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I have a Windows 2003 SBS at home and because Windows doesn’t support VLANs natively, I use Vmware to run a virtual opensuse router. This works perfectly fine for all systems except for the host OS itself. On my host OS, my download speed was around 3.5 MB/s, which is just fine, but the upload was only around 20 kB/s, which is less than 1/50 of what should be possible. After 2 nights of searching, I finally found the culprit. I used Bridged networking for the connection between Host, Guest and all other PCs in the network, but Vmware seems to have a problem with this setting. Switching to host-only networking solved the problem for the host, but disabled the guest talking with other PCs. So I added a new virtual network adapter in Vmware, making one host-only and the other bridged. After removing the old gateway and setting the Hosts Gateway to the host-only IP of the guest, everything is now lightning fast.

I used to have the “Genion S Online” plan from O2 Germany, which costs € 10 / month. For € 5 more each month, I had a “Wap & Email Flatrate”, which allowed me to surf and email on my mobile device. With 100 free SMS each month, I was even satisfied with € 0.19 I have to pay for each minute on my phone. My contract started December 2003 for 24 month and has been extended once (which is done automatically). But lately the prices have been dropping like crazy. For around € 4 each month, calling could be as cheap as € 0.05 a minute!

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A few days ago, I received a letter from T-Com confirming my order of T-Home Entertainment Comfort with VDSL 25. I never ordered it, especially not on September 10th, where I had been in China. Anyway, I didn’t want VDSL 25 when I already have VDSL 50 and I didn’t want IPTV either because I have Cable. That’s what I told the T-Home Hotline yesterday and now they offered me Entertain Basic with VDSL 50 + ISDN for € 63.95. I checked their website and saw that this combination isn’t even possible. It seems that this is only a special combination for customers who request it. Well, it’s perfect for me.

After some problems I had with VDSL at the beginning, it now is pretty stable. Even though the highest download speed I ever got was around 3 MB/s, uploading files with over 1 MB/s is just great! Browsing the net has become really comfortable.

How do I get these two working together without additional tools like pptpproxy? That was a question I had for a long time and finally there is a solution. On a forum, I found a post that allows GRE connections through the default openSUSE firewall. So here is the working configuration for my openSUSE 10.2 with Microsoft Small Business Server 2003.

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Modifying your PPC (PocketPC) software is called “cooking” in the PPC world. People who change the software are the “chefs” and the development environment is of course the “kitchen”. But the result is called ROM.

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Last Thursday, my new cell phone arrived. It’s the O2 Xda Orbit, a branded version of the HTC Artemis P3300, filled with useful features like GPS and Wireless LAN. As a Nokia fan, it was really hard to resist the N95, but I’m more than happy with my choice.
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I never thought that this would happen, but it did. The “My Documents” folder has probably become one of the most important folders I use, so it needs to be backed up, which I did. I had them on my server, on my notebook and on my desktop computer. With my old server having raid 5, I was pretty sure that I’ll never lose them.

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I have been quite busy lately, but I managed to buy myself a RAID 6 system. I used to have a RAID 5 with 4 harddrives but I guess that’s just not secure enough. I am a lazy person, so I am sure that I won’t replace a broken hard disk immediately. With RAID 5, I would run into the problem of losing all my data as soon as a second hard disk fails. That’s why I decided to upgrade to an RAID 6, where 2 hard disk can fail.

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Telekom, T-Com, T-Home or whatever they are calling themselves now is my ISP for VDSL 50. So if you have read my previous entries, you already know that it is not working as expected. First, my download rate is less than 20 Mbit, which is okay if you have VDSL 25, but not if you are paying € 10 more every month to get 50 Mbit. I’d be satisfied with 35-45 Mbit, but that’s not the speed I’m getting.

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Today, I had a fun discussion with my friend Frank about Tablet PCs (convertibles, no slates) and Windows Vista. I have been watching the development of Microsoft programs and found them to be more and more tablet-friendly. The software released this year – Windows Vista and Office 2007 – support a lot of things specially designed for easy access with a tablet pen.

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