Crosstalk Solutions

2025-08-19 · open the original ↗

• EdgeRouter 3.0 has finally left early access with a redesigned interface. The host notes the release had been in early access for over two years; upgrading an EdgeRouter X from 2.0.9-hotfix.6 took a single reboot, and the new UI moves the top tabs into a left-hand menu, adds CPU, RAM and port-status widgets to the header, and offers dark, light and system themes.
• WireGuard VPN support is the headline new feature. Per the release notes, it lets the EdgeRouter connect to another WireGuard peer for site-to-site, VPN-server or VPN-client setups, and the host finds a new WireGuard section under VPN for adding peers. The notes also add remote access to the local web interface through UISP, where he believes only the CLI was reachable before.
• New factory defaults tighten security. The release notes list a default firewall dropping all incoming traffic on eth1, SSH disabled by default, new password-strength checks (which flagged his weak test password) and logging of websocket client IPs for brute-force detection. He reads the default-firewall note as meaning internet on eth1 now works without the setup wizard, but had not tested it.
• The host welcomes continued updates for older EdgeMax hardware. He lists the EdgeRouter 4, 6, X and X SFP as beneficiaries, while noting he has covered little but UniFi from Ubiquiti on the channel for some time.

2025-08-18 · open the original ↗

• Hamina Planner produces a client-ready Wi-Fi design in minutes. The host shows it working with any brand of access point: it auto-scales a dropped-in floor plan, maps walls and doors in 3D for material and height edits, auto-places APs for a chosen model, mount and height, simulates a Wi-Fi 7 iPhone roaming between them, and auto-routes Ethernet runs with cable lengths.
• He pitches the tool as a way to sell design work. He suggests such a design could be billed at hundreds or even thousands of dollars; the video makes no sponsorship disclosure either way.

2025-08-15 · open the original ↗

• Fanvil's entry-level video intercom kit impressed the host for its price. The kit costs $150. Crosstalk, a VoIP provider that says it does not usually resell Fanvil, installed it for a customer. The kit pairs an i60 door phone (2 MP camera, call button, RFID reader, door-strike relay, IP65, IP66 with an optional rain cover) with a 7-inch touchscreen indoor station on PoE or a power adapter and Wi-Fi; the i60K adds a keypad for a few dollars more.
• Without a PBX, the kit does little beyond call-and-unlock. The two units pair over the LAN in about a minute, but then the door phone can only call the indoor station and the station trigger the relay. Registering both as SIP extensions on a FreePBX, here a Crosstalk-hosted one, adds voicemail, outbound calling and speed dials from the indoor station, and SMS, which he did not try.
• Door voicemail uses call-forward-on-no-answer to the voicemail code. On the indoor station he set forwarding to *513 (* sends straight to voicemail in FreePBX, 513 being the station's extension); he used 10 seconds of ringing for the demo but suggests 20–30 in production.
• The i60 also rings ordinary VoIP video phones. Pointed at a Crosstalk 280 phone, it delivers H.264 video once answered, though unlike the indoor station there is no preview before pickup, and * triggers the relay. RFID unlocking worked with a key fob he had lying around; the bundled smartphone-app licences he did not test.
• The camera's narrow angle and cloud-PBX streaming are the caveats. He advises mounting the i60 higher than a normal doorbell so it doesn't just show visitors' belts. Video on the indoor station stuttered through the cloud-hosted PBX, which he says disappears with a PBX on the local LAN.

2025-08-11 · open the original ↗

• UniFi OS Server is for networks without UniFi OS on the gateway. The host sees two use cases: UniFi APs and switches behind a third-party gateway such as pfSense or an EdgeRouter, and UniFi gateways that lack onboard UniFi OS. Think of it as a cloud key, he says, running locally or cloud-hosted for many sites; Dream Machines, the Dream Router, Cloud Gateways and the Dream Wall don't need it.
• The gateways without onboard OS are aimed at MSPs. The store's advanced-hosting gateways (Gateway Enterprise, Gateway Fiber, Gateway Lite) suit a provider running one large cloud or bare-metal UniFi OS Server instance, giving one interface for all customer sites and one set of admin credentials per employee instead of per-site logins.
• It replaces the legacy self-hosted Network application and cloud keys. The host has moved about a dozen clients off an old Network instance hosted at DigitalOcean. Gains over the legacy app: UniFi OS and its applications update from the UI and can auto-update rather than via the CLI, and sites get UniFi Identity, InnerSpace and Site Magic SD-WAN mesh VPN.
• It runs only Network and cannot act as a router. As of recording it cannot run Protect, Access or Talk, only Network plus Identity and InnerSpace, though Ubiquiti has hinted at more. It does not turn a multi-NIC box into a firewall like pfSense. He assumes, untested, it can't share a server with the legacy app because of port overlap (the 8080 inform port, a new 11443 GUI port), so shut the old app down first.
• It is early access, and a Docker version is unlikely. Downloads appear only to those signed up for UniFi early access, which he thinks is free. He guesses Ubiquiti won't build a Docker version because the server is already containerized, in Podman.

2025-08-07 · open the original ↗

• A Raspberry Pi suits UniFi OS Server for your own network only. The host frames this install as controlling local devices without exposure through the firewall; MSPs hosting customers should use his hardened hosted-Linux setup instead. It serves UniFi APs and switches behind a non-UniFi gateway, or UXG gateways lacking onboard UniFi OS; Dream Machines, the Dream Router, Dream Wall and UCG models don't need it.
• The hardware minimum is a guess; storage is the firm one. Ubiquiti publishes no CPU or RAM minimum, and he guesses a Pi 4 with 4 GB will do; he used a Pi 5 with 8 GB. Storage must be at least 20 GB, so he recommends a card of 32 GB or more, and used 128 GB.
• Ubuntu Server plus Podman and the ARM64 installer is the path. He flashed Ubuntu Server 25.04 with Raspberry Pi Imager, enabling SSH with password authentication up front, and advises a DHCP reservation or static IP since devices check in regularly. After updating, install Podman, wget the Linux ARM64 installer, chmod +x it, run it with install under sudo, and allow about two minutes before browsing to port 11443.
• Ubiquiti's licence forbids reselling hosting built on the free software. The setup wizard states it is for personal or organizational use only. The installer's note also says to add your user to the uos-server group to run its commands; a factory-reset U7 Pro XG then appeared ready to adopt.
• MicroSD cards are prone to failure, so plan for it. He notes UniFi backs the configuration up to the cloud weekly, so a failed Pi can be rebuilt and restored; alternatively boot from an external M.2 or SATA SSD, copying the boot volume over before installing UniFi OS Server, which he says is easiest.

2025-08-05 · open the original ↗

• Migrating legacy UniFi sites to UniFi OS Server is easy, the host finds. His old DigitalOcean-hosted controller was still on Network 7.4.162, over a year since its last update, because the legacy app needs manual CLI updates; he is moving his legacy clients so they stay current. The use cases he gives are UXG-line gateways without onboard UniFi OS and UniFi devices behind a non-UniFi gateway.
• Export the site, import it, then push devices across. On the old controller, Settings > System > Site Management > Export Site downloads a file; on the new server, add a site via Import Site. Back on the old controller, pick the devices and enter the new server's hostname (the default port needs no change), and they are told to set-inform to it.
• Devices moved over quickly once told the new address. Within one to two minutes, an old switch and a UAP AC Pro reported to the new server almost immediately, and he believes they are also updated to firmware matching the new server's version. Only then forget the devices on the old controller and delete the site.
• It is still early access, so production MSPs may wait. As of recording, he suggests those with many production clients hold off until general availability. Older hardware can get stuck; then SSH in and run set-inform manually, or paperclip-reset the device and re-adopt it.

2025-08-01 · open the original ↗

• UniFi OS Server is Ubiquiti's official hosting, now free to self-host. Ubiquiti pitches it at MSPs managing gateways without onboard UniFi OS (the Gateway Enterprise, Fiber, Lite line). The host's biggest advantage is that UniFi OS and its applications update from the UI, with auto-updates, unlike the legacy CLI routine; it also adds Site Magic, InnerSpace and Identity, with sites still visible at unifi.ui.com.
• Serious multi-site deployments should run on Linux, not Windows or Mac. He considers Windows and Mac builds fine for trying it or one local site but less seriously supported. On DigitalOcean he chose a $12-a-month droplet with 2 GB RAM; the $6 one technically meets the 20 GB minimum with 25 GB. He recommends automated backups and SSH-key login in production.
• Installation is Podman plus Ubiquiti's x64 installer. It installed UOS Server 4.2.23 in about 30 seconds and needs a minute more before the GUI on port 11443 responds. The setup wizard's licence forbids reselling hosting on the free software, and multi-site management must be enabled under Settings > System; the default site can only be renamed once a second exists.
• Harden it with a DNS-validated certificate and a UFW firewall. He uses certbot's Cloudflare DNS plugin with a zone-scoped API token and a community member's import script, plus a cron renewal job. The DNS-01 challenge means port 80 need not be opened. UFW denies incoming by default, allowing only UniFi's listed ports and SSH from your WAN IP. Chrome still showed "not secure" despite a valid certificate; Firefox did not.
• Change the default subnet before adopting the first gateway. He preconfigures the network so that Site Magic can link sites, which cannot share the same default subnet. A Gateway Lite on a separate T-Mobile Home Internet connection, simulating a client site, then adopted to the hosted server and updated.

2025-07-30 · open the original ↗

• The Switch Ultra's power options make it unusually versatile. It can take PoE++ in through a rear port, leaving all seven front gigabit ports free, or run on an optional 60 W or 210 W AC adapter; the power source sets how much PoE the front ports get, over 200 W with the 210 W adapter. A magnetic mounting plate lets the host stick one to the back of his office rack for test devices.
• The U7 Pro XG is a no-brainer over the U7 Pro. For $10 more it gives almost the same performance, a 10 Gb uplink, white or black colours, and the flatter face and stepped metal back plate that Ubiquiti's engineers developed for the enterprise E7 series' heat dissipation in dense deployments.
• The UCG Fiber is the best desktop gateway Ubiquiti has made. The host's view rests on its full UniFi OS app suite, two 10 Gb SFP+ ports, one 10 Gb and four 2.5 Gb RJ45 ports (one supplying PoE), and flexible WAN assignment: any port can be WAN, and up to six of the seven can be WANs at once.
• The UK Ultra is the host's most controversial pick, but brilliant. Though it is Wi-Fi 5 at a time of Wi-Fi 7 access points, at $89 it is IPX6 weatherproof, draws at most 8 W, and takes panel and omni antenna accessories; he keeps one in his network bag, runs one in his backyard off a solar setup, and recommends installers carry one as a spare.
• Etherlighting on the Pro Max switches is genuinely useful, not just looks. Port RGB can be set by link speed or by VLAN; on his 16-port switch the host colours his internet VLAN pink, IoT green and secure LAN blue. He calls it the rare real innovation in switches, a category he says he usually turns down vendor review requests for.

2025-07-25 · open the original ↗

• Basic failover sends everything out the primary until it is down. Dave Barger, presenting, notes UniFi gateways handle up to eight WANs depending on model; extra WANs are added by mapping a LAN port as WAN (Settings > Internet), and traffic falls back up the list once a higher WAN recovers. His demo pairs a Gateway Ultra with a Peplink router on an AT&T SIM as backup.
• UniFi's default SLA for declaring a WAN down rarely needs changing. By default it pings ping.ui.com, Cloudflare and Google out of each WAN and marks the link down if two of the three fail. Custom SLAs let you set targets, a ping interval (5 seconds in his example), a time window (60 seconds) and thresholds that default to 20% packet loss and 1,500 ms latency.
• Weighted load balancing assigns sessions by probability, not bandwidth. A 50/50 or 75/25 weighting effectively flips a weighted coin for each new session, ignoring its size, and the whole session then sticks to that WAN; a large YouTube upload can land on the weaker link.
• Policy-based routing pins specific traffic to a chosen WAN. Routes can target domains (subdomains included implicitly), and the kill-switch option forces traffic out that WAN even when it is down. Barger suggests this to keep guest traffic off a metered secondary WAN, since load balancing fails over inherently.
• UniFi does not support bonding, which load balancing is not. A load-balanced speed test shows one WAN's speed; bonding uses several WANs within a single session and can send redundant packets so a VoIP call or livestream survives a WAN dropping. Barger points to Peplink for this, disclosing that Crosstalk is a Peplink Gold partner.

2025-07-23 · open the original ↗

• The host calls the Netgate 8300 a beast, citing its throughput. Being configured for a Crosstalk wireless ISP client, it is rated at 36 Gbps routing and 26 Gbps through the firewall, with four SFP+, four SFP and three 2.5 Gb Ethernet ports plus IPMI, an expansion module slot for more high-speed ports, and a slot for a second power supply. Crosstalk says it is a Netgate pfSense partner.

2025-07-21 · open the original ↗

• The host warns VoIP resellers not to become 3CX partners. He has never used the product and concedes it may be good, but says he would never rely on 3CX for his customers because of how it treats channel partners; once a partner is cut off, he says, the customers they brought in become 3CX's.
• A former partner reports being dropped for commenting on a competitor. In a LinkedIn post the host reads, the partner says 3CX stripped their partner status within 8 hours of a comment about a rival platform, then removed their help-forum posting rights. The host says he has heard dozens of similar stories.
• The host cites past evidence of partner-hostile terms. He quotes a former 3CX director of sales in a 2018 interview saying partners had to hand over full end-user contact details to get free updates, which 3CX could use to go to customers directly; and in 2023, he says, 3CX ended updates for perpetual licences past a certain version unless customers moved to recurring licences.

2025-07-16 · open the original ↗

• The Dream Router 7 is the simplest entry, but it pins your access point. At $279 it combines gateway, four-port switch with one PoE port, Wi-Fi 7 access point and full UniFi OS apps, and handles multi-gig internet; the host's "mother-in-law router" suits apartments and small homes. Its bundled 64 GB microSD is good for maybe one camera and not mission-critical, and the Wi-Fi sits wherever the ISP hands off.
• The UCG Ultra suits only sub-gigabit lines and network-only use. At $129 it manages up to 30 UniFi devices and over 300 clients with a 2.5 Gb WAN and four 1 Gb LAN ports, but runs only UniFi Network and is rated for 1 Gbps with intrusion prevention. The host would step up to the $199 Cloud Gateway Max, rated 2.3 Gbps, for faster internet or other UniFi apps.
• The Lite 8 PoE switch is optional for mostly-wireless homes. The $109 switch has eight gigabit ports, four with PoE+, for wired devices and access points; without many wired devices a PoE injector for the access point will do.
• The host would pay extra for the U6+ over the U7 Lite. The $30 buys better range: the U6+ ($129) is rated for 1,500 sq ft and about 300 clients against 1,250 sq ft and 200 for the $99 U7 Lite, and on a gigabit switch Wi-Fi 7 gives no noticeable speed gain. Gateway, switch and U6+ total $367, with each piece placed where it works best.
• Cheaper UniFi gear is not the best value for home use. The host rejects the $190 Express 7 as too underpowered and the $89 UK Ultra, a Wi-Fi 5 unit, as only a supplemental backyard access point. He notes most out-of-production UniFi gear on eBay or Facebook Marketplace is still supported.

2025-07-15 · open the original ↗

• The SunFounder Pironman 5 Max's standout is its dual M.2 riser. It takes two NVMe drives in RAID 1 or RAID 0, or, as in the host's build, one NVMe plus the Raspberry Pi AI Kit, whose Hailo-8L gives about 13 TOPS and which he calls a learning toy. The case also has a tower cooler, RGB fans, a 1-inch stats OLED, exposed GPIO and a board converting micro HDMI to full HDMI.
• The host's build turns the Pi into an offline knowledge store. He added a 1 TB Kingston NVMe drive and installed Internet-in-a-Box, carrying local Wikipedia, over 60,000 Project Gutenberg ebooks and Khan Academy Lite.
• The host rates it highly, with noisy fans the main complaint. He says assembly took about 90 minutes with easy instructions, and he would swap the fans for quieter ones on his own desk. The base model, without AI kit or storage, is about $108 US.

2025-07-11 · open the original ↗

• The UniFi network ran three years with no drops or failed equipment. At this Idaho lake house, internet arrives at a distant boat house from a wireless ISP (about 50 Mbps across the lake) and a since-installed Starlink Gen 2 dish on a fabricated dock mount, and is carried by VLAN to a Dream Machine SE in the main house; the host kept firmware updated remotely.
• Access points were moved below DFS to stop interfering with the ISP. The wireless ISP reported interference from auto channels; its link runs above the DFS range, around channel 153, so the host manually staggered every access point and Crosstalk's own point-to-multipoint gear onto lower 5 GHz channels, set to 40 MHz width except the busiest main-house access point at 80 MHz.
• The point-to-multipoint link had failed, masked by access-point mesh. One antenna lost power when the client shifted the network rack and half-unplugged it, and a dead 24 V passive PoE injector downed another, replaced from a spare. Mesh kept the back house online, but the host says a point-to-multipoint link is always more reliable than meshing at distance.
• Growing trees have since degraded the back-house wireless link. Two trees now block line of sight to the antenna; the owner, who already planned to remove them, said this gave him the motivation.
• Plasti Dip on the outdoor access points held up through three years. The host contrasts it with a box spray-painted black, which weathered far worse.

2025-07-09 · open the original ↗

• Crosstalk offers one RingCentral customer a free migration to its PBX. The company's own offer, framed as an escape from per-extension monthly pricing, covers full project management and number porting onto its open-source-based Crosstalk PBX with no labour charge, for a company with 10 or more extensions and under 6 months left on its contract, in exchange for appearing in a video case study.
• Crosstalk claims switchers save thousands of dollars a year. The host gives no figures beyond that and says customers end up owning their system rather than renting it.

2025-07-08 · open the original ↗

• The Slate 7's touchscreen is functional, not decorative. It shows WAN and SSID status, offers QR codes for clients to join, live speed and load stats, and toggles for VPN (choosing between client profiles), AdGuard Home and Tor; the host says it has replaced his use of the physical side toggle. GL.iNet's Wi-Fi 7 travel router also has MLO, dual 2.5 Gb WAN/LAN, USB 3 for storage or tethering, and 5/9/12 V input.
• Factory-default setup runs through a short browser wizard. The admin page is at 192.168.8.1: join the GL-BE3600 SSID, scan the bottom QR code or wire in; the wizard sets an admin password and SSIDs, with an optional 160 MHz bandwidth scan that adds time. The host says GL.iNet routers have always got past hotel captive portals for him, though he prefers wired WAN.
• Dynamic DNS is useless behind a hotel's double NAT. The host says remote access there needs GL.iNet's AstroWarp SD-WAN or Tailscale instead. Multi-WAN supports failover or load balancing; he runs Starlink primary with campground Wi-Fi as backup.
• VPN client use is where the router shines. The host uses WireGuard with Private Internet Access, disclosing an affiliate link; AdGuard Home may block VPN providers and need disabling during setup. A home VPN is added by uploading a WireGuard config file as a new client group.
• Network acceleration, on by default, breaks the screen's bandwidth stats. Disabling it under network settings restores them. The host notes GL.iNet had the router on sale for Amazon Prime Day at recording.

2025-07-01 · open the original ↗

• The host's pick for a 10 Gb UniFi home gateway is the UCG Fiber. At $279 it has four 2.5 Gb LAN and two 10 Gb SFP+ ports, any port assignable as WAN, up to 5 Gbps with IDS/IPS, and an M.2 slot for adding UniFi Protect storage later. The design question came from a Rogue Support ticket from a user with UGREEN NAS units and a 10 Gb workstation.
• The Pro XG 8 PoE switch is pricey but powers everything. At $499 it has eight 10 Gb RJ45 ports, all PoE+ capable, two 10 Gb SFP+ uplinks and a desktop or wall form factor. The $299 USW Flex XG saves money and can itself be PoE-powered from the gateway, but cannot power an access point.
• The U7 Pro XG is better value than the U7 Pro. For $10 more it adds a 10 Gb port against the U7 Pro's 2.5 Gb, plus the flat-faced, metal-backed design carried over from Ubiquiti's enterprise E-series.
• The complete build lands right at the title's budget. The three pieces total $977, and with a DAC cable the host puts the full 10 Gb network with PoE at about $1,000.

2025-06-30 · open the original ↗

• A VLAN is layer 2; moving between VLANs is layer 3. The host explains that traffic within one subnet or VLAN stays at the data-link layer however many VLANs are stacked on an interface, while getting from one VLAN to another is routing at the network layer.
• A layer 3 switch routes between VLANs without the router. Normally inter-VLAN traffic has to go back to the router to be forwarded; a layer 3 switch can be configured to do that routing itself. The host offers this as an off-the-cuff explanation and asks others on the stream to check him.

2025-06-27 · open the original ↗

• Software VPNs can leak a remote worker's real location. The host says Crosstalk support gets many requests to mask a worker's location from an employer that locks access to a home IP; with a VPN, Tailscale or ZeroTier, forgetting to enable it or a dropped tunnel exposes the real location. GL.iNet sponsored the video.
• The Flint 3 is GL.iNet's new tri-band Wi-Fi 7 home router. It has four 2.5 Gbps LAN ports, one 2.5 Gbps WAN port, 2.4/5/6 GHz bands with MLO, preconfigured VPN client profiles (PIA, NordVPN, Mullvad and others), AdGuard Home, dynamic DNS and parental controls. As of recording it was on pre-order, with both early-bird price tiers already sold out.
• AstroWarp fixes a single home router as everyone's internet exit. GL.iNet's cloud service, which the host likens to SD-WAN, joins its routers and client apps (phone, Windows, Mac) into one central network at astrowarp.net; you draw links between devices and toggle "access the internet via" the chosen exit node.
• The host's test kept his home IP across three different WANs. With a Slate 7 travel router on T-Mobile Home Internet at a remote office, and later on hotel Wi-Fi in repeater mode, what-is-my-IP checks showed his home Comcast Business connection and the same IP once AstroWarp was enabled, with no re-configuration after moving.

2025-06-24 · open the original ↗

• STP exists to stop loops that cause broadcast storms. Dave Barger, presenting for Crosstalk, says a looped switch can bring a network down; his on-site tip is that link lights all blinking in perfect unison likely mean a broadcast storm. STP breaks the loop with a virtual "STP block" and re-negotiates if a link fails, adding simple redundancy.
• Set STP priority yourself so the right switch becomes root. The switch with the lowest priority (set in multiples of 4096) is elected root bridge; with equal defaults the election falls to MAC address and is effectively random. Barger says to give the switch nearest the router the lowest priority, so the block lands far from it.
• Port cost by link speed decides where the block goes. After the root election each switch adds a speed-based cost per hop to reach the root; in his three-switch example with all 1 Gbps links and the root at 4096, the block falls between switches B and A. Small businesses rarely need to touch costs, only priority.
• RSTP converges faster; deliberate loop designs need other protocols. RSTP adds faster negotiation and edge, alternate and backup port roles, and MSTP handles multiple loops. Barger says clients who plan many intentional loops expecting STP to cope are better served by another switching protocol or dynamic routing such as OSPF.

2025-06-19 · open the original ↗

• UniFi accounts now support passkeys for multifactor authentication. The host says it is enabled under Security at account.ui.com, took him under a minute, and stores the passkey in his password manager (1Password) across devices; he keeps TOTP as backup and recommends passkeys wherever possible as more secure and easier than other MFA.

2025-06-17 · open the original ↗

• The sanctuary's own plan meant double NAT and a weak mesh. The Yellowstone Wildlife Sanctuary, a nonprofit with a $1,000 cap, had bought two Dream Router 7s and two U7 Outdoors, planning one UDR7 behind its ASUS router and a wireless mesh of about 80 m (250+ ft) to a barn; the host rejects both.
• One UDR7 replaces the ASUS as the dual-WAN gateway. Its second WAN leaves room for Starlink, which the sanctuary wants but cannot yet afford monthly. Three USW Lite 8 PoE switches add ports in the office, gift shop and barn, with a U7 Outdoor on omni antennas at the shop and the barn.
• A NanoBeam point-to-point bridge replaces the mesh to the barn. A pair of NanoBeam 5AC Gen 2 at $99 each should carry about 300–400 Mbps over that span. They need 24 V passive PoE, so an INS-3AF-I-G converts the switch's 802.3af output rather than using an injector.
• Surge protectors at both ends guard against lightning. For the Montana weather, a grounded ETH-SP-G2 goes inside where the cable exits and another outside near each NanoBeam, so a strike should kill only the radio and protectors. Protectors for the U7 Outdoors, under the eaves, are optional.
• The new gear totals $655, under the $1,000 budget. That is three switches at $109, two PoE converters at $20, four surge protectors at $12.50, two NanoBeams at $99 and two mounting arms at about $20 from Amazon. The spare UDR7 could resell for an estimated $200–250. The design was worked out on a live stream with viewers.

2025-06-16 · open the original ↗

• A Starlink Mini kept the host online where LTE failed. On a 7-hour road trip it worked lying on the shelf behind the rear seat, powered by an Anker power bank showing 22 W while searching, about 10–12 W once connected, and an estimated 4 hours 13 minutes of runtime. He pitches his referral link for one free month of service.

2025-06-15 · open the original ↗

• NFR kits give installers the margin MSRP pricing leaves out. The host says installers buying at MSRP end up paying for their own time on warranty and RMA work; a not-for-resale kit lets prospective resellers buy and learn a vendor's gear at a steep discount.
• Alta Labs' kit costs $399 against a $636 MSRP. It includes the Route10 gateway (four 2.5 Gbps RJ45, two PoE, two 10 Gbps SFP+), the S8-POE switch (8 gigabit ports, four PoE+), an AP6 (2x2 Wi-Fi 6) and AP6 Pro (4x4). It requires joining the reseller program; code "crosstalk" takes $10 off. The host is giving one away, winner picked June 27.

2025-06-12 · open the original ↗

• A one-line script set-informs every unadopted device on a subnet. Hosted UniFi controllers need each local device told where to call home via the SSH set-inform command, which is slow by hand or through HostiFi's GUI at 100 devices. The host points to a script from a Ubiquiti employee that scans the local subnet and does the SSH for all of them.

2025-06-10 · open the original ↗

• The USW Pro XG 8 PoE is all-10 Gbps in desktop form. It has eight 10 Gbps RJ45 ports, all PoE+ with a 155 W PoE budget, two 10 Gbps SFP+ ports, layer 3 capability, internal fans and wall mounts for switch and brick. MSRP is $499, in stock in the US UniFi store as of recording.
• Etherlighting colours each port by speed or by untagged VLAN. The host adopted it over a DAC from his UCG-Fiber (UniFi OS 4.2.12, Network 9.2.84) and showed default speed colours: yellow for fast Ethernet, white for both 1 and 10 Gbps, blue 2.5, orange 5. He re-coloured gigabit; breathing mode can be turned off.
• The host rates $499 a good value against rivals. He found an FS switch at $589 with four SFP+ but 2.5 Gbps, layer 2 only RJ45, and a TP-Link at $442 with two SFP+ but likewise 2.5 Gbps layer 2; he could find no other brand matching the specs.
• The 210 W external power brick is his main complaint. He accepts that building it in would force a rackmount chassis, and notes its own mounting bracket lets it hide under a desk. He also says UniFi's layer 3 differs from the standard implementation, without detail.

2025-06-05 · open the original ↗

• The hotel room's access-point Ethernet ports gave no connection. The host plugged his GL.iNet Slate 7 into both ports on an in-room Aruba wall access point and never got a DHCP address; unsure whether it was misconfigured or blocked, he fell back to Wi-Fi as WAN, though he prefers hardwired.

2025-06-04 · open the original ↗

• Mitel has spent a decade failing to move to the cloud. The host recounts its 2017 ShoreTel purchase, going private a year later, a 2021 cloud sale and RingCentral UCaaS partnership, a Chapter 11 filing early last year citing over $1.15 billion of debt, then dropping RingCentral after three years for Zoom.
• MiVoice Office 250 loses all support in June 2026. It is already end of life; MiVoice Business is still supported, but the host argues that could change at any time. His reading is that Mitel is in survival mode with no clear long-term strategy, a risk for customers who buy phone systems for 5–10 years.
• The host's remedy is moving to Crosstalk's own VoIP service. He openly pitches it as an alternative to RingCentral or Zoom: month-to-month, no termination fees, no per-user licensing, on-premises or hosted, project-managed porting. Mitel, RingCentral or Zoom customers who mention the video get 10% off Crosstalk hardware through 2025.

2025-05-22 · open the original ↗

• The ZimaBoard 2 upgrades the original with faster CPU and networking. It moves to an Intel N150 CPU, dual 2.5 Gbps ports (from dual 1 Gbps) and an all-metal case for heat dissipation; it comes in an 8 GB RAM / 32 GB eMMC version and a 16 GB / 64 GB version, with two USB 3.1 ports, Mini DisplayPort up to 4K at 60 Hz, and two powered SATA 3.0 ports for a mini NAS.
• It ships with ZimaOS but runs any x86 operating system. ZimaOS, IceWhale's CasaOS-based personal cloud OS, builds in remote access and RAID; the host lists Windows, Ubuntu, CasaOS, Proxmox VE, pfSense, OpenWrt and Unraid as alternatives.
• The host had Plex, AdGuard Home and Pi-hole running on it. Plex on ZimaOS with an external SSD needed only a media location added to the container; AdGuard Home and Pi-hole were set up separately because both use DNS. The board was on Kickstarter at recording, scheduled to ship in August 2025; the video makes no sponsorship disclosure.

2025-05-21 · open the original ↗

• Protect's Alarm Manager can trigger on people, objects and events. Triggers include Face ID (known, unknown or specific faces), license plates, objects (person, vehicle, package, animal, or free-text AI Key prompts such as "FedEx truck" at 70% match confidence), line crossing, loitering, NFC or fingerprint scans, sound, UP Sense sensors and system events; stacked triggers like line-crossing-without-a-hard-hat need the AI Key.
• Alarm actions go beyond notifications, including repositioning a PTZ camera. Actions cover app notifications, webhooks, UniFi Access door unlocks, sounds on the smart chime or upcoming horn speaker, lights, and PTZ moves to a preset that return home after a set time. The host found the feature at the bottom of Protect's menu on Protect 5.3.45 and UniFi OS 4.2.10, the latest at recording.
• Slack alerts use a built-in "Slack post" webhook. The host, on Slack Pro at $87 per user per year and unsure whether the free tier works, creates a channel, builds a from-scratch Slack app with incoming webhooks on, and pastes its URL into Protect. He warns the webhook URL is public-facing and should be treated like a password, and suggests "ignore repeated action" at about 10 minutes to avoid spam.
• Custom webhooks to other platforms are not yet dependable. Pushing alarms to Discord did not work natively, and a Make.com relay received Protect's data but failed to post, seemingly on permissions, though the firm's other Make.com and Zapier automations to Discord work fine.
• Protect has no way to test-fire an alarm. Because a custom webhook only learns its payload when the alarm fires, setting up something like an animal or FedEx-truck alarm means waiting for the real event. The host says he asked Ubiquiti for a test-trigger button and hopes it arrives in a future version.

2025-05-15 · open the original ↗

• UniFi switches and APs work behind a FortiGate gateway. The demo uses a FortiGate 70F, a UniFi Flex switch and a U7 Pro, continuing the channel's FortiGate small-business setup video, and the host says the approach scales to as many UniFi switches and APs as needed while keeping the FortiGate's UTM features.
• A FortiGate DNS entry lets new devices find a cloud controller. This is optional if a local controller sits on the same subnet, and set-inform over SSH also works. Otherwise, enable DNS Database under Feature Visibility, have DHCP hand out the FortiGate's .1 address as DNS, create a recursive DNS service on the internal interface, and add a "unifi" zone whose "@" entry points to the cloud controller's IP.
• Already-running devices must reboot to pick up the new DNS. In the demo the U7 Pro appeared for adoption but the switch did not until both devices were rebooted and pulled fresh DHCP leases.
• In UniFi, only VLAN IDs matter; the default subnet can stay wrong. The controller's default network shows the wrong subnet and can't be changed in the current version, which the host says is harmless with no UniFi router. Employee (VLAN 20) and guest (VLAN 30) are added as virtual networks with "third-party gateway" as router, then SSIDs are mapped to them.
• Switch ports carry the VLANs the FortiGate defines. The FortiGate uplink and AP ports keep the default native VLAN and allow all tagged VLANs, since the AP needs both to serve its SSIDs; an access port, here port 2, is simply set to the guest network.

2025-05-14 · open the original ↗

• The captions list the rack's contents but give no cost. The host walks the UniFi Enterprise rack at Ubiquiti's RSAC 2025 booth, top to bottom: an Enterprise 24 switch, a dual stack of EFGs, 100G aggregation switches, four 48-port Enterprise switches, three AI Keys, four Enterprise NVRs and a Power Distribution Pro. No prices are stated, despite the title.

2025-05-12 · open the original ↗

• The U7 Pro Outdoor's 6 GHz radio only matters in high-density deployments. It adds 6 GHz to 2x2 MU-MIMO on all three bands, which the original U7 Outdoor lacks. The host expects the gain at venues like festivals with many Wi-Fi 7 clients, not in a home backyard; 6 GHz is opt-in at adoption since it is not legal everywhere.
• It is a $279 outdoor AP with weatherproofing and PoE+. That is the US MSRP at launch, after a long wait for FCC approval. It has a 2.5 GbE port powered by PoE+, IPX6 rating or IP67 with the included cable gland (which the host recommends), wall and pole mounts, and roughly 300-client support.
• The bundled external antennas make only 2.4 and 5 GHz omnidirectional. Without them all three bands are directional, about 90° per Ubiquiti's included diagram. The host can't say why 6 GHz stays directional and guesses the form factor lacked room for a third antenna; the antennas must also be enabled in UniFi, not just screwed on.

2025-05-06 · open the original ↗

• A point-to-point bridge is a "wireless wire", not client Wi-Fi. An access-point radio on the gateway's LAN shoots to a station radio that terminates into a switch, and phones or laptops need a separate Wi-Fi AP on the far side; it is also distinct from mesh kits like Orbi or Deco. Point-to-multipoint is the "Y cable" version WISPs use, as in the firm's Cerro Gordo ghost-town deployment.
• Band choice trades speed against range and line-of-sight tolerance. 2.4 GHz reaches far and tolerates light trees; 5 GHz is faster but stricter; 60 GHz gives gigabit-plus but needs precise alignment and suffers in fog and rain. For a detached garage the host says a roughly $100 pair of 2.4 or 5 GHz LOCO radios suffices.
• Ubiquiti's Wave line is 60 GHz with a 5 GHz backup. Point-to-point: Wave Pico $179 (1.3 km), Wave Nano $279 (5 km), Wave LR $379 (about 8 km, mostly a far-customer station), Wave Pro $599 (15 km paired). Wave AP Micro (90°) and Wave AP (30°, longer reach) are $499 PtMP access points; the 2 Gbps rating is 1 up plus 1 down, falling with distance, and backup runs about 200–300 Mbps.
• Wave radios now take DHCP, but should be fixed. Unlike older gear defaulting to 192.168.1.20, they lease an address; the host pins them with a reservation or a static IP outside the DHCP pool. Setup on firmware 3.4.0 means switching wireless mode from the point-to-multipoint default, setting one side to main mode, and matching link name and strong security key.
• The host's demo link ran near his gigabit line rate. Two Wave Picos side by side showed about 1.5 Gbps of 60 GHz link capacity and a speed test of about 900 Mbps down and 720 Mbps up. The video promotes design help from Rogue Support, Crosstalk's sister company, for picking among the overlapping models.

2025-05-05 · open the original ↗

• The GL.iNet Slate 7 was "absolutely perfect" as a travel router. On its first trip, at RSAC 2025, the host ran it as a wireless repeater because his hotel room had no Ethernet port, with his laptop hardwired to it through an Anker multiport hub; the kit also includes a YubiKey and a 1080p portable second monitor.
• The host's roughly four-year-old Samsung laptop needs replacing. DaVinci Resolve crashed several times on the trip while editing in only 1080p, and he is looking for a laptop for video editing.

2025-05-02 · open the original ↗

• The captions list the rack's contents but give no cost. The host walks the UniFi Pro Max rack at RSAC 2025: redundant UDM Pro Max gateways, two USW Pro Aggregation switches, three 48-port USW Pro Max switches, four UniFi Power Amps (he owns one and praises its audio), two NVR Pros, two UNAS Pros and a Power Distribution Pro. No prices are stated, despite the title.

2025-04-30 · open the original ↗

• Ubiquiti showed two reference racks at RSAC 2025. The Pro Max rack ran redundant UDM Pro Max gateways, a USW Pro Aggregation, 48-port Pro Max switches, the UniFi power amp, NVR Pro and UNAS Pro units and a power distribution Pro; the Enterprise rack ran redundant Enterprise Fortress Gateways, an Enterprise 100G aggregation switch, four Enterprise 48s, three AI Keys and four Enterprise NVRs.
• The AI PTZ camera was on display ahead of release. The host says it is not yet released but "coming soon", shown in white at the main booth and black at a second booth; he likens it to the earlier large G4 PTZ, and separately says his own G5 PTZ tracks his dogs around the yard.
• The U7 Pro Outdoor turns directional on 6 GHz only. The host, seeing it for the first time, says it shares the U7 Outdoor's form factor but feels heavier, and with its antennas fitted it is directional on 6 GHz while staying omnidirectional on 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.
• The Access demo paired the intercom with a separate intercom viewer. The viewer pulled the intercom's camera feed and audio live, with QR, directory, PIN and NFC unlock on the intercom; Ubiquiti's self-contained Access display case, built around a Cloud Gateway Max, is not a product it sells.

2025-04-28 · open the original ↗

• The Pro XG24 PoE is a layer 3 multi-gig PoE switch. It has 8 2.5 GbE and 16 10 GbE RJ45 ports, all PoE++, plus two 25 Gbps SFP28 cages; as of recording, the host says the only UniFi gateway with SFP28 cages to match is the Enterprise Fortress Gateway (EFG).
• Hot-swappable power and fans mean stepping up to Enterprise Campus. The Pro XG24's fans and power are built into the chassis, with a locking power port and an RPS port for redundancy; hot-swap supplies or fan modules need the Enterprise Campus 24 PoE, about $700 more.
• The Pro XG family spans four models, including a desktop one. The Pro XG10 PoE has 10 10 GbE PoE++ ports and two 10G SFP+; the Pro XG48 PoE has 16 2.5 GbE and 32 10 GbE PoE++ ports and four SFP28; the $499 Pro XG8 PoE is, as far as the host knows, the first desktop switch with Etherlighting.
• Ubiquiti uses its own name for 90 W PoE. The host explains 802.3bt Type 3, known as PoE++, supplies up to 51 W, while Type 4 at up to 90 W carries an extra-plus name he believes only Ubiquiti uses; the only device he knows that accepts it is the Switch Flex 2.5G PoE.
• These are among UniFi's cheapest switches for powering 10G access points. The host names the Enterprise E7, U7 Pro and U7 Pro XGS as targets; the Pro XG24 offers 720 W of PoE and 460 Gbps switching capacity, drawing 150 W bare and up to 870 W fully loaded.

2025-04-24 · open the original ↗

• Size a FortiGate by its threat-protection throughput, not its ports. UTM inspection is CPU- and RAM-heavy: the FortiGate 70F lists over 1 Gbps of IPS and NGFW throughput but only 800 Mbps of threat protection. The host, from a firm that says it is a Fortinet partner, chose the 70F as about the smallest model supporting explicit proxy and SSL decryption.
• Several features are hidden from the menu by default. The 70F ships at 192.168.1.99 on port 1 with user admin and no password; options missing from a guide are under System > Feature Visibility. The host moves the LAN to 10.10.0.1 and adds employee (VLAN 20) and guest VLANs, tagged down to a UniFi switch as a third-party gateway network.
• A WAN cannot join an SD-WAN group while anything references it. The host deletes the factory LAN-to-WAN policy first, and configures WAN 2 even if absent so failover is plug-in later. His SLA pings Cloudflare and Quad9 every 500 ms, marking a link down after five failures and up after five successes; the rule prefers WAN 1 over WAN 2.
• Security profiles only act on the firewall policies they are enabled on. FortiGate denies everything not explicitly allowed, including inter-VLAN traffic; LAN-to-WAN rules need NAT, LAN-to-LAN rules should not have it. The host writes one rule per network so each can carry its own antivirus, web and DNS filter profiles, such as separate student and teacher filters.
• SSL inspection needs the FortiGate's CA certificate deployed to clients. Without it, every HTTPS page shows a certificate warning; pushed through something like Microsoft Intune, it is invisible. Without decryption, the host says, filtering still works but is less effective, since malware over HTTPS cannot be seen; the default antivirus profile blocks rather than monitors.

2025-04-23 · open the original ↗

• A wrongly blocked domain is fixed by allowlisting or pausing Pi-hole. The host meets this most during online shopping; a temporary disable resumes blocking automatically when the timeout expires, but normally needs the Pi-hole web interface.
• Pi-hole Remote's paid version controls blocking from an Apple Watch. The free iPhone app connects to multiple Pi-hole instances and can disable blocking; the paid version, which cost the host $9.99 for a lifetime licence, adds the watch, with pauses from 1 minute to 8 hours, for the rest of the day, or indefinitely.

2025-04-18 · open the original ↗

• The NPU stayed idle until a Windows Insider build was installed. After that, the host saw it working on live captions for a YouTube video and in AMD's Amuse image generator running the SDXL Turbo Stable Diffusion model with Ryzen AI support.
• The NPU's gain for local AI is efficiency, not speed. The host says it does not necessarily run LLMs faster than a GPU but draws less power and heat; he expects real NPU support in tools like Ollama within a few updates, though for now it takes manual setup.
• The host rates it his likely favourite mini PC as a workstation. Testing since early February, he saw no slowdowns from the 12-core Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with Radeon 890M graphics, but not for competitive gaming. It has dual 2.5 GbE, Wi-Fi 7, OCuLink and an internal power supply, from $929 with 32 GB and 1 TB, up to 96 GB and 2 TB.

2025-04-17 · open the original ↗

• Every Wave unit backs its 60 GHz link with 5 GHz. 60 GHz is sensitive to weather and alignment, so the 5 GHz radio takes over if it drops; the host expects about 1 Gbps or more on 60 GHz but 200–400 Mbps on the backup.
• Point-to-point range and price climb together across four models. Line-of-sight ranges: Wave Pico $179, about 1.3 km; Wave Nano $279, 5 km; Wave LR $379, 8 km; Wave Pro $599, about 15 km. A link needs a pair.
• The two point-to-multipoint APs trade beam width for reach. The Wave AP Micro and Wave AP are both $499; the Micro's 90° beam covers wider, while the Wave AP's 30° beam reaches stations much further away.

2025-04-08 · open the original ↗

• Clearly IP's free Open Page module unlocks formerly paid paging features. It works with FreePBX and Tango PBX version 17; install by switching to the Clearly IP repository, then running fwconsole ma downloadinstall openpage over SSH, which adds an advanced paging section to page groups.
• Pages can carry a lead-in tone and go out by multicast. A prepend announcement plays a system recording, such as a chime, before the live page; one or more multicast addresses let large numbers of phones be paged without consuming phone-system resources.
• Valet and scheduled paging suit noisy sites and schools. Valet paging records the whole message first and can queue several pages to play in turn; scheduled paging runs pages on a recurring timetable like a school bell schedule, with three bell sounds included or your own uploaded.

2025-04-04 · open the original ↗

• Ubiquiti's USB-C 10 GbE adapter delivered near line rate in testing. Plugged into a Mac Mini's USB4/Thunderbolt port and cabled to a UCG-Fiber, it measured 9,750 down and 9,776 up (the captions give no unit) against an OpenSpeedTest server on a Minisforum MS-01; MSRP is $199.

2025-03-21 · open the original ↗

• ClearlyIP has opened a community forum for an unexplained TangoPBX. The forum is live at community.tangopbx.org; the host, who calls himself a big fan of ClearlyIP, declines to say what TangoPBX is and calls the forum the first in a series of announcements due over the coming months. He is "Crosstalk" on the forums.
• The host says FreePBX's own forums have driven users away. He attributes this to a noticeable lack of interest and engagement from Sangoma, FreePBX's parent company, and to heavy-handed moderation, which he says caused an exodus. He presents the new forum as ClearlyIP's attempt to rebuild a welcoming open-source PBX community, which he calls desperately needed.

2025-03-11 · open the original ↗

• The new U7 Pro XG and U7 Pro XGS are fanless redesigns. Both have a near-flat face and an all-metal back built to shed heat, so no fan and no noise, plus a 10 Gbps RJ45 port powered over PoE+. The new mounting plate is not a drop-in replacement, but it keeps the old screw-hole pattern, so no new holes are needed.
• The XGS is the higher-capacity model, with a dedicated scanning radio. The host gives the XG as 2x2 MU-MIMO on all three bands, about 1,500 sq ft and around 300 clients. The XGS is 4x4 MU-MIMO on 5 GHz (2x2 on 2.4 and 6 GHz), about 1,750 sq ft and over 500 clients, and scans continuously for interference to adjust channels in real time.
• The host calls them a smarter buy for futureproofing. He describes the XG as essentially a U7 Pro and the XGS as a U7 Pro Max, each with a 10-gig NIC and the new fanless form. He places them between the existing U7 and the higher-end E7 lines, and says the 10-gig NIC alone justifies the small extra cost. Prices were shown on screen only, not spoken.

2025-02-25 · open the original ↗

• The UCG-Fiber lets any copper port serve as either WAN. It has four 2.5 Gbps RJ45 ports, one 10 Gbps RJ45 port and two 10 Gbps SFP+ cages, and any of the 2.5 or 10 Gbps ports can be set as primary or secondary WAN. It runs UniFi OS with the full app suite (Network, Protect, Access, Talk), and an M.2 NVMe slot provides Protect storage.
• The host got full LAN wire speed in testing. He set WAN on a 2.5 Gbps port and ran a 10 Gbps speed test across the LAN. The figure of just over 5 Gbps WAN-to-LAN with IDS/IPS enabled is stated, not shown tested. Base price is $279 with no storage; the drive tray is a separate accessory, and 1 TB and 2 TB NVMe versions are also offered.

2025-02-25 · open the original ↗

• The UDR 7 is an all-in-one gateway needing no separate controller. It runs UniFi OS and UniFi Network on board, so no Cloud Key or separate UniFi Network controller is needed.
• The UDR 7 adds an SFP+ port and dual WAN. Around the back are four 2.5 Gbps RJ45 ports, one with PoE output for an access point, VoIP phone or camera, plus a 10 Gbps SFP+ slot; internet can run off RJ45 or SFP+, and dual WAN is supported.

2025-02-25 · open the original ↗

• The UniFi Express 7 upgrades the original Express to Wi-Fi 7. The UX7 is physically larger than its Wi-Fi 6 predecessor and has a 2.5 Gbps RJ45 LAN port, a 10 Gbps RJ45 WAN port and 2x2 Wi-Fi 7. In the box are a USB power brick with cord and a braided patch cable.
• Like its predecessor, the UX7 runs UniFi Network only. The host found Network was the only application offered, so it cannot run Protect, Access or Talk. Setup was as simple as other UniFi gateways, and he updated it to UniFi Network 9.0.1 without issue. As of recording he did not know the MSRP or how many UniFi devices it can manage.

2025-02-25 · open the original ↗

• The UCG-Fiber is the host's pick for multi-gig internet connections. It has a quad-core ARM Cortex-A73 CPU and 3 GB of DDR4 RAM, and Ubiquiti claims over 5 Gbps of throughput with IDS/IPS enabled. The host did not run a multi-gig WAN-to-LAN test himself and asked viewers to post theirs.
• Storage costs extra on the base model. The $279 base model has no NVMe drive; adding your own requires the $19 M.2 drive tray. Versions with 1 TB and 2 TB pre-installed were launching, but the host had no pricing on them at recording. Like the UCG-Max, the NVMe slot is for Protect surveillance storage.
• Any of the seven ports can be primary or secondary WAN. There are four 2.5 Gbps RJ45 ports (one with PoE+), a 10 Gbps RJ45 WAN port and two 10 Gbps SFP+ cages, one WAN and one LAN by default. The host put WAN on a 2.5 Gbps port and disabled secondary WAN, freeing all three 10 Gbps ports for LAN.
• The host measured full LAN wire speed in his lab. He got 10 Gbps throughput running OpenSpeedTest on a Minisforum MS-01 over a DAC on an SFP+ port and testing from a Mac Mini on the 10 Gbps RJ45 port. He suggests 2.5 Gbps WAN users can use the three 10 Gbps ports for a core-switch uplink, a NAS and a workstation.
• He expects price and mounting to be the only complaints. He struggled to find valid criticisms. It is desktop-only, powered by a separate 54 V DC brick, with a template for the rubber feet. He discloses that his purchase link is an affiliate link that pays him a commission without changing the buyer's price.

2025-02-25 · open the original ↗

• The UDR 7 keeps the old form factor with faster ports. The old UDR had a single 1 Gbps RJ45 WAN; the UDR 7 has four 2.5 Gbps RJ45 ports (one with PoE out) and a 10 Gbps SFP+ slot, adds a Wi-Fi 7 access point on top, and runs UniFi OS and Network on board with no separate controller.
• Either WAN can be assigned to any of three ports. The choices are ports 3 and 4 (2.5 Gbps RJ45) and port 5 (the SFP+). The host ran Comcast Business cable on port 4 and T-Mobile Home Internet on port 3 as dual WAN, and reassigned the SFP+ (secondary WAN by default) to LAN for a 10 Gbps DAC link to an OpenSpeedTest server.
• Wired tests reached full wire speed on every client. A 2.5 Gbps-connected Minisforum server hit full 2.5 Gbps across the UDR 7 to the 10 Gbps server, and a 1 Gbps laptop got essentially full gigabit. The setup speed test on his sub-gigabit cable line showed 932 Mbps down and 237 Mbps up.
• Wi-Fi 7 tests needed channel widths maxed out first. After forgetting this initially, he set 240 MHz on 5 GHz and 320 MHz on 6 GHz. A 2x2 Wi-Fi 6 iPhone 13 Pro Max reached roughly 770–790 Mbps, and a 2x2 Wi-Fi 7 Google Pixel 8 roughly 1.7–1.9 Gbps, though the captions garble the exact figures.
• He recommends it as an all-in-one for newcomers and small sites. He sees it suiting parents' homes or small businesses he administers, and it can still expand with access points, Protect or UniFi Talk phones. Its microSD slot handles Protect for one or two cameras; beyond that he points to a UNVR. Price was unknown at recording.

2025-02-20 · open the original ↗

• The LAN Turtle gives remote shell access to any network it joins. The Hak5 device looks like a USB Ethernet adapter but is a small Linux box; the host configured it to open a key-authenticated reverse SSH tunnel to an Ubuntu server at Vultr, then SSHes to port 2222 on that server to land inside whatever network it is plugged into.
• MAC address whitelisting will not stop it. The device can mimic the MAC address of the host computer it is plugged into via USB. The host calls detecting and preventing such devices a hard question, asks viewers for their approaches, and says a follow-up video on defences is coming.

2025-02-18 · open the original ↗

• UniFi Network 9 replaces interface-based firewall rules with zones. The host lists the release's other additions as Site Magic SD-WAN, a local network API and UniFi CyberSecure, a $99-a-year threat-management service. Dave Barger, who presents the rest, says the old LAN In/LAN Out/LAN Local rule sets grew long and had to be read top to bottom to see the default action.
• The new zone matrix mirrors Crosstalk's own client firewall planning. Barger says Crosstalk consults clients on a source-versus-destination matrix coloured red (drop), green (accept) and yellow (complicated), and UniFi's zone matrix shows the same at a glance: "allow all", "block all" or a count of policies for each pair.
• The upgrade is opt-in and migrates existing rules automatically. After updating to 9.0 it must be enabled under Settings > Security; Barger's rules migrated in a second or two, though he assumes larger rule sets take longer. Networks are auto-sorted into Internal, External (WAN), Hotspot (guest) and DMZ zones, and custom zones can be created.
• Defaults allow internal-to-internal and block DMZ and hotspot traffic. External-to-internal holds three rules read top-down: allow return traffic requested from the LAN, block invalid traffic, then block all.
• Policies can now target a specific device, tracked by MAC. Sources can also be a network, IP or MAC, with ports and an allow, block or reject action. Barger warns iPhones and some Androids randomize MACs, so device targeting suits servers and NAS. Connection state is simplified to all states, return traffic (established/related) or custom.

2025-02-08 · open the original ↗

• DeepSeek run locally showed no traffic to China in the host's capture. Following David Bombal, who used Wireshark to show the DeepSeek smartphone app sends data to China, the host ran DeepSeek under Ollama and Open WebUI with Wi-Fi disabled and other apps closed, filtering for outbound TCP. A query produced almost no activity, and the only endpoints were in the United States.
• The local model answered with the network fully disconnected. With the Ethernet adapter disabled it still reasoned through and correctly answered an arithmetic question (12 apples).
• Local LLMs trade privacy for less processing power. The host concludes local models do not phone home to China or anywhere else, but lack the compute of OpenAI or DeepSeek; he still rates local running solid for general queries and document summarizing.

2025-02-06 · open the original ↗

• Tailscale is free for personal use and built into GL.iNet routers. It is a WireGuard-based VPN and SD-WAN tool, free for up to 100 devices and three users, where each device in the tailnet gets its own private IP. On GL.iNet routers it is labelled beta, so older firmware may need upgrading; the host demos his favourite travel router, the Beryl AX.
• Binding the router takes a toggle and a link. Enable Tailscale under Applications, then follow the device-bind link to connect it to your tailnet. The Tailscale admin flagged the router's client as outdated; the host found no way to update it but saw no problem, and expects a future GL.iNet release to update it.
• Reaching devices behind the router needs two extra settings. Tailscale alone reached only the router's admin page. Enabling "Allow Remote Access LAN" on the GL.iNet and approving its advertised 192.168.8.0/24 subnet under Edit Route Settings in the Tailscale admin let him reach an OpenSpeedTest server at 192.168.8.150:3000 from a separate network.
• Remote Desktop into a home PC needs Windows Pro and a fix. Windows 10 or 11 Home cannot accept RDP; enable Remote Desktop and allow RDP through Windows Firewall. Login with a Microsoft account failed until he ran a "runas" command with his MicrosoftAccount email and winver, from an older article he links.
• The host says the whole setup is quick, even for first-timers. He puts it at no more than 10 minutes start to finish and says he was impressed; a written blog post of the steps is linked in the description.

2025-02-05 · open the original ↗

• Tails boots any PC from USB and leaves no trace. Building it needs a USB drive of at least 8 GB (USB 3 recommended for speed): download the image from tails.net, verify it, and write it with balenaEtcher, choosing the target carefully because it is wiped. The host PC may need its BIOS boot order changed to boot from USB.
• Optional persistent storage is encrypted with a passphrase. The first-run wizard offers it, and you choose which data persists between boots, such as documents, bookmarks and Wi-Fi passwords.
• Tor masks location and activity but is not bulletproof. Tails offers connecting through Tor and bundles the Tor Browser, Pidgin for secure messaging, and network-monitoring and encryption tools; rebooting and removing the stick ends the session.

2025-01-30 · open the original ↗

• A ChatGPT-style local AI needs no powerful GPU. The host builds it from three free pieces (Ollama to run the models, Docker Desktop, and Open WebUI as the chat interface) on a Minisforum MS-A1 with an AMD Ryzen 7 8700G, Radeon 780M graphics and 32 GB of RAM, about $700 new; because the models run locally, he says, nothing is sent to corporations or governments.
• The WSL2 step tends to fail once before succeeding. Enabling the "Virtual Machine Platform" Windows feature (Windows 11, or Windows 10 version 1903 build 18362 or later) failed on his first attempt and went through on the second; Ollama itself installs with no GUI (the setup is about 750 MB), and Docker Desktop prompts a WSL2 update after its reboot.
• Pick the Open WebUI run command that matches your GPU. The default command from the Open WebUI quick start suits a PC without an Nvidia card; with one, the Nvidia-GPU variant offloads the model work and runs much faster. The interface comes up at localhost:3000, the first login creates the admin account, and the host stops the container when he wants the GPU back.
• Start with small models and step up until speed suffers. Llama 3.2 at its default 3 billion parameters ran well on the MS-A1 (the 1B version is pulled as "llama3.2:1b"); Llama 3.3 at 70 billion was "almost unusably slow" even on his Threadripper 3960X desktop, though DeepSeek R1 70B ran fine there, so he used DeepSeek R1 7B on the mini PC.
• DeepSeek's censorship sits mostly in its app, not the model. He reports the claims that DeepSeek R1 was trained for under $6 million, knocked about half a trillion dollars off Nvidia in a day, and (per OpenAI) was trained using ChatGPT. The local model had refused to discuss the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre while he researched, but answered on camera; Ollama also lists uncensored models such as Llama 2 Uncensored.

2025-01-23 · open the original ↗

• Tailscale's value is a control plane layered over WireGuard. WireGuard (ChaCha20 encryption, public/private key authentication) carries the data; Tailscale's coordination server tracks every endpoint and builds direct point-to-point links, giving a mesh instead of a hub-and-spoke VPN where remote users talking to each other must cross the main office, adding latency and a single point of failure.
• Devices behind double NAT connect without any port forwarding. Where a direct link fails, as behind Starlink, traffic goes through a DERP relay server using STUN and ICE; the host says the relay only forwards packets and cannot decrypt them, and running your own DERP server is possible but "totally unnecessary".
• The free tier covers a typical household. Tailscale counts machines and users separately, and the free account includes 100 machines; the host's example is three family members across phones, tablets and laptops, and he says he has not outgrown it. MagicDNS names every device as machine name dot tailnet name, avoiding a separately maintained DNS server.
• A pfSense router can share its LAN or internet connection. On a Netgate 4200 behind double NAT, he enrolls the router with a pre-authentication key, advertises 192.168.1.0/24 as a subnet route, and reaches a CasaOS box at 192.168.1.102 from an iPhone on LTE. Advertised subnets and exit nodes both need admin approval in the dashboard; users then pick an exit node to tunnel all their traffic.
• Access controls are powerful but written in JSON. Tailscale denies by default, but its starting rule allows any source to any destination, so most home users need not touch it. Rules are directional yet stateful (return traffic is allowed), can reference users, groups and devices rather than IPs, and are pushed to and enforced on each client.

2025-01-21 · open the original ↗

• The host is selling surplus office gear through the Crosstalk store. Prices include shipping: an Anker 8-in-1 MagSafe charging station for $40 (from a $49 grab bag; valued at $69), and a Wyze Cam v3 bundle for $85 (three cameras, two used, plus a spotlight, socket lamp and solar panel; about $163 new).
• An unopened Arista Wi-Fi 6 access point goes cheaper than eBay. The Arista C-200 is a 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi 6 AP with a single gigabit port, still in its packaging; he puts eBay at about $45 plus shipping and asks $35 shipped. The items are listed under "Tech Sale Tuesdays" in the store on the Crosstalk Solutions website.

2025-01-17 · open the original ↗

• The Switch Flex 2.5G PoE is a compact, powered-uplink 2.5G switch. It is $199 MSRP and available from January 16, with eight 2.5 Gbps PoE+ ports and a 10 Gbps uplink on either RJ45 or SFP+; it is a little larger than the host expected, and comes with wall-mount screws, a bracket and a levelling template.
• The PoE it delivers depends on the PoE powering it. Powered through the 10 Gbps RJ45 port, it shares 12 W across its ports when fed PoE+, 37 W on PoE++ and 57 W on what Ubiquiti calls PoE+++. The host lays out the standards: 802.3af up to 12.5 W, 802.3at up to 25.5 W, 802.3bt Type 3 up to 51 W and Type 4 up to 90 W.
• The host thinks "PoE+++" branding will not scale. It is his term for 802.3bt Type 4, used to tell it apart from Type 3; he argues you cannot keep adding pluses, and that "PoE++ Type 3 and Type 4" would have been safer if a later standard ends up called PoE+++.
• Full power and full bandwidth together mean buying more hardware. As of recording, only the Enterprise Campus 24 PoE and Enterprise Campus 48 PoE can feed it PoE+++, and both are marked "coming soon". The alternatives are a $29 PoE++ injector, which limits the uplink to 1 Gbps, or a $79 210 W AC adapter.
• On his own bench, the host accepts a bandwidth bottleneck for now. Replacing his Lite 8 PoE, he feeds it at 2.5 Gbps from a 2.5G PoE++ port on his Pro Max 16 PoE, since his Enterprise XG has no PoE, then chains a $49 Flex Mini 2.5G (five 2.5G ports, 802.3af-powered) off it. It negotiated at 2.5 Gbps, and adopting and setting port VLANs took about ten minutes.

2025-01-16 · open the original ↗

• The foam insert fits a Starlink Mini into a Milwaukee Packout well. It fits "like a glove", with a notch for lifting the dish out and space for cables and accessories, so the original box can go; but the host had to remove his Striker mount first and would like a version sized for it.
• The host likes the idea but calls the price crazy. The insert costs $90 against about $80 for the Packout itself, and he invites anyone who can make such inserts more cheaply to contact him, wanting one under $40 and seeing room for versions for other mounts, DeWalt cases and Pelican cases.

2025-01-10 · open the original ↗

• Crosstalk is ending UINotify's paid alerts as Ubiquiti stock shortages ease. The host built the stock-alert service after COVID-era chip and shipping shortages; paid email and SMS alerts end, while free alerts continue on Twitter, Mastodon and the Crosstalk Discord "for the time being". Recurring subscriptions were cancelled automatically, nobody has been charged since early December, and the last ones run out on January 9.
• The UI Product Selector is moving to its own site. In the coming weeks Crosstalk's tool, which the host likens to PC Part Picker for UniFi networks, moves to uiproductselector.com.

2025-01-09 · open the original ↗

• GL.iNet's coming Slate 7 adds Wi-Fi 7 and a front touchscreen. Shown at CES 2025, the screen gives the status of each internet source (Ethernet, Wi-Fi repeater, tethering, cellular), QR codes for joining its wireless networks, OpenVPN, WireGuard, AdGuard and Tor toggles, and CPU, memory and clock displays.
• It keeps the familiar Slate hardware, which the host likes. It has USB-C power, 2.5 Gbps WAN and LAN ports, a USB 3 port for tethering or network storage, and the toggle switch he says he loves for turning the VPN or other functions on and off.

2025-01-07 · open the original ↗

• The U7 Pro Outdoor is a rugged Wi-Fi 7 AP for open-air mounting. It is IP67 with a metal back, a single 2.5 Gbps RJ45 port with a cable gland, PoE+ power, and 2x2 MU-MIMO on all three bands; MSRP was slated at $279 at the time of recording.
• Its external antennas make two bands omnidirectional. By default it has a 90° directional beam; with the two included antennas on its RP-SMA connectors, 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz become omnidirectional while 6 GHz stays 90° directional.

2025-01-06 · open the original ↗

• The tiny MikroTik mAP lite is now end of life. Smaller than a deck of cards and than Ubiquiti's UK Ultra, it has one Ethernet port and 2.4 GHz wireless, dates from 2016, cost the host $36 on Amazon, and went end of life in October 2024.
• The host would pay extra for the GL.iNet Beryl AX instead. The smallest MikroTik still made, the mAP 2nD, is 40% bigger, almost twice as thick and just under $50; for about $25 more he would recommend the Beryl AX, which is not much bigger and has a much friendlier interface.

2024-12-30 · open the original ↗

• Visual Subnet Calculator makes splitting and joining subnets easy to see. You enter a network in CIDR form and click "divide" to split it (a /24 into two /25s, and further), with each piece's range, mask, usable IPs and host count shown, then click a CIDR in the join column to merge them back. The host recommends it as free and uncluttered; it is on davidc.net and is the first search result for its name.

2024-12-24 · open the original ↗

• 5G wins near a cell tower; Starlink wins beyond one. The host's bottom line is that cellular broadband is cheaper, faster and more consistent within tower range, while Starlink is the only high-speed choice outside it. He frames both as for remote sites (RVs, construction, events) or as backup, not as replacements for good fiber or cable.
• The host backs up his cable line with a 5G home-internet plan. His Comcast Business connection gives almost 1 Gbps down but sometimes drops, so he keeps T-Mobile 5G Home Internet as a backup WAN at about $30 a month (bundled with his family's phones), which he calls well worth it.
• Starlink's speeds swing widely; 5G's are steadier. The host gives 4G as 5–50 Mbps, 5G as 50–500 Mbps (his T-Mobile tests show 300–500 Mbps), Starlink Mini 50–200 Mbps and Gen 3 100–400 Mbps. Starlink varies from one test to the next because the dish keeps switching satellites, so at a friend's cabin they route Zoom calls over a steady 30 Mbps wireless ISP.
• Cellular costs less but Starlink plans can be paused. Cellular home internet runs about $50 a month and unlimited SIMs $65–90 a month; Starlink Roam unlimited is $165 a month, or $50 a month for 50 GB plus $0.25 per extra GB. Starlink service can be turned off out of season.
• Cellular depends on your carrier's towers; Starlink barely needs aiming. Not every tower serves every carrier, so some Crosstalk deployments carry SIMs from several carriers; directional antennas (one from Waveform) and cellmapper.net help at range. Starlink says it needs a 110° clear view of the sky, but the host has set up a Mini with no regard for this, and used both dishes while driving, without trouble.

2024-12-23 · open the original ↗

• A Wi-Fi QR code lets guests join without typing the password. The QR code generator site's Wi-Fi option takes an SSID and password and produces a code to post in a waiting room or an Airbnb; frames, shapes and colours are free, while logos and scan tracking need the paid Pro version.
• Crosstalk hands customers free Wi-Fi QR codes as an added service. The host says he has only ever used the free version and finds it good enough for this.

2024-12-17 · open the original ↗

• Fing Agent turns a Raspberry Pi into an always-on network monitor. Paired with the Fing phone app, the host says it sends real-time alerts, blocks unknown devices, sets internet downtime per user, keeps an event timeline of the network, and includes ping and traceroute diagnostics, with alerts you can filter to what matters.

2024-12-17 · open the original ↗

• Ubiquiti's holiday sale is mostly clearing out older Wi-Fi 6 access points. Through December 27: Flex HD $109, nanoHD $99 (from $179), UAP-AC-Pro $109 (from $149) and another access point $169 (from $349). The host suspects it is inventory clearance now that Wi-Fi 6 and 7 models are out, but calls them still perfectly good, especially for home use.
• The host's other picks include cameras, gateways, switches and EdgeRouters. UniFi Express $109 (from $149), G4 Bullet $99 (from $199), G4 Doorbell Pro $179 (from $299), Dream Wall $799 (from $999), Pro Max 24 $369 (from $449), Pro Max 16 $229 (from $279), EdgeRouter 4 $99 (from $199) and EdgeRouter 6P $129 (from $259). He rates the EdgeRouters as very solid firewalls.

2024-12-16 · open the original ↗

• Ubiquiti's 42U rack cabinet carries a heavy shipping cost. It costs $1,400 plus a $499 shipping charge, weighing 361 lb (460 lb packed), and has lockable casters, a temperature-triggered fan, removable white powder-coated sides, a tempered-glass front door and a perforated rear door. The host, who saw it at the UniFi World Conference, praises the look but gives no verdict.

2024-12-13 · open the original ↗

• The Nighthawk suits non-technical users and is quickly outgrown by everyone else. The host calls it a decent choice for people who want a router that just works, or easy (paid) parental controls. Anyone wanting switches, more access points, a home lab or an IoT subnet will soon outgrow it. Setup is very simple, if slowed by forced 3–6 minute waits.
• The hardware is good value only at Costco's price. The host paid about $200 at Costco for the RS280S, a Costco-only model; Netgear's nearest online equivalent, the RS300, costs $100 more. It has a 2.5 Gbps WAN port and two 2.5 Gbps plus two 1 Gbps LAN ports. Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5G in UniFi would take a Cloud Gateway Ultra and a U7 Pro, $318 together.
• Wi-Fi 7 and the box's speed figure mean little at home. Wi-Fi 7 improves efficiency for networks with hundreds of clients, not single-device speed, says the host. The 9.3 Gbps claim adds the 0.6, 2.9 and 5.8 Gbps of three bands, counts transmit and receive together, and he calls the practice industry-wide. His advice: don't pay extra for Wi-Fi 7.
• Netgear charges extra for parental controls and security. Smart Parental Controls cost $8 a month or about $70 a year, and the app shows only a 30-day trial without the price; Netgear Armor (Bitdefender) is up to $45 a year and needs clients on each device. The host counts about $115 a year for features standard elsewhere.
• The web interface omits basic networking controls. At 192.168.1.1 there are no custom DHCP DNS servers, no VLANs or extra subnets, and guests share the main subnet, though client-isolated. The host credits Netgear for forcing a strong admin password, but notes mixed support reviews and a 1.06/5 Better Business Bureau rating.

2024-12-12 · open the original ↗

• Password Pusher replaces emailing passwords with expiring encrypted links. The open-source tool makes a link and a QR code that expire after a set number of days or views. A free account adds files (up to 10 at once), URLs and a passphrase, and it can be self-hosted in Docker. The host says Crosstalk uses it whenever it shares passwords with customers.

2024-12-10 · open the original ↗

• Fing Agent's router vulnerability check finds open ports and risky services. It scans the public IP for open ports and audits router settings such as UPnP and NAT-PMP, then flags what to close or disable. From the Fing app (Security, then automatic router vulnerabilities) the check can be scheduled to run regularly, with a real-time alert for each new finding.

2024-12-05 · open the original ↗

• Peplink WAN behaviour is set by drag-and-drop priority. WANs at the same priority load-balance; lower ones are backups. The presenter, using a dual-modem Max BR2 Pro, notes every Peplink starts at 192.168.50.1 with admin/admin, which it forces you to change, and that Crosstalk, now a Peplink Gold partner, sells the units.
• Cellular standby and APN settings matter most. "Remain connected" keeps a backup modem hot, while "disconnected" saves data but takes minutes to come back. Each of the two modems has two SIM slots (four SIMs, two active), with LTE/5G and band locking available. A missing APN means calling the carrier; SmartCheck is the recommended LTE health check.
• Outbound policy routes traffic by rule, under HTTPS persistence. HTTPS persistence stays on top so sites such as banks don't see changing public IPs and lock you out. The demo puts guests on VLAN 10, enforces them onto Wi-Fi-as-WAN to spare cellular data, and adds a firewall rule denying guest-to-LAN traffic. Priority and lowest-use are the other algorithms.
• SpeedFusion bonding needs a Peplink endpoint at the far end. Bonding adds the WANs' speeds and can send duplicate packets for resilience. The far end can be the paid SpeedFusion Cloud (the easiest), a second Peplink, or a SpeedFusion Hub on a cloud host such as DigitalOcean, Vultr or AWS. Usage can be limited by application, SSID or LAN client.
• InControl 2 adds remote management and InTouch access behind CGNAT. It is free for the first year then a subscription, adopts devices by serial number, can preconfigure Wi-Fi and SpeedFusion before shipping, and opens the local web admin remotely. InTouch reaches internal web or SSH services behind double NAT or CGNAT, much like a Cloudflare tunnel, or a serial console for out-of-band access.

2024-12-03 · open the original ↗

• Fing Agent installs on a Raspberry Pi through snap. Flash Raspberry Pi OS with the imager (Wi-Fi details preset), SSH in, update, install snapd, then run sudo snap install fing-agent and its connect script under /snap. The host says it works on Pi 4 and Pi 5; the app's "add monitoring unit" then finds the agent automatically.

2024-12-02 · open the original ↗

• Passwords-generator.net beats built-in generators on options. Beyond the usual numbers, cases and symbols, it can drop look-alike characters (O and 0, I, 1 and l), forbid repeated or sequential characters, and generate several passwords at once (five by default). The host rates it one of the best for its simplicity.

2024-11-27 · open the original ↗

• A site without power forced the network core into another building. The plan put the UniFi Dream Machine SE and a Rocket Prism point-to-multipoint antenna on Cerro Gordo's General Store, which had no power, so the crew moved them to a locked 4U rack with a 1U UPS in the Gordon House. The host thinks this ended up better than the original plan. Ubiquiti sponsored all the network equipment.
• They kept the old solar-powered ISP relay and added Starlink as backup. The wireless ISP's signal from Lone Pine reaches a solar relay pole (NanoBeam, MikroTik router, LiteAP). They brought new NanoBeams to replace it but left it alone because it worked, and a Starlink Mini now plugs into the UDM SE as a second WAN beside the roughly 50/40 Mbps ISP link.
• A tailings pile meant relaying to the Hoist House via a hilltop NanoBeam. The Bunk House was the only spot with line of sight up the hill. A NanoBeam there picks up the Gordon House link, and 300 ft of shielded direct-burial Cat6 donated by TrueCable runs up the hill to a NanoBeam aimed at the Hoist House. They painted the outdoor gear brown with Plasti Dip, which the host says doesn't hurt Wi-Fi.
• The 900 ft mine shaft got fiber plus Cat6, replacing coax. The old coax could carry Wi-Fi down but couldn't power cameras or more APs. Infinite Cables donated 244 m of armored six-strand OM3 LC-LC fiber, giving a 10 Gbit link between Enterprise 8 PoE switches at the top and at the 700 level. Pre-terminated Cat6 feeds UK-Ultra APs at 100, 200 and 900 ft, plus a G5 Flex camera on the water source. The owner, Brent, installed the shaft run about three weeks later.
• Some sites needed far less than planned. Dave Barger measured close to the ISP's full speed inside the tin-sided church, so they skipped it and kept the spares. At the recording studio, a NanoBeam's secondary PoE-out port powers a mesh AP over one cable. The General Store got cameras running off a temporary extension cord. Brent says the town went from a 1–2 megabytes-per-second cellular hotspot to working internet, and he sees the hotel as the next need.

2024-11-26 · open the original ↗

• Fing Agent blocks new devices by default after you approve existing ones. You first scan the network and confirm which devices belong. With automatic block turned on, any new device is kept off the network until you allow it, and Fing Agent notifies you when one tries to connect.
• Each device can be blocked outright or paused for a chosen time. A block removes the device from the network until you unblock it. A pause cuts its internet access for a period you choose or indefinitely, which the host says suits businesses that want control without constant manual work.
• The host relays a Black Friday price on Fing's Premium plan. As captioned, it costs $449.99 a year and covers up to three Fing Agents. The short presents this as a limited-time offer and says nothing either way about sponsorship.

2024-11-21 · open the original ↗

• The host pitches the GL.iNet Spitz AX for semi-permanent mobile setups. He names RVs, construction sites, remote cabins and boats, and runs it with three WANs: Starlink, Wi-Fi as WAN, and dual cellular SIMs. GL.iNet sponsored the video, and the description carries a 30%-off link.
• It has dual 5G SIMs and removable antennas for external cellular antennas. The router has a 2.5 Gbit WAN port, a 1 Gbit LAN port, USB-A for storage or tethering, and microSD. The SIMs aren't hot-swappable, so install them before powering on. Four of the six antennas are cellular and two are Wi-Fi 6, and any can be swapped for external ones.
• Use an omni antenna on a vehicle and a directional one at fixed sites. On his RV roof, the host put a Mobile Mark omni antenna on the four cellular leads and kept Wi-Fi inside. For fixed sites he suggests a directional antenna such as the Waveform Quad Pro. He notes an RV's Winegard Air 360 picks up only TV, while the Air 360+ adds cellular and Wi-Fi.
• The host puts cellular last to avoid data caps and uses failover. His order is Ethernet, then Wi-Fi as WAN (repeater mode), then cellular, to limit data-cap and overage costs. He says failover suits most cases, but load balancing is worth it with several unlimited links. For the two SIMs, two different carriers is ideal.
• In his driveway test, cellular was fastest and Starlink was erratic. Starlink Mini gave 137/14.8 Mbps; he usually sees 60–70 up to about 220 Mbps. Wi-Fi as WAN to his house Comcast gave 174/128 Mbps through the RV walls, so good campground Wi-Fi may be worth preferring. T-Mobile through the roof antenna gave 268/34 Mbps.

2024-11-19 · open the original ↗

• Fing Agent turns a Raspberry Pi into an always-on network monitor. The host says it keeps a live device inventory and alerts you to new or unauthorized devices, which you can block one at a time or by default.
• The host says it also scans for vulnerabilities and reports performance. He says its automated scans find open ports and weak router configurations, and it reports on network health, internet speed and ISP performance. He pitches it for small businesses through to growing enterprises; the short doesn't mention sponsorship.

2024-10-31 · open the original ↗

• A UK Ultra board fits inside the Dream Machine's drive tray. The host's team mounted a stripped UniFi UK Ultra (the "Swiss army knife" access point) on a 3D-printed plate in the Dream Machine SE's hard drive tray, powered by a short patch cable to a front PoE port; STL files are linked. The trade-off is losing the drive bay for UniFi Protect.
• The second build packs router, access point and camera into 1U. This version keeps the drive tray, wedges another UK Ultra beside the power supply with RP-SMA connectors extended to the front bezel for external antennas, and wires a dissected G5 Flex camera to look out from the front panel, IR night vision included.
• Internal power came from hardwiring two of the switch's PoE ports. The team pulled the modular connectors behind switch ports 1 and 2 and hardwired patch cables to the pins, making those ports unusable from the front. UniFi still shows both devices normally, the UK Ultra at 1 Gbps and the G5 Flex at Fast Ethernet.
• The host frames it as a Halloween stunt, not a recommendation. He says Ubiquiti would not condone voiding warranties this way, notes he bought over $1,000 of hardware for the video, and gives no reason for the builds beyond seeing whether it could be done.

2024-10-22 · open the original ↗

• Bonding beats load balancing because sessions survive a link failure. Peplink sponsored this video, and Crosstalk is a Peplink gold partner that sells and installs it. The host explains that load balancing pins each client to one link, capping its throughput and dropping calls if that link dies; SpeedFusion splits each session's packets across all links through an encrypted VPN to an endpoint that reassembles them.
• Smoothing trades extra bandwidth for loss-free live streams. It sends duplicate packets over separate links, so a packet lost on one arrives on another. The host cites a client streaming sports events from a portable Peplink kit with several Starlinks and LTE backup, and "hot failover" keeping VoIP or Zoom calls alive when one link drops.
• Setup through SpeedFusion Connect takes a few clicks. On a Peplink B One 5G (MSRP $599; a B One without 5G is $299), the host picked Seattle, San Francisco and San Jose endpoints from a latency-based suggestion list, avoiding the suggested Vancouver to keep traffic in the US. Dragging WANs between priority levels switches between load balancing and failover, and Wi-Fi can be used as a WAN.
• Bonded throughput is capped well below the router's WAN speed by default. The B One 5G routes 1 Gbps without SpeedFusion, but by default bonded links reach 400 Mbps aggregated unencrypted and 200 Mbps encrypted; paid Peplink plans raise throughput and data allowance. The host's Starlink Mini typically tests 50–150 Mbps down and his Gen 3 80–300 Mbps, and he says bonding evens out that fluctuation, upload especially.
• Crosstalk has deployed Peplink in remote and mission-critical sites. The host describes an NDA-bound TV production in remote Northern Canada given a PACE plan: dual Starlinks, Iridium satellite, LTE SIMs from several carriers and local wireless ISPs. He also says Peplink has bonded up to 12 Starlinks on Royal Caribbean cruise ships using a Balance 2500 EC.

2024-10-15 · open the original ↗

• Access Server is the self-hosted option; CloudConnexa is the managed one. OpenVPN sponsored this video, and the host's description link pays Crosstalk a referral. He prefers self-hosting on his own hardware, and names two use cases: remote users reaching internal resources, and remote sites (a restaurant chain's point-of-sale) on always-on, split-tunnelled router connections.
• A $6-a-month DigitalOcean droplet and a domain name are enough to start. The host used DigitalOcean's one-click Marketplace image, an SSH key, weekly backups and a Cloudflare DNS A record. OpenVPN gives two concurrent connections free; more are bought as licences. The admin GUI runs on port 943 by default, and he redirected it to 443, noting a separate admin port is more secure behind firewall rules.
• Update the image immediately and enable DCO when asked. The one-click image shipped version 2.11.3, against 2.14.1 current as of recording; the upgrade requires un-holding the openvpn-as package first. The upgrade offers data channel offload, which moves tunnel encryption to the Linux kernel, and the host says to accept it in most cases for performance.
• Use a real SSL certificate for the server's domain name. The host bought a Namecheap PositiveSSL certificate for $5.99 a year via a certificate signing request, uploading the CA bundle, certificate and private key. Let's Encrypt is a free alternative that renews every 90 days, set up on the server with certbot following OpenVPN's guide.
• Site-to-site access needs a static IP, routing and a VPN gateway flag. The host added a 172.27.240.0/20 static subnet beside the default 172.27.224.0/20, gave the GL.iNet Slate AX router 172.27.240.22, and marked it a VPN gateway for its 192.168.22.0/24 LAN, with split tunnelling. The router must also allow VPN traffic into its LAN; he then reached a speed test server there. He recommends TOTP MFA, also available alongside RADIUS, LDAP or SAML.

2024-10-08 · open the original ↗

• A Starlink Mini inside a sunroof works at highway speed. On a Striker mount with upward-facing suction cups, powered from a power bank over USB-C, the host got 45 Mbps down and 4.18 Mbps up parked under heavy tree cover, and 142 Mbps down and 11.8 Mbps up at 60 mph, even facing the wrong way. The video promotes his Starlink referral link.
• The host sees little evidence that suction cups crack sunroofs. He has not had it happen, knows no one who has, and the Striker mount's maker told him he had heard of no cases. He says online warnings rarely come with firsthand accounts. The cups also flip to mount on the roof, where he drove over 8 hours with a Gen 3 dish.
• Front-face EMF exceeds the public limit, but the back is shielded. On his own EMF meter, the host measured a baseline of about 17–18 V/m, about 480 V/m directly in front of the dish and about 77 V/m behind it. He compares these with ICNIRP's public limit of 83 V/m and occupational limit of 420 V/m, and judges the Mini in a car relatively low risk.

2024-10-03 · open the original ↗

• The UniFi Device Bridge brings wired devices onto wireless mesh. It picks up a mesh signal from an access point and feeds one PoE RJ45 port, usually for a camera, though a Flex Mini switch could serve more devices. Both models ship October 25: the indoor UDB at $99 MSRP (internal 5 GHz antenna, omni antenna included) and the outdoor, longer-range UDB Pro at $199.
• The host found the UDB simple to set up. He tested only the UDB, not the Pro: it appeared in UniFi for adoption on power-up, the external antenna needed a settings change, and a G4 Bullet camera plugged into it came online in Protect.

2024-09-24 · open the original ↗

• The MAX BR2 can run two 5G carriers at once. The host describes the Peplink MAX BR2 as a professional-grade cellular router with two onboard 5G modems, plus two wired WAN ports, all manageable together through load balancing, failover or Peplink's SpeedFusion bonding.
• It is built for vehicle mounting, as a mobile network in a box. The host points to a metal case with built-in mounting brackets and a 10–30 V DC terminal block with ignition sense, and suggests emergency vehicles, police cars, ambulances or broadcast vans as uses. Crosstalk says it is a Peplink partner and offers sales and support.

2024-09-20 · open the original ↗

• Most users will notice no difference between $100 and $500 mesh. At Costco the host found Deco mesh systems at about $100 for Wi-Fi 6, $249.99 for Wi-Fi 6E and about $500 for Wi-Fi 7, and says the vast majority of users would see no difference whatsoever between the cheapest and the dearest.

2024-08-29 · open the original ↗

• One power bank can run a Starlink Mini and UniFi network. The host powers a Starlink Mini from a 27,600 mAh Anker Prime power bank through a USB-C-to-barrel cable, with Ethernet from the dish into a UniFi Express; he expects the battery to keep the whole setup online for about 3 to 4 hours.
• The UniFi Express serves as both gateway and access point. Because it has a built-in access point, the host says the single unit gives a full UniFi setup, with room to add switches or more access points.

2024-08-27 · open the original ↗

• Meshtastic gives cheap, low-power messaging where cellular fails. The host pitches the open-source mesh for events with congested cell coverage (a music festival, the Baja 500), remote hiking with a base camp, farm IoT sensors on small solar panels and batteries, and GPS asset tracking on vehicles, before handing off to Crosstalk's David Barger for the build.
• The recommended RAK Wireless starter kit needs a few add-ons. Barger bought three at roughly $20–30 each: a RAK19007 baseboard with a 900 MHz LoRa module (US), an optional GPS module he calls power-hungry, and a screen. The battery (about $2–3) and enclosure are extra; his battery connector did not fit and had to be re-soldered. Connect antennas before powering on, or risk frying the board.
• Set the LoRa region first, or the node will not work. Barger flashes the latest stable firmware via the web flasher in a Chromium-based browser, then sets the region from "unset" to US. Defaults to know: the primary channel has no pre-shared key, so add one on a secondary channel for privacy; roles are client (relays), client mute (never relays), router and repeater; leave the LongFast modem preset as a beginner.
• One high node covered about seven to eight city blocks. With a large 915 MHz antenna on a town's tallest parking garage, Barger reached the fringe at seven or eight blocks, shorter where large buildings intervened. To cover the downtown he would place repeaters about six to seven blocks apart, as high as possible.
• The firmware is still beta, and it showed. Nodes left on overnight stopped receiving each other's messages despite transmitting; after hours with the logs, only a factory reset fixed it, cause unknown. His GPS module never got a lock even outdoors, possibly specific to his hardware; a phone can share its GPS instead, which he says is no good for standalone asset tracking.

2024-08-26 · open the original ↗

• Aim the Starlink Mini roughly north, then fine-tune alignment. The host uses a compass to point the dish in the general direction of north, plugs it into the RV's power, and corrects the alignment with the app's guide; the obstruction view showed trees overhead.
• Speed roughly sextupled once the dish settled in. The first test, with obstructions, gave about 22 Mbps down and 10 up, already above the campground's paid Wi-Fi, which tops out at 10 Mbps. After 20 to 30 minutes of settling, the host measured 128 Mbps down and 20 up.

2024-08-16 · open the original ↗

• Password Pusher replaces clear-text passwords with expiring links. The sender sets expiry by days or views (the demo uses four days or three views), optionally adds a retrieval passphrase, and shares a link or QR code. The host argues the hosted site is low-risk because only the password is sent, not the username or site, and the code is open source; self-hosting removes the trust question.
• A $5-a-month cloud server is enough, with backups off. The host uses a Vultr shared-CPU instance with the one-click Docker image (25 GB SSD, 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM; $1 a month more for AMD high-performance) and disables backups, because the app stores nothing worth restoring. He creates the DNS A record early, in Cloudflare with proxying off, to give propagation time.
• Install is two Docker containers and one Caddyfile edit. The host downloads a Docker Compose file and a Caddyfile, sets the Let's Encrypt email and the fully qualified domain name in the Caddyfile, and runs docker compose up -d, which pulls the Password Pusher and certificate containers. He says the whole job takes under 15 minutes; written steps are on the Crosstalk blog.
• Lock SSH to your WAN IP and auto-restart the containers. With ufw, he allows port 22 only from his own WAN IP (a /32 for a single address), allows HTTPS 443 from anywhere, deletes the default anywhere rules for 22, and enables the firewall. Adding restart: always to both services in the Compose file brought the site back within a minute of a reboot.
• Crosstalk itself uses Password Pusher with its customers. The host says the firm sends and receives customer passwords this way, and presents it as showing customers it values security on their networks and phone systems.

2024-08-06 · open the original ↗

• The host took nearly five minutes to terminate a Cat6 cable. Timing himself through cutting, stripping, removing the centre spline, untwisting and ordering the pairs to T568B, he finished in 4 minutes 54 seconds with a passing test, and says as a hobbyist rather than a professional installer he expects many viewers are faster.

2024-08-02 · open the original ↗

• The WLAN Pi R4 kit turns a spare Pi 4 into a Wi-Fi toolkit. The host bought the bring-your-own-Pi kit himself, about $180 USD with shipping, and says the video is unsponsored with no contact with the project. It adds a heatsink case with display and a USB Wi-Fi 6 adapter, since the Pi 4's onboard radio is Wi-Fi 5. It needs a Pi 4 with 2 GB or more and did not yet support the Pi 5.
• Left at a client site, it becomes a remote Wi-Fi probe. Reachable over VPN, Tailscale, ZeroTier or Cloudflare tunnels, it can serve as a remote endpoint for WiFi Scanner on Windows or WiFi Explorer Pro on Mac. The host would pair this with its bundled Grafana dashboards, which log periodic speed tests, latency and DNS resolution time.
• The profiler shows what a misbehaving client can actually do. It broadcasts a test SSID; any device attempting to join, with any password, gets profiled for supported bands, beamforming and maximum transmit power. The host uses this to diagnose a client with a weak antenna or one that cannot use the available band.
• Kismet and Cockpit come bundled, but Kismet runs hot. Kismet, which the host likens to Wireshark for Wi-Fi, scans selectable channels and details every device and access point, but loads the Pi enough that the metal case matters. Cockpit gives a browser console with updates and a terminal; spectrum-analyzer dashboards exist for tools he does not own.
• Most functions work from the device's own screen and buttons. Without the web GUI, it offers reachability checks, speed tests, tests to vendor clouds (Aruba Central, Extreme, Mist, Ruckus), a port blinker for finding its switch port, a hotspot bridged to Ethernet, and a DHCP/TFTP server mode. The host had not tried its Bluetooth features.

2024-07-26 · open the original ↗

• Starlink Mini is the dish for mobile use, not fixed sites. The host, who says the video is not sponsored and that he bought the dish and service himself, rates it superior to every earlier Starlink by almost every measure for RVs, camping and off-grid work, but still recommends the full-size residential dish at a home or business for its extra bandwidth.
• The Mini costs more up front than the full-size dish now does. The dish is $599 plus the $20 shipping he paid, while SpaceX cut the standard dish to $499, with promotions as low as $199 in places. Mobile Regional is $150 a month unlimited, in-motion up to 10 mph; Mini Roam is $50 a month with a 50 GB cap and opt-in $1/GB overage; both can be paused and are prorated.
• The in-motion speed limit may not be strictly enforced. The host ran a Gen 3 dish on the Mobile Regional plan through a 12-hour road trip at around 80 mph without trouble. The captions state Mini Roam's in-motion terms ambiguously.
• The router is built in, and unplugging Ethernet breaks the IP67 rating. The dish (12 in by about 10.25 in, just over 3 lb) carries a 3x3 MU-MIMO Wi-Fi 5 access point, which the host argues is enough because internet speeds never reach Wi-Fi 6 rates. Its RJ45 port lets it act as a WAN-only device, but Starlink says IP67 holds only with its own Ethernet cable, unreleased at recording. The data sheet gives 12–48 V input, with a 12 V cable and a USB-C-to-barrel cable "coming soon".
• His backyard tests showed strong speed at half Gen 3's power. Off an EcoFlow Delta, setup took about 2 minutes plus roughly 15 minutes of two firmware updates. The Starlink app measured 138 Mbps down, 16.4 Mbps up and 54 ms; Ookla measured 82 down and about 12 up, against the 150–300 Mbps he typically gets on the full-size dish. Idle draw was 20–30 W (Gen 3: 40–60 W), rising about 10 W, to roughly 40 W, during a speed test.

2024-07-16 · open the original ↗

• Cloudflare's speed test gives a fuller picture than a headline number. The host says speed.cloudflare.com starts automatically and measures bandwidth in segments of 100 KB, 1 MB, 10 MB, 25 MB, 100 MB and 250 MB files, aggregated into the total. It also measures latency unloaded and during upload and download, graphs packet loss, and maps your location against the test server.

2024-07-12 · open the original ↗

• The UniFi Cable Internet modem replaces an ISP modem inside UniFi. The UCI costs $279 and has one DOCSIS 3.1 coax port and one 2.5 GbE port. A full 2.5 Gbps link needs one of the five UniFi gateways with a 2.5 GbE WAN port. It works behind a non-UniFi gateway, but then you get no statistics, and even in UniFi it shows only CPU, memory and bandwidth.
• ISP compatibility is narrow, so research before buying. It is US-only: Comcast Business only on the business side, Xfinity, Charter Spectrum or Cox on the residential side. Comcast caps third-party modems at 1.2 Gbps down and 40 Mbps up, Spectrum at 1 Gbps and 35 Mbps. It does not work on high-split DOCSIS, and some ISPs are rolling out DOCSIS 4.
• Static IPs on Comcast Business rule it out. Comcast Business allows static IPs only through its own gateway, so the host, who has a block of five static IPs, cannot use his unit. He is giving it away to a US subscriber.
• The main reason to buy is lease savings. The host pays Comcast Business a $32.95 monthly equipment fee, so a UCI would pay for itself in about 8.5 months and save over $300 a year after that. Activation is mostly reported online as under 10 minutes without calling support, with some calls running past an hour and one case unresolved even after a truck roll.
• Users report better performance more often than not. From Reddit and forum posts, the host found about 75% of users reporting faster speeds than with their ISP modem. Of the rest, half saw no change and half saw worse performance. He stresses this is anecdotal and reads it as a better-than-even chance of improvement.

2024-07-08 · open the original ↗

• Windows 11 Notepad now spellchecks and autocorrects by default. Microsoft had offered the feature to beta users since March 2024 and has now pushed it to all Windows 11 users. The host expects pushback from users who want Notepad unbloated and from coders who don't want code autocorrected. Each feature can be turned off separately in settings.

2024-07-05 · open the original ↗

• Bring the gateway up first, then add devices one at a time. The host says patience makes setup smoother. A UniFi OS gateway comes online either through the UniFi mobile app over Bluetooth or from a wired computer on a LAN port browsing to the IP on its screen, typically 192.168.1.1. The UI account needs multi-factor authentication, which Ubiquiti mandates as of July 2024.
• Add a local-only admin as an emergency backdoor. The host recommends this in case the UniFi cloud login fails. He also advises the Official release channel, scheduled auto-updates for UniFi OS and apps, and leaving the weekly cloud config backup on, or taking manual backups if you disable it.
• Change the default 192.168.1.x subnet if you might VPN sites together. Turn off auto-scale and change the third octet (his example is 192.168.4.1), but leave the /24 mask alone. The DHCP range defaults to .6–.254; widen or narrow it according to how many devices need static IPs.
• The guest checkbox isolates a network from your other subnets automatically. Ticking it creates firewall rules that allow internet access but block your other subnets. On the guest Wi-Fi he points to client device isolation (right for hotel-style networks, wrong where you cast or print), speed-limit profiles (his example is 10 Mbps each way) and a blackout schedule for business hours.
• DNS Shield will likely break the gateway's built-in ad blocking. The ad blocking filters DNS, but gives no visibility into what it blocks. Suspicious activity detection set to Auto is IDS, which only notifies; notify-and-block is IPS. It costs gateway CPU, but the host says home users would probably never notice.

2024-06-13 · open the original ↗

• Every UniFi network needs four components, often combined in one box. They are a gateway (router/firewall), wireless access points, switches and the UniFi Network controller; the Dream Machine Pro combines gateway, switch and controller without Wi-Fi, while UniFi Express combines gateway, Wi-Fi and controller with a single LAN port. The host recommends beginners run the controller on the gateway, so it is always on and new devices find it easily.
• Beginners should pick a gateway with a switch, not built-in Wi-Fi. The host prefers the Cloud Gateway Ultra to UniFi Express: the Ultra costs $129 and has a four-port switch; Express costs $149 with a Wi-Fi 6 radio, but supports fewer devices (up to 30 UniFi devices) and its small antenna covers about an apartment or small home. The Ultra lets you place stronger access points where coverage is best. Most gateways handle up to 1 Gbps; above that, check each product page's throughput with IDS/IPS enabled.
• A small PoE switch covers most home wiring. His pick is the 8-port, AC-powered Switch Ultra 60 W costs $159 and can power two or three PoE devices; the $199 Lite 16 PoE (8 of 16 ports PoE) is the step up, and he runs one in his garage. He also likes the $29 Flex Mini, powered by USB-C or PoE, for wiring devices behind a TV.
• Beginners should skip Wi-Fi 7 and buy Wi-Fi 6 access points. Wi-Fi 7 costs more and few clients can use it, though he expects that to change in four or five years. Of the PoE models under $150 he rates the $129 U6 Plus best, about double the U6 Lite's throughput for $30 more; the U6 Pro at $159 is fine too, and he suggests a U6 Mesh outdoors.
• With access points, less is more. He advises starting with one or two centrally placed access points in a typical wood-and-drywall home and adding more only where coverage proves lacking; without PoE switches, each needs a PoE injector. He built the UI Product Selector site he uses here to filter and share builds, and the video opens and closes with a pitch for Rogue Support's network design service.