Link Aggregation VPN Primer The Next Reality

Aggregating Problems

Thanks for the great article in the Spring issue about boosting my NAS with link aggregation. And timely, too. I had just run Ethernet cable up to my second floor to serve another PC and a smart TV up there, and was looking into utilizing both ports on my QNAP TS-251, since two or three devices may be accessing it at a time now. I use my NAS for media streaming and computer backups. Since I hadn’t purchased a switch yet, I just picked up the same switch you used ( TP- Link SG-2008). I was able to follow your tutorial to the letter. It was spot on, but one tip, though, for anyone using this particular switch: After setting up LACP and verifying everything works, you’ll want to click “Save Config” on the main menu, to make the changes permanent. Otherwise, if the switch loses power, it reverts to factory defaults, and you lose your settings. I found that out the hard way when I decided to move the switch to a new location after setting it up!

I’m semi- comfortable with networking, but I’m far from an expert, and I had one hell of a time getting things to work initially. I have a cable modem and wireless router (D- Link DIR- 868L). I couldn’t log on to the switch unless I removed the router from the network. I was able to do that and get LACP set up just fine, but once I hooked the router back up: no switch access again. The QNAP console confirms both ports are trunked, though.

I assume I may have an IP address conflict. I ran across a neat little program called NetScan Tools Pro, which tells me more info about my network than I knew existed! It says there are no duplicate IP addresses, and I couldn’t decipher any other problems with the tests I ran. FWIW, my Windows 10 PC and my router are both using default network settings for the most part, except I set them both to use Google’s DNS servers. They’ve been set up that way for a long time without issue. My cable modem is pretty well locked down, of course. My ISP charges $ 25 per month just to have a static IP address set on it. No thank you!

So, do you think I should just leave well enough alone, since everything seems to be working fine? Or is there a reasonably simple fix to get things set up right? I don’t want to go mucking around with a lot of network settings and screw something else up, but I don’t want any potential future problems either. Perhaps we could use a feature article on home networking one day soon?

– Scott Holcomb

EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: I passed on your details to the author of the article, Nick Peers, and he responded with, “The switch defaults to 192.168.0.1, which conflicts with many routers. You need to manually set the IP address of the switch to something else.” Nick followed up by saying he’ll drop you a line directly, as it’s not easy. On to your last point: I think a feature on the optimal way of setting up your home network is a great idea, and it’s something you’ll see in a forthcoming issue.

Network Primer

Can the magazine consider running a article on the use of a VPN, and show any value in using that kind of technology?

– Hinton Thomas

EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: Virtual private networking has traditionally been used by home workers to log on to their work’s intranets to get critical work done securely. This is still their main use today, although more and more we’re seeing VPNs used as a way of obfuscating network traffic to avoid georestrictions and censorship. We’ve looked at the process of setting up and running VPNs before (in fact, if you turn to page 68, you’ll find a guide on how to turn your home PC into a VPN for accessing while you’re out and about), but we’ve only ever touched on what VPNs are in passing. We’ll look at covering this in more detail in the future.

Discount Drive

I keep seeing in your builds that you always have decentpriced SSDs. Where do you get the prices from?

– EJ Cross

REVIEWS EDITOR ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: We use a combination of Newegg, Amazon, PC Part Picker, and NCIXUS. We generally avoid one- off, short-term sales, because the lead time on the magazine means that these can be out of date by the time you read it. So, you shouldn’t have a problem finding drives for the prices we quote.

Virtual Revolution

With rumors circulating and people guessing, I’m one of them. Here’s my guess: Valve/ HTC are working on the next iteration of Vive. If we see anything this year, I think it’s more likely it would be Iteration 1.5. Sort of a Tick, Tock, like Intel’s strategy has been in the past for optimizing its architecture. I think it is more likely (for development) that we see a full hardware update some time next year.

–Matthew Sumrada

EDITOR- IN- CHIEF TUAN NGYUEN RESPONDS: HTC is said to be working on a completely untethered version of the Vive—that is, one without having to use Lighthouses for 3D room-scale type movement. This is very much like what Oculus demoed to us during the last Oculus Connect event, a few months ago. Everyone is working on how to get the imagery from the desktop GPU over to the headset wirelessly. HTC is trying to work that out, but right now the wireless stuff is prone to interference and range issues, as well as latency. You cannot have latency when it comes to VR, or else you’ll get sick immediately. HTC recently demoed an external 3D tracker module, but that is likely to be integrated into the headset on the next iteration of the Vive.

Window of Things

Could you please do some coverage on Microsoft’s Windows 10 IoT initiative? It seems to be the perfect bridge between your Raspberry Pi projects and hardware/ build enthusiasm. Extending Windows to the Pi via real- world controls is exciting to consider, but extremely hard to find good coverage on.

– Steve Hysick

EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: Like you, we were very excited about the potential offered up by this initiative, but once we got our hands on a build, it became apparent that this was aimed at fairly serious development, rather than the at- home hacking that typifies most Pi projects. Having said that, we’ve just taken another look around (in response to your email), and there are a few more projects now. You can find plenty on the official site— https://microsoft. hackster. io— and grab the software from https://developer. microsoft.com/en- us/ windows/ iot/getstarted.

Sound System

When building computers for digital music production, optimizing for reduction of latency equals or exceeds that for gaming. I wish you would start monthly columns about builds, hardware, and software tweaks for high- power music rigs. Digital music magazines tend to slide past the issues of the actual computer and operating system software.

–Terry Livenick

EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: We love a niche here on MaximumPC, but a monthly column may be taking things a bit too far. Even so, we’ll investigate this topic and see what we can find out.