Onboard Network Card

    Case         Lian-Li PC61 ATX Silver Aluminum Mid. Tower (black)

    Power Supply 430 Watt Thermaltake Power Supply With Dual Fan W0070

    Warranty 1 Years Parts & 3 Years Labor Warranty

    (Canadian Dollars) Priced At:  $1,071 + approx 140$ shipping and tax

    that makes about total $1000 US

    I can change most parts, but the present configuration is a set, so its cheaper that way.

    Any suggestions? Thx

    I have no problems with anything BUT the western digital hard drives.  Go with the seagate equiv, pay a couple of extra bux and get that 5 year warranty.  You will not regret the decision...trust me!

    RAID

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Here is a good explanation...

    The fundamental difference between reading and writing under RAID is this: when you write data in a redundant environment, you must access every place where that data is stored; when you read the data back, you only need to read the minimum amount of data necessary to retrieve the actual data--the redundant information does not need to be accessed on a read. OK, this isn't as complicated as I probably just made it sound. :^) Let's see how various storage techniques used in RAID differ in this regard:

    Mirroring: Read performance under mirroring is far superior to write performance. Let's suppose you are mirroring two drives under RAID 1. Every piece of data is duplicated, stored on both drives. This means that every byte of data stored must be written to both drives, making write performance under RAID 1 actually a bit slower than just using a single disk; even if it were as fast as a single disk, both drives are tied up during the write. But when you go to read back the data? There's absolutely no reason to access both drives; the controller, if intelligently programmed, will only ask one of the drives for the data--the other drive can be used to satisfy a different request. This makes RAID significantly faster than a single drive for reads, under most conditions.

    Striping Without Parity: A RAID 0 array has about equal read and write performance (or more accurately, roughly the same ratio of read to write performance that a single hard disk would have.) The reason is that the "chopping up" of the data without parity calculation means you must access the same number of drives for reads as you do for writes.

    Striping With Parity: As with mirroring, write performance when striping with parity (RAID levels 3 through 6) is worse than read performance, but unlike mirroring, the "hit" taken on a write when doing striping with parity is much more significant. Here's how the different accesses fare:

    For reads, striping with parity can actually be faster than striping without parity. The parity information is not needed on reads, and this makes the array behave during reads in a way similar to a RAID 0 array, except that the data is spread across one extra drive, slightly improving parallelism.

    For sequential writes, there is the dual overhead of parity calculations as well as having to write to an additional disk to store the parity information. This makes sequential writes slower than striping without parity.

    The biggest discrepancy under this technique is between random reads and random writes. Random reads that only require parts of a stripe from one or two disks can be processed in parallel with other random reads that only need parts of stripes on different disks. In theory, random writes would be the same, except for one problem: every time you change any block in a stripe, you have to recalculate the parity for that stripe, which requires two writes plus reading back all the other pieces of the stripe! Consider a RAID 5 array made from five disks, and a particular stripe across those disks that happens to have data on drives #3, #4, #5 and #1, and its parity block on drive #2. You want to do a small "random write" that changes just the block in this stripe on drive #3. Without the parity, the controller could just write to drive #3 and it would be done. With parity though, the change to drive #3 affects the parity information for the entire stripe. So this single write turns into a read of drives #4, #5 and #1, a parity calculation, and then a write to drive #3 (the data) and drive #2 (the newly-recalculated parity information). This is why striping with parity stinks for random write performance. (This is also why RAID 5 implementations in software are not recommended if you are interested in performance.)

    Another hit to write performance comes from the dedicated parity drive used in certain striping with parity implementations (in particular, RAID levels 3 and 4). Since only one drive contains parity information, every write must write to this drive, turning it into a performance bottleneck. Under implementations with distributed parity, like RAID 5, all drives contain data and parity information, so there is no single bottleneck drive; the overheads mentioned just above still apply though.

    As if the performance hit for writes under striping with parity weren't bad enough, there is even one more piece of overhead! The controller has to make sure that when it changes data and its associated parity, all the changes happen simultaneously; if the process were interrupted in the middle, say, after the data were changed and not the parity, the integrity of the array would be compromised. To prevent this, a special process must be used, sometimes called a two-phase commit. This is similar to the techniques used in database operations, for example, to make sure that when you transfer money from your checking account to your savings account, it doesn't get subtracted from one without being certain that it was added to the other (or vice-versa). More overhead, more performance slowdown.

    The bottom line that results from the difference between read and write performance is that many RAID levels, especially ones involving striping with parity, provide far better net performance improvement based on the ratio of reads to writes in the intended application. Some applications have a relatively low number of writes as a percentage of total accesses; for example, a web server. For these applications, the very popular RAID 5 solution may be an ideal choice. Other applications have a much higher percentage of writes; for example, an interactive database or development environment. These applications may be better off with a RAID 01 or 10 solution, even if it does cost a bit more to set up.

    Speed Limiter?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Is there any (simple) way to limit the speed of people on my network? Say I only want people who are connected to my router to get 5Mbps. How can I do this? I do want to keep full speed on my computer.  :haha:   Any programs or ideas would be greatly appreciated.   :smile2:

    Yes there is a way....and you can get the router for $5.00!!  

    https://shop.fon.com/FonShop/shop/US/ShopController?view=product&product=PRD-001

    You can also flash certain routers with hotspot software that will allow you to do the same thing as the one above.

    Most Reccomended

    in Networking and Hardware

    Posted

    This is the best low cost solution...  for here the technology just sky rockets..

    It is a netgear product that will allow you to have a back up..

    http://www.netgear.com/Products/VPNandSSL/WiredVPNFirewallRouters/FVS124G.aspx

    If you are looking for a product that does bandwidth combination between the two connection you are looking into the $500+ realm of business class routers.

    Swimmer I can't help but notice this is advertised as a gigabit router (which internally it very well be), but wan to lan its only 11.5mb grrrrr

    The new cpu hype

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    First we had the dual core cpu. Now the quad 4 cpu is out. I can only imagine how many salesman will con the average user into spending alot more money on a computer by convincing them the dual are twice as fast and the quads being 4 times as fast as the single core cpu.

    From everything I have seen and herd the dual core at best will give you MAYBE a 30 percent boost over the single core. Most average users will never notice it. Acording to pcmag the quad chips are no better. Most will never notice the increase in preformace over the single core. Of course the hard core geeks will overclock them and brag about the benchmark tests.

    Just hope common sense prevails. Sure you can pay big bucks for a car that will do 180 miles an hour. Where in the usa can you utilize that speed. Computers are no diffrent. Sure you can pay big bucks for a computer that will screem, but do you really need it? Is the cost worth shaving a few seconds of load time for a program?

    Just hope the hardcore geeks as well as the weekend geeks educate there friends and pass along the real information that its just hype. I am getting ready to build my next computer. Yea I can afford it so I did go with a dual core cpu chip. Its the atholon 64 4200 dual core  chip. I get it up and running an about a month or so I will let ya all know my thoughts compared to a single core.

    I have no intention of upgrading from dual to quad core.  Thats just crazy....I have way more processing power than I need now.....I almost feel guilty having what I have......especially when I know what I had 22 years ago.....

    BIOS Update

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Ok, so i got a prebuild computer, if i upgrade (update) bios will i have access to all the features (for overclocking) or will it still be locked?

    In your case it will be locked because your BIOS is a highly modified version of the generic.  HP has a nasty habit of embedding things into their BIOS and other hardware so you need to be very careful.

    A few years back they embedded  the modem and sound board together (well parts of each actually...in any case it was uuuugly).  When people made changes to this equipment they found themselves with multiple functions no longer working and there was no way around it but to replace both with either the original product (which could no longer be obtained) or replace them both which still left the user with an annoying boot error that never went away.

    Helpsvc problem

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    how can you be sure of that - upgrading is not always a solution - I have not been experiencing this problem before, it started all of a sudden - so I dont think that even microsoft is aware of this issue - i highly doubt sp2 would fix it

    While it may not fix your problem SP2 does resolve a ton of other problems not to mention keeping your current in the upgrade path which is critical.

    ISPgeek, another modem question!

    in Networking and Hardware

    Posted

    I cannot honestly answer that question without speaking to your tech guys and that probably won't happen.    The levels you have posted above are not bad....so unless you are actually having problems I wouldn't worry about them.  We hesitate to give levels out to people because the minute they change the phone calls start to flood in.....your levels will change from hour to hour and day to day, this is normal.  So long as they stay within normal operatiing params and you have no problems I wouldn't worry about it.

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