I've become a really big fan of Penny Arcade this year. I read it like... three times a week. Sometimes I look through the archives to see what I missed back when I didn't know of PA's existence. These are a couple of my absolute favorites.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/07/29
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/09/26
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/05
My router had been begging for a VLAN switch for some time. With seven ethernet interfaces, things were getting a little out of hand.
While designing a wireless network for a big client and spec'ing out the hardware, I found just the thing. The Netgear FS726TP. Like many people, I've been burned by the crappy plastic-encased Netgear consumer grade stuff in the past, however I'm a big fan of their higher quality ProSafe gear, especially the WG302 and WG102 access points which comprise my home wireless network.
I was impressed with the specs of the FS726TP, for the price, and had tentatively planned to buy one for myself once the client's project was complete and I had verified the switch would meet my own needs as well. As soon as the gear for the project came in, I put the switches to the test.
So I have had been enjoying my DSL internet connection, and my cable co-free life. And then my ISP apparently decided they had been much too nice to me.
Over the past weekend, my DSL seemed to be suffering from brief hiccups. Brief enough that when I checked to see why my connection just went down, it was already back up. That was a small annoyance that I planned to call Cincinnati Bell about Monday morning.
But come Monday morning I had bigger problems. By then my DSL connection would not stay up for any more than 30 seconds at a time. It was essentially unusable (I did try however, loading webpages in between disconnects -- what fun).
