DP | @ekhoophotography

As one of the first TM Streamyx customers way back in 2001, ten years is a long time to wait for decent broadband. Streamyx was good when it launched but like anything in Malaysia, it just stagnates. Anyways, my parent's house is among the first few areas for Unifi, unlike where I stay now which is low on TM's priority list just because the exchange we use is pretty run down.


The speed is great but the installation purely sucks. Don't get me wrong, the guys did a decent job and were quite clean but I think the first thing Telekom Malaysia should have done is not to assume each household has a single PC. Secondly, the installers should not assume the cable drop is next to the phone table and next to the TV set. So here goes the installer bitching about my complicated setup... see below and trying to charge my mom RM12 per meter run of CAT5 cable. Good thing I have a box (a thousand feet) handy. CAT5 cable run in my parent's home, measured from the switch is about 85 feet (26m) to the TV area, 75 feet (23m) to the guest room, 65 feet (20m) to Rooms 1 and 2.

Since I wasn't around when the completed the installation, they managed to hoodwink my parents into believing that all the PCs are already connected. As my parents didn't know how to run any network testing, all they did was try to load some websites. They even forgot to testing printing. My mom tested printing from her PC (in the guest room) though so she thought everything worked. Yes, it works but half the house is still on Streamyx!! See below diagram.

I dropped at 4:30pm and first thing I did was to do a cable trace. Not liking what I found, I turned off the ADSL connection and immediately two PCs lost internet connectivity. It's obvious why. These are the things I immediately configured or changed:

1. Change the Router’s Administrator password (defaulted to blank!)


2. Turned off the Wireless on TM's DIR-615. (If you intend to use it, rename the Wireless Network Name/SSID)
   * The default SSID uses the customer’s name, i.e.: subscribername@unifi.


3. Disable Remote Access to the router


4. Enable Firewall, including blocking scan, DOS attacks, service filters, the whole enchilada....


5. Adjusted the DHCP port range so it didn't conflict with my other devices that were statically assigned

Here's how the network finally looks like:


It looks like I've to be around and end up doing a fair bit of work if (when TM decides to upgrade the Sungei Way exchange) I subscribe to Unifi and their installers come to my home. It's way more complicated that my parents!

By the way, I didn't play around much with the phone service or the IPTV service. It's not that attractive to me at the moment but hopefully it'll change in the future. I'm hoping for pure SIP services from TM in terms of the voice side...

Seems like after posting the NAS entries, I got a question from a friend trying to archive his photos as well as other data, i.e. media files, documents, backups, etc. So how do you decide which NAS to buy?

For everyone and anyone who asks me, I'll always go with a dual-drive NAS. If you decide to go with a single drive NAS, you might as well go with USB disks like Seagate FreeAgents or WD Elements. So, basically you have to calculate how much storage you need. One area to start with is to see how much space you use in one year and how much that grows. My average storage needs (photos only) are about 600Gb/year. Chances are that won't increase much unless I upgrade my cameras. I do budget a 10% increase. I do have other needs also so by the time I added everything in, it's a large number.

Secondly, ask yourself f the NAS is your primary backup or not. If it is, it will need to be able to store all your backups. It's good to take into account a 3-year plan so if you need 600Gb/year, then your NAS will be or must be able to grow to accomodate at least 2TB. This actually then dictates the size of your NAS. If it's secondary storage (like in my case) where you have backups somewhere else (Hard drives, DVDs, BDs, etc) then the requirements are different. I wanted past 3-years of media (Photos & videos) on my NAS while my main backup stores everything. This required at least a capacity of 2.2TB at least which is why I went with a 4-drive unit. Most 2-drive NAS units max out at 2TB (2x2TB disks in mirrored/RAID1 config).

Finally, the next thing you need to consider is how fast you want to get the data off the NAS. I assume you'd be connecting at least via gigabit speeds. The specifications of the NAS play a part in the speed (excluding poor network speeds) aspect so normally I look at what CPU the NAS has along with the memory.

So what are my choices/recommendations?

Budget: DLink DNS-323
Cheaply priced (RM439/USD130), it's the lowest cost 2-drive NAS I would buy myself.

I've only had experience with QNAP and Synology NAS units so that's what I'll stick with. You can go over to Smallnetbuilder and check their NAS reviews but not all are available locally in Malaysia. Here's a handy performance chart for QNAP and Synology NASes.

Two-bay units:
Synology : DS210j or DS209
Qnap : TS-210 or TS-219

Two-bay units (higher performance):
Synology DS210+
Qnap TS-239 Pro II

Four-bay units:
Synology : DS410j
Qnap: TS-410 or TS-419P

Four-bay units (higher performance):
Synology : DS410
Qnap: TS-439 Pro II

note: this list above is from May 2010. If you need more space, you can consider the 5 and 6 bay models.

A few people have asked me to elaborate on my storage strategy so here it is. Some background information is needed first. I started taking photography seriously in 1998. Buying my first SLR back then was a big thing and working through the lenses and other options. In late '99, was basically scanning the prints on a flatbed scanner. Quality was amazing, or at least what I thought was amazing until I stumbled upon a very expensive (at that time, I wasn't making much a month) option; the slide scanner. By skipping the printing stage and scanning directly from film, it delivered unmatched results from anything else unless you're comparing to a drum scan. Since then, I've been scanning almost all my slides and negatives but most of what I shot were from my travels. Film costs a fair bit, especially if you shot transparency film such as Fuji Velvia, Kodachrome or Elitechromes, so the everyday life doesn't often get captured on film.

So with digital scans dating all the way back to 2000 (the 2700 dpi scans tend to produce on average 14MB LZW compressed TIFF files), storage is key, along with a proper backup strategy. I went with CD-Rs and then DVD-Rs but they never were convenient (not fun, not quick, and laborious process) meant that you will almost never will do it timely enough so I decided to stick with hard drives. They get cheaper and are inherently quicker to access if they're stuck into a spare machine that can be booted up anytime you needed to.

I upgraded scanners so the file sizes got bigger and films like Velvia and EliteChrome 100 pushed the resolution (grain?) further. Then came my first DSLR, a 300D (my shortest-lived DSLR ownership) and my 20D several months later. So came RAW files, 16-bit PSDs, and the story continues until I hit my 5D Mark II with 21-megapixels, Full HD movies. Backup is getting more important but also important is accessibility.

I needed to backup and offload my main PC but also need to access the "older" stuff occasionally. Leaving your main storage server switched on/off daily or 24x7 wasn't something I want to do on a daily basis so I got a NAS which I quickly outgrew within a year so that too got upgraded to a 4-bay unit.

I have a storage server with 6x1TB disks. It's all RAID 1. Mirrored. So I get a net space of 3TB. I have a "_photos" folder shared out that further breaks down by year, i.e. "2001", "2003", along with some odd directories. I also have a "_videos" folder where I back up my created DVDs (ISO format) and Adobe Premiere Pro project files. The problem is occasionally accessing stuff from say, 2006. My main PC only stores past 16-odd months so I ended up going to my storage server regularly. So what's running 24x7 is my NAS box with 4x500Gb in RAID5. That gives me about 1.4TB of disk space. That way, I get that past 2-years on it; i.e. 2008 & 2009 along with my 600Gb music collection on the built-in iTunes server. My IP cameras also record to NAS and they keep the past-7 days recording. I also have imaged backups of all the machines in my home so that if the primary disk crashes, recovery is just a click away. Keeping everything in sync is the unix utility rsync (the windows equivalent is DeltaCopy).

With the growing file sizes, I'll be moving my storage server to 1.5TB disks by Q4 this year and my NAS will grow to 4x1TB*... one can never have enough disk space!



* That's one thing I like about my NAS. I can live swap the disks and expand it without powering down and losing my data. I can easily move from 500Gbx4 to 1TBx4 and later to 2TBx4.

If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll have noticed a few posts alluding to the search of some network storage to replace my 2-drive unit. I finally settled on the QNAP TS-439 Pro. Read the previous post about it or go to QNAP's site to read more. Basically, I needed a compact, four-drive unit. Why four drives? It allows either two mirrored sets of disks (note: not necessarily RAID1) or RAID5 (with or without a spare). Going larger (5, 6 or 8 drive units) adds exponentially to the price but I wanted the use of the few 500Gb disks I have lying around. 500Gb is quite small but if I put them in a RAID5 set, I get 1TB (n-1). Later when I move some of my main storage disks to 1.5TB disks, I get another 500Gb to slot in as a spare drive (3x500Gb + 1 spare).

Other highlights for me were the hot-swap disk trays (lockable), multiple USB ports for printer sharing and dual-Gigabit LAN ports. The other stuff are frills. The dual gigabit Ethernet ports give you a fair bit of flexibility. You can configure two separate links for two separate networks, or some form of load-balancing, etc. Mine is configured for link aggregation group (LAG) mode. If you want to read more on that, which can get technical, Google for 802.3ad. In a nutshell, what LAG does is to create an aggregation group of network links that share the same speed and duplex settings. This requires a switch that supports LAG though and few consumer grade switches support it. The TS-439 Pro does have another option of using Adaptive load balancing. This bonds the network interfaces on the 439 and allows it to aggregate without any switch support. There's a slight drop in performance but if you don't have a switch that supports 802.3ad, it is the way to go. Did I mention two links means redundancy?


My primary use is to serve as my iTunes and media server (uPNP/TwonkyMedia), download stuff (BitTorrent), IP camera recorder, and a common file store to use between my PCs and notebooks in the house. My plan is to copy my photos there from camera, then once they're sort of done (processing, etc), they can be moved to my File Server (which has 6x1Tb) in a RAID1+0 config. I've used jperf to do some testing to check the LAN bandwidth/switch speeds and for the TS-439, some regular file transfer timings.

First off, my gigabit LAN between Win Server 2003 R2 (dual-core Athlon, 6x1TB, 3Gb RAM, single link, the onboard NIC is died earlier this year so I'm running an Intel Gigabit CT off the PCIe x1 slot) and my Vista 64 SP2 client. I ran jperf over a few minutes with a five second interval. Min speed reported at 601,274Kbits/sec, max speed reported at 879,761Kbits/sec. Average the 30 readings and I get an average of 795,208Kbits/sec, or 776Mbits/sec or about 97Mbytes/sec. So let's see how the 439 Pro transfers -- remember, I have link aggregation on the TS-439.

1. Transfering 14,521Mbytes of photos. What I have is a mix of small and large files sizes. Large as in on average 26,912kb and small as in about 9kb (the XMP sidecar file). Transfer took about 320 seconds. 45.3MBytes/sec.

2. Transfering only the CR2 files took faster, clocking in about 261 seconds, or 55.5MBytes/sec.

3. Dual client access. Transfer a directory of photos and sidecar XMP files (12,672Mbytes and 11,760Mbytes). Start the transfer on client A then client B. Same target on NAS. Client A finished at 262 seconds. Client B finished at 302 seconds. Note that client B started transferring at roughly the 30 second mark of Client A. Average transfer speed is about 48.3Mbytes/sec for client A and 38.9Mbytes/sec for client B. Not too shabby considering both were hitting the NAS at the same time for about 87Mbytes/sec. Good enough for me.


I've used it as a mapped drive for working on my photos and from Lightroom 3 beta 2 and Bridge CS4, the images feel very snappy. Not as quick of course compared to my local SATA drive but it's not that obvious you're working through a network. The lag on bridge in terms of refresh for example is noticeable only when you have three clients hitting the NAS but the fact is that its not terribly slow. My guess is that if Bridge refreshes my 800 photo directory on my local drive in 5 seconds, it takes about 8 or 9 on the NAS and perhaps 15+ seconds if you have multiple clients hitting F5 at the same time. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied. Maybe it's time to look for dual-Gigabit port NICs for my client machines as well but I think the NAS will get faster when I up the RAM to 2Gb.


Overall, I'm pretty happy. It serves up my music to my iTunes, I can also listen to music/look at photos/watch movies on my Popcorn Hour C-200 via Twonkymedia server, record from all four of my IP cameras and work on a shared folder of photos. Not cheap but probably more cost effective to run than a standalone PC or server (if you factor in licensing, power, heat and noise). You can do other things with it as well though even thought I don't such as running a Web or FTP server, etc.

If you want a more in-depth review, you can read it here.

Wanted to post this much earlier but didn't have the time to. When it was time to replace all the old wiring in my new home, it made sense to lay enough cable drops to various rooms and areas in the house. I used Cat 5e cabling because I had a box of it lying around. Cat 6 would be better but no point throwing a thousand feet of good cable away. A few hiccups happened for the wiring contractor conveniently forgot to add a drop near the kitchen and dining so those areas will need to be wireless now and means they can't get Satellite TV either via Cat 5. All cables were home-run (star topology) into my "home office" room. I didn't want a standard Rack occupying the space so I turned Ikea-hacker. An Ikea PS cabinet was modified with my dremel tool to mount a 24-port patch panel and patch block to distribute phone lines. Since I had a DSL link, I patched all phones behind the DSL splitter which makes things cleaner.


Data-links were patched to a Linksys (Cisco Small Business) SRW2008 managed gigabit switch which in turn is fed off my dual-WAN Linksys RV042 VPN router. Also connected is a DLink DIR-655 wireless router and a Netgear 10/100 8-port POE switch to power my IP cameras distributed around the house. It all fit somewhat nicely into the Ikea PS cabinet with space for two Belkin power strips fed off an APC UPS with extended run battery. That'll give an approximate three hour runtime for my cameras, broadband and network during a power outage.

Improvements? I'll need to add a few more cable drops for IP cameras sometime this year and since my NAS will be coming soon, I'll probably need another patch panel. I've three data ports in each room, that makes 9 plus my "home office" has 4 ports so I've already used 13. My living room and common area has another four ports so that goes to 17. I've 3 POE ports outside the home (to be increased to 5) so that's 20. My phone line distribution ends up take another three so I'm effectively out of ports! The picture below is not the latest one as I've added a modified shelf to hold my router to make space for a 16-port 10/100/1000 switch below and will be color coding the patch cables for easier maintenance soon.



BTW for those interested in laying their own Cat 5 or 6 cables to connect to Telekom Malaysia's demarcation point such as a telephone pole, here's a quick guide depending if your cables are new or not. Newer cables are usually color coded. Mine are blue/white and white/blue and typically, you'll use the same matching blue/white & white/blue center pair in the Cat 5 cable. The good thing about Cat 5 is that you can carry more phone lines on the same cable using another pair (up to 4) so your one single Cat 5 cable can then be split internally (hence my patch block & patch panel) to multiple incoming phone lines and devices (fax, line 1, line 2, etc). Typically, white/blue (white cable with blue stripes) is the positive cable but do verify with a voltmeter to be sure. In older areas sometimes the color is red and green where green is positive. If you have all black cable, a ridge (feel for it) marks the side of the twin cable that's the positive wire.

p.s. Sorry for the photo quality -- all taken with my iPhone

While Malaysian broadband is lacking in more ways than one can count, there is yet hope. A certain monopolistic company and their terrible service is all most of us have but if you can actually afford it, SDSL is much better considering the guaranteed transfer speeds compared to best-effort. Best effort in boleh-land is probably equivalent of try-lah. You'll probably encounter download speeds as fast as 100kb/second to about 1kb/second. Yes, it's that variable. Come to think of it, Malaysian traffic is similar. I can take anywhere from 15 to 100 minutes to get to work!

There's yet another option - Metro Ethernet. Yes, many cities in Korean and Japan have high speed Ethernet broadband connections while our fancy broadband is still stuck at the mostly same speeds it launched with seven years ago! Paneagle has it's Metro-E in select buildings and areas and if you can afford it, a certain monopoly's broadband becomes dial-up! This is a 5Mbps Metro-E link.

Check-out my simultaneous download of Windows 7 from the MSDN site and yes, I'm still in Malaysia! Here's the info on my IP address:
IP address: 202.169.29.70
Reverse DNS: [No reverse DNS entry per ns01.paneagle.com.my.]
ASN Name: PANEAGLE-MY-AP (Paneagle Communications Sdn Bhd, Metro-Ethernet & Internet Access Provider, Malaysia)
IP range connectivity: 1
Registrar (per ASN): APNIC

From experience (and analyzing the airwaves), quite a number of people ignore security when they get their wireless networks setup. Well, all that security is inconvenient I suppose but do you know how far your wireless access point or router transmits to? This is more apparent in a condominium or apartment setup where you not only have neighbors beside you, you also have to worry about neighbors above and below you. At one point, before I moved to a house, I could pick up networks three floors up. While the signal strength is not good, breaking into it was simple was it used WEP and a five character password.
More than half my surrounding networks at that point had no security! and worse still, many still had their default linksys, dlink or belkin setup IP addresses, usernames and passwords! I taught someone a lesson by changing his wireless router password and within a few days, the router got setup with WPA.
WPA itself is not invulnerable and I've successfully got into a few WPA networks around my condo unit with BackTrack because their WPA passwords were nothing more than simple strings like "linksys" or "mynetwork".
Anyways, after I got my soon-to-be-replaced Belkin wireless router up, I went around my house with inSSIDer and kismet. What you see below is inSSIDer's scan of my neighborhood. First thing I normally do is to lower the transmit power to ensure my router doesn't broadcast further than my main gate. My Belkin router doesn't do that but it's going to be replaced in a few days so no worries. Secondly, to ensure good connectivity, you make sure there's no channel overlaps. You can see my hopefaithandlove network all by itself on channel 1. You also can see most other networks have none (gasp!) or purely WEP security. Finally, I normally make the WPA2 key long enough. My method is to pick a favorite verse from the bible. If you want tighter security, don't leave spaces, substitute occasional numbers for alphabets, and perhaps throw in a Greek or Yiddish word in the process! Better still if you have more resources, go with WPA-Enterprise with a Radius authentication server... client certificates, the works! Ah, a totally different ballgame. For me, I stick to WPA2, put my wireless on a separate VLAN so that if someone gets into my wireless network, all they can do is get to the internet. Not good but better than having the ability to hit my main PC or File server.

The Casa Damansara infrastructure is up and running! Of course, right now, the only thing that is missing is the wireless HSDPA bridge/modem but everything, including local 802g and local LAN is up and running! Full firewall and packet inspector is also live! All we need to do is move my storage servers and other PCs!