Singapore ADSL Delight

Telstra needs a thorough and robust slapping. I moved apartments in Singapore a couple of weeks ago and was unhappy with the Net2Room 'ADSL' service supplied, so I looked into the local ADSL providers. I decided to go with SingNet the IP arm of SingTel.

I walked into the SingTel store near my office building at 4pm on a Thursday afternoon last week and applied. Since I didn't have a phone line, I also applied for one of those, too.

Tuesday morning, 11am the line was installed, by 2pm I had working 3500 / 350 kbps ADSL. Most of that intervening time was me ducking out to purchase an ADSL modem - I wasn't expecting it to happen so soon.

Less than 3 working days, from application to working ADSL service. The equivalent from Telstra in Sydney, or any ISP so lumbered with Telstra's DSLAM provisioning headaches would have taken 3 weeks. Add to that the typical 10 to 15 day wait for a copper service and the total pushes 6 weeks.

You even get given the choice - pay the Telco for an ADSL modem, or roll your own, so to speak. Just TRY getting Telstra to unbundle the modem. Needless to say I was very impressed.

Wed 16 Mar 2005 | /Computers/Networks | permalink

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SATA Raid controllers

I've been looking out for a decent review of SATA RAID controllers for a while, I'm thinking of building a media server. www.tweakers.net has an awesome review of 8 different controllers.

The Areca ARC-1120 8 port SATA II controller kicked the pants of the competition in almost every respect, most notably the 3Ware card I was previously considering.

Wed 09 Mar 2005 | /Computers/Storage | permalink

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iPod Ownership

Now that I own an iPod I finally understand what the fuss is all about. I mean it just gives you unprecidented access to your music collection. I find myself listening to music I was only dimly aware that I owned, from CD's that must be buried somewhere dusty on the back of a bottom shelf behind a mountain of used computer parts and smelly dive gear.

iTunes sort of does that for you, but the 'aways have it with you'-ness of the iPod means that while you're waiting for a train, you can pop it out and explore. Man, to think I've listened to literally HOURS of completely irrelevant noise when I could be listening to music instead. (Some may argue that my music collection IS, in fact, irrelevant noise. Bite me).

Wed 09 Mar 2005 | /Computers/Apple | permalink

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Apache 2, Webmail

Spent some time installing Apache 2.0.50-8 so that I could do the proxying for Outlook Web Access properly. It sort of worked with Apache 1.3.26 but you couldn't reply to an email or forward one without a weird access denied error.

Apache 2 allows "ProxyPreserveHost" option, which ensures that the website requested by the client is passed to the proxied machine - that way Outlook Web Access knows how to insert correct URL's into the returning data. Works ver nicely now.

I must say I'm very impressed with the modular way Apache 2's configuration works. Heaps neater than one monolithic file, especially if you have multiple sites of configs.

Thu 12 Aug 2004 | /Computers/Networks | permalink

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SPAM Filtering

Spent the last few days setting up SPAM filtering. I used to use SpamAssassin, but it was just getting so hopeless at detecting SPAM. I've given DSPAM a try, http://www.nuclearelephant.com/projects/dspam/ and so far it works remarkably well. Very easy to set up - and I even learned a thing or two about Exim MTA.

Sat 07 Aug 2004 | /Computers/Networks | permalink

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