Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by Reuben

10 Blackberry Gripes

Reuben — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:56:06 +0800

Also available from our BolehVPN Blog.

Now I love my Blackberry. To me, it still is one of the best messaging devices out there allowing me to receive instant e-mail, remain signed in on multiple IMs, multi-task and my favourite, the Blackberry Messenger. It is pretty stable, for the most part quite responsive and using it is intuitive. However, the competition is catching up quick and RIM seems to be resting on its laurels while the other big boys are catching up…and fast!

The new models of Blackberries still do not address these issues and unless RIM starts doing some drastic revamps in its phone, it may be soon pushed into obsolescence.

Perhaps the most unforgivable thing is that some of these problems are very easily rectified.

Now in no particular order (cause I’m too lazy to rank them):

1. Browser

Why of course…the perennial gripe. Blackberry’s browser is way behind the competition. Slow, sluggish, chokes on Javascript, the Blackberry browser is in drastic need of an update.

Despite the existence of third party browsers such as Bolt and Opera Mini, most of them lack the integration that BB Browser offers for e.g. Sending page links, opening links automatically with the browser and instant launching making its experience less than satisfactory.

However, RIM is rumored to be developing a WebKit based browser which many hope to rectify this problem which frankly has been left outstanding for far too long.

2.Too many similar models

Instead of making a few handsets to cater to different markets, RIM has SEVERAL handsets to cater to the same market with very minor differences and it mostly involves crippling a phone to make a Telco happy. Basically RIM juggles these few options to make certain phones attractive:

1. WIFI
2. 3G capability
3. GPS
4. A decent camera

Mix and match these options to create a new phone! Furthermore, creating more models confuses consumers and makes developing for Blackberries a nightmare. And as we all know…the very core of smartphones today are its applications and for these we need third party developers (think IPhone).

Some examples, remember the 8300, 8310 and 8320? Even the Tour and Javelin aren’t significantly different from each other.

And no WIFI on the Storm 1 is simply inexcusable (not to mention how its consumers were basically beta-testers for RIM).

3. Inability to copy a number to a new contact easily

Got a new number of an existing contact? Well too bad you have to go through quite a few steps to get it into your list. You have to select the number, copy the contact, browse to the contact you want to add/edit the number to and then paste it in and then save….

Can’t we just have a frickin Add to Existing Contact option? :/

4. The perpetual Scanning of Media and slow Thumbnails

Now the media player of Blackberry is quite a recent addition, only coming in the past few years and marked the end of the Blackberry as a purely business device.

Its first iteration was workable but had very huge confusing omissions (inability to create playlists anyone?).

It now has these features and is a more fully featured media player but there are some huge performance issues. Put in your memory card loaded with your pictures and mp3s and wait while your Blackberry chugs on it for a good 5 minutes or more slowing down performance severely while this happens. This also happens with EVERY reboot and perhaps the most annoying is after unplugging it from Mass Storage Mode from your computer. How can this be acceptable? It can’t be the memory card which loads really fast when accessed via the computer even while in the Blackberry so there’s obviously some flaw in the code.

Furthermore, try loading your Pictures and viewing them and what you’re treated to are extremely slow loading thumbnails (think 5 seconds for each thumbnail to load). Now I may have a lot of pictures (several hundred) but if other phones can handle this, why can’t a Blackberry? What’s the point of having the ability to store several gigs of data if they take so long to access?

On a side note, video recording on my Bold also tends to go out of sync from video and audio from time to time which I think might be related to the slow access time of Blackberries to a memory card but I may be wrong.

5. The need for regular reboots

Now many Blackberry users will say otherwise, but the Blackberry does require a reset every few days or so (sometimes daily) as it slowly runs out of application memory. Closing other running applications do not seem to help this. Many point to the browser as being one of the culprits causing memory leaks. Considering the reboot process takes about 5 minutes and then add in another 5 minutes for rescanning of your memory card, this is often quite a pain.

How I cope with it is rebooting it before I go to sleep, but seriously this is a basic OS issue that needs to be resolved.

6. An App World that does not work in all countries

RIM’s answer to the IPhone Store is App World. In addition to its higher priced apps, less variety it also is only available in several select countries. Malaysia isn’t one of them. Even if setting up payment mechanisms for other countries is difficult, it is inexcusable to leave us out of App World for the free app selections! I want a simple way to check which of my apps need updating and do it from there rather than manually checking from the Blackberry site.

Hopefully this will be rectified in time.

7. Crap Blackberry Maps

Tried using Blackberry maps? In short, it’s crap, grab Google Maps instead.

8. Closing Applications is not a one-button task

One of the great things about the Blackberry is its multi-tasking ability. Even then, closing down unused apps from running in the background is good practice and increases the time needed before you require another reboot. It also saves battery and valuable memory.

However, RIM doesn’t make it very easy. Instead of an easy one press button that closes the app, hitting the ESCAPE button only minimizes it. To actually FULLY close it, you will have to go into Menu, Scroll all the way down then hit close. Now do this thousands of times and it quickly gets annoying. Does RIM really want our Blackberries to respond sluggishly?

9. OS 5.0 a Major Minor Update

Now OS 5.0 was meant to be a huge leap forward for Blackberries and got many of us excited. Unfortunately it seems to be rather minor in my opinion.

1. A marginally faster browser
2. A better BBM (which is actually already available on older OSes) with threaded SMS
3. Some UI and Performance Improvements

Wait..that’s it? :-/ Now I haven’t tried OS 5.0 yet due to its many incompatibilities with my existing set of apps but I’ll leave BGR to give a run down on its major changes.

10. Not keeping customers informed

RIM isn’t really known for its transparency. Several outages have happened without any proper announcement from RIM and Blackberry users had to resort to blogs to see if they were the only ones experiencing the problem.

First of all, outages on Blackberries should not be tolerated. Being touted as a business device, reliability should be one of the cornerstones of the BB network. Secondly should an outage need to happen, it should be informed in advance or if it was unexpected, at least tell us what’s going on.

Thankfully this doesn’t happen too often but is it really so difficult to send out a a short notice telling everyone not to panic? Compare Google’s response to its Gmail outage and see the difference.

Closing Thoughts

Now I really want to stay with my Blackberry. The 9700 Bold looks promising but I doubt that the issues above will be solved anytime soon.

There’s also one gripe that I have but did not include it in the above list due to its rectification in later models. The trackball that’s an absolute magnet for dirt and grime and is a pain to clean (especially on the Bold and Javelin). Now this has been phased out in RIM’s newer models and is a huge step in the right direction but still leaves me a bit sore in shelling out another RM2k (I THINK) for the 9700 which basically gives an optical trackpad, faster response and a better camera. Too much for too little?

One killer app is preventing me from making the switch to any other device right now and that’s the Blackberry Messenger. However should there be only 1 reason in the way of me making a switch away from Blackberries? I am sure many users might think otherwise.

Problems fitting components

Reuben — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:03:37 +0800

Do you have any advice as to how a dual slot GPU will fit in my motherboard which is a Gigabyte ep45-ud3p 1.6?

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mother...?ProductID=3137

one of the problems is that I have an Asus Xonar D2X card which is pretty long and cannot fit into the top small pci-e slot since the back will hit the RAM.

It now barely fits with a single slot card. How would I go about fitting in this dual slot card?

Is there any performance penalty if I decide to use the 2nd pci-e graphics slot for a dual slot GPU (like the 5870) instead of the 1st pci-e slot?

I'm really puzzled as to where Asus intends us to place this D2X card...

[WTS] Used Q6600 G0 Stepping

Reuben — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:31:33 +0800

Item(s):

Just the processor
Q6600 G0 Stepping

Price:

RM450.00

Warranty:

None, but tested with OCCT for 24 hours with no errors.

Dealing method:

Pos/CoD

Location of seller:

Kuching, Sarawak

Contact method/details:

Lowyat PM

Item(s) conditions:

Working condition, used

Reason for sale:

Upgrading to Q9550

bolehGame - Need a local Gameserver for your clan?

Reuben — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:59:34 +0800

BOLEHGAME: LOCAL GAMESERVER HOSTING!!!

From the people who brought you BolehVPN: the Largest VPN Provider in Lowyat

We have been operating game servers for over a year now but have not publicized it due to full slots.

We now have opened a new server that is ready to take in new game servers.

All our game servers are currently hosted in TM's datacentres and therefore should return consistent pings for Streamyx users.

We support the following games:

1. Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare
2. Call of Duty 5 World at War
3. CounterStrike 1.6
4. CounterStrike Source
5. Team Fortress 2
6. Left 4 Dead

We may support other games upon request. We will NOT support any form of MMO hosting.

Some of the gameservers we are currently hosting:

CoD 4 Servers

XIII Promod
totenkopf bb

Team Fortress 2 Servers

BolehVPN Public All-Talk Server:202.71.97.81:21200

Counter-Strike Source Servers
Zon! Gaming Scrim Server

Zombie Mod Server
Private

Test Ping

Please PM me for a test IP to ping.

Pricing Information

In most cases, our servers cost RM8/slot per month.
This means should you wish to purchase a 16 slot server, it will cost RM128.00 a month.
Customizations or higher tick rates may affect this price.

Discounts are available when paying several months in advance.

Minimum period is 1 month.

Bank in Details

Please make payment to any of the following Bank accounts .

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

Make sure to drop an e-mail to sales@bolehvpn.net with the following details:

Desired Gameserver:
Number of Slots:
Game Server Name:
Desired Admin Password:
Additional Instructions:

together with your proof of payment.

[WTB] Gigabit NIC PCI

Reuben — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:14:56 +0800

WTB Gigabit NIC PCI

Not that particular on brand.

Please pm me with

Model (if with product link better!):
Best Price inclusive of shipping:

Please ensure that it will support 1000 mbps! I see some sellers don't really know and mislabel their NICs as gigabit capable when they are actually only 10/100

Will require shipping to Kuching/Sarawak and will pay by online bank transfer.

Many thanks!

Crazy Monkey Defense

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 07:30:00 +0800

Crazy Monkey Defense

Reuben — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:41:00 +0800

Saw that there wasn't that much coverage of this MMA art that is actually available in Malaysia.

Please note that this is NOT the same martial art as Crazy Monkey Kungfu (which looks genuinely crazy ;P) and is not related to it

Above Pic Taken from KDT site

KDT (http://www.kdta.com)
Studio 23 (http://www.studio23.my)
are two places that I know of that do offer this.

After about 16 years in Aikido (which I still maintain training), decided to try a more sparring based martial art and I'm enjoying it a lot. Just wondering if there were any fellow CMDers here?

For those who have not heard of CMD, it's basically a mixture of

1) Western boxing
2) Muay Thai
3) BJJ

So it's a combination of a striking and grappling with quite a few unique techniques and philosophies to it.

[YOUTUBE]_6fb9cVcSa8[/YOUTUBE]

If there are any people who are interested in Kuching? Do feel free to join me!

I also started a training log at http://crazymonkeydefense.blogspot.com to those who are interested

[WTB] HyperX KHX4200S2LL/2G

Reuben — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:37:11 +0800

Looking for this item! Please quote price + shipping to Kuching, Sarawak

Item(s):

KHX4200S2LL/2G

http://shop.kingston.com/PartsInfo.asp?ktc...=KHX4200S2LL/2G

Dealing method:

Online bank-in or CoD in Kuching

Contact method/details:

Please e-mail reuben@bolehvpn.net or PM

Age of item:

New

[WTB] Cat 6 Network Cable

Reuben — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 01:26:20 +0800

Require Cat 6 cable + shipping to Kuching, Sarawak

Please quote for the following lengths

a) 2m (or less)

b) 10m

Much appreciated please pm me!

OpenSUSE and FreeBSD

Reuben — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:00:18 +0800

I have been a FreeBSD user for the past two years or so and love its stability and more importantly its ports system . Furthermore the FreeBSD handbook is an excellent resource for newcomers to the Unix world.

I have resisted trying Linux full blown because of my bad experiences with Ubuntu which was a real pain for me both as a desktop OS (I still think Windows has the edge here for my purposes for the sheer reason of Microsoft Office and games) and a server (it couldn't really handle the loads which the servers we run on though perhaps it is only a matter of tweaking which we don't know how to, note that our CentOS servers runs without such problems).

However it seems that for a home server, Linux may be the better choice with a greater choice in user apps, more user oriented and better compatibility for game servers. It seems that the support is more user oriented as well.

I am thinking of converting my home server that is used as the home's storage centre and torrent download machine. FreeBSD seems to have limited driver support for the new Broadcom NIC in the Dell server I own which refuses to work at 1 gigabit, and as such have been comtemplating the switch to OpenSUSE which seems like an excellent distribution. Furthermore it seems when I upgraded my system to FreeBSD 7.1 RC1, the system randomly shuts down now .

Anyone has thoughts on OpenSUSE? 11.1 was just released yesterday and am downloading it now! And please don't take it as a bashing of Ubuntu, I'm sure it has its place but just not really keen on something that I had a bad experience with.

DSL-520B

Reuben — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:59:34 +0800

Modem/router: D-Link DSL-520B

In the endless search for the ultimate Streamyx IP range...

I find myself stumped.

Can't seem to find the place to disconnect/reconnect easily within this modem's web config.

I don't want to set it to bridged mode because I have several computers connected to it and want it to manage the connections for me.

I used several DLinks before and had no problems finding it but am puzzled with the new layout.

Are there any custom firmwares I can use?

I'll be really pissed if there isn't a way

[addedon]December 1, 2008, 10:43 pm[/addedon]I also note their 24x7 support line is NOT actually manned.

They tell you to press 8 to leave a message but the button does not do anything...

Ugh!

[WTB] Website Design Services

Reuben — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:22:12 +0800

I am looking for a website designer that does NOT use pre set templates to make a clean, professional website for our Advocates Association.

Content for now is quite simple and we haven't fully decided on the Site Map yet but wish to have a pool of freelancers and their respective portfolios before deciding on who to prepare the drafts.

Tentative date of completion is about mid January but no later than end of January.

Budget is modest but we don't seek a very complex site for now though some CMS or even a nicely done Wordpress is needed for posting news articles and updates.

Please do pm me or post here should you be interested. Many thanks.

Lowyat Spamming me with Topic Notifications

Reuben — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:24:15 +0800

Just got a slew of topic notification replies for the same post.

Something's up!:

[attachmentid=642076]

Blackberry Bold Review

Reuben — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:43:33 +0800

Taken from a blog I co-post:
http://www.soleenstrategies.com/myblackberryworld/index.php

Right, a pretty overdue Blackberry Bold review which has been probably done to death but I'm finally comfortable in writing a review after using it for several weeks and given time for problems to crop up.

I'll keep it more based on personal experience rather than the Bold's features which have been overdone already.

Pros:

* Amazing screen, crystal clear and probably the best screen on a mobile phone at this point in time
* A lot more responsive with the faster processor than the Curve and the extra memory seems to help with running more programs at once (especially IM applications which hung constantly on my Curve).
* Camera is clearer than the Curve although technically the same.
* Rock stable (see proviso in Cons later) and has not crashed for more than 2 weeks
* Great connectivity options with Wifi, 3G, EDGE and GPRS.
* Call quality has improved on the Curve
* Speaker quality is also decent now so you can actually listen to music without headphones (not great but hey, sometimes you just want some background music and not have crappy tinny sound coming out).
* Price has dropped from initial estimates during the offer period it was in the low RM2000s and now it's in RM2499 from Celcom though I believe there are some discounts available for new accounts. Makes it more compelling to go for the Bold instead of the initial estimate of RM2800.
* Looks extremely sexy
* Updating the OS took a lot shorter (maybe about 15 minutes instead of the half or hour or more on the Curve).
* In my opinion the best Blackberry out at the moment

Cons:

* The OS (version 4.6.0.126) is pretty flaky out of the box which crashed repeatedly, had immense battery issues (certain days it would die within one afternoon), and constant 'hangs'. This OS is shipped by default in both Celcom and Maxis Bolds. This to me was a very bad thing as it gave people a bad impression of the Bold especially since it's only a minority of users who know how to upgrade their BB OSes. Staff from the telcos also seemed to be generally oblivious to this. Upgrading to the current 162 build (which is not even available from Celcom/Maxis' website but a third party site (crackberry.com) solved al these issues.
* Battery life is slightly worse than the Curve with 3G on. On light use, with 3G on it can last about 2 days without charge but on regular use it would fall flat in about a day or so. It will definitely last the day and it's still decent considering the power packed in the device. Running the media player is also extremely battery consuming.
* Browsing experience has improved with better support in displaying websites in its intended nature but still sluggish in loading as compared to the Iphone despite the 3G speed. Still decent enough for general usage but it's not too fun to use.
* Media functions have improved but still not as intuitive as the Iphone's. Also codec support is still not all-encompassing with divx files being a hit or miss. In most cases you would still need to do encoding conversions. Processor still not powerful enough for full sized DivX/Xvid videos. This may be just a hardware limitation on phones in general at this point in time rather than a flaw.
* Default Headset quality was poor with a tinny sound on music though it was comfortable on the ears.
* Youtube does NOT work on Celcom's network. Unsure about Maxis' network but unless you are going through wifi, Youtube is confirmed as non-working. Celcom is working on a resolution and they are not the only telco experiencing this problem. This is a Network issue rather than a Bold problem but really disappointed me as I really wanted to youtube while I was waiting for things.
* For some reason I didn't really like the leather at the back as I was also afraid of scratching it with my fingernails and kinda became sticky with my sweaty hands a lot faster ;P Minor quibble.

Conclusions

The Bold is a gorgeous device and I absolutely love it. To me, it epitomizes what communicating is about merging e-mail, sms and phone calls into a neat little interface with a minimal learning curve. However if you were looking for a lifestyle multimedia device, then the phone will probably disappoint in this regard when compared to the Iphone though it has done a decent job at it.

It has covered all the previous weaknesses of the Curve and improved on it but there is still room for improvement on its Media functions.

Also the Telcos should be more proactive about updating their OS versions on their phones or at least inform people of this option. People expect their phones to work out of the box and mind you that most people will not update their OS versions so their experience is impaired on what is essentially a great phone.

[LFGroup] Lonely Level 54 Warlock

Reuben — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:51:00 +0800

Was looking for some people whom I can play with around my level range on Frostmourne?

I'm on the Refer a Friend program so I would have to tag along my friend's char for the triple exp until 60 (played time 1 day 18 hours ftw)

Timotei (Undead Warlock)

Looking for Beta Testers for ping lowering service

Reuben — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:33:27 +0800

Beta WoW Boleh Ping Service (Free Trials)

This service works on the same principles as Gamepath and Lowerping.

Please refer to here for help on finding a good IP range for WoW.

We are looking for testers for this (no payment required).

Please post your interest and support of such a service.

We are now using a local datacentre which should give more consistent pings to the US servers regardless of where your WoW server is located.

Optimizing your Streamyx Connection

Reuben — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:39:14 +0800

Just thought that for those of you are not familiar with finding a good TM IP range...

have written a guide for you all to peruse.

http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/803577

Optimizing your Streamyx Connection

Reuben — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:34:00 +0800

I know there has been many talks of this but I have not seen a good guide on this in human language .

Anyway since I have written one for my service, thought I'll share it here:

This guide is only applicable to Streamyx users.

1. Introduction to the Problem

[center]Not all Streamyx connections are created equal.[/center]

You can be experiencing extremely slow speed and poor performance while the guy next door is blazing away at max speed.

Why is this the case?

Streamyx spreads its connections over different routers. This is done automatically on TM's side. However certain routers may be overloaded or faulty or subject to an attack or under maintenance.

Our task here is to find a way to get to those functioning, wonderful (at least relatively) spankingly fast routers!

2. What is an IP Range?

IP addresses (often shortened to IP) are the internet's version of addresses. Instead of a real world address:

QUOTE

Mr Lim's Personal Computer
No 24, Jalan 20/9, Paramount Garden,
46300, Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
[PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A JOKE]

which is meaningless, we get assigned addresses in a numerical format.

For example:

QUOTE

124.82.115.32

You can find out what your IP is (which changes everytime you reconnect to the internet) by visiting http://www.whatismyip.com/.

An IP range (as how we define it), is a range of addresses. We find that with Streamyx, the most important digits to look for in an IP address are the FIRST TWO DIGITS.

QUOTE

124.82.115.32

It is suspected that each router governs an IP range and everyone on the same IP range goes through the same router.

In human language:

[center]"The first two digits of your Streamyx Internet Address determines which router you go through."[/center]

[center]As long as these first two digits are the same (which means you are within the same IP range), all performance within that IP range will be the same.[/center]

So for example if you are unsatisfied with your speed/performance on 124.82.x.x, you will have to find an IP that does not begin with 124.82, but something else like 60.54, 124.13, 118.100, etc etc. and then retest and evaluate if it's a good one (see Part 4).

3. How to get a new IP Range

There is unfortunately no easy way about this. This is assigned on TM side and for our purposes is more or less random.

The only way to get a new IP is to disconnect and reconnect your connection and then recheck what IP you are on (you can do so by surfing to http://www.whatismyip.com/ if you forgot). We do find that different times of the day gives different sets of IP ranges.

However some tips:

1) Do not disconnect and reconnect too fast in rapid succession

Do it in perhaps of intervals of 5-10 seconds, taking breaks in between. If done too fast, TM blocks you from connecting for a few minutes, and increases this time with every subsequent attempt. Take it slow and steady.

2) Be patient

It is not uncommon to try 10-20 times until you find the desired IP range you want. Be patient and stay at it.

4. Evaluating an IP Range - Yay or Nay

Now that we know what is an IP range, why it is important to find the right one and how to get new ones, let's find out how to evaluate if an IP range is good or bad!

We will use a free program called Pingplotter for this which may be downloaded here.
This program traces the path of your internet connection all the way to its intended destination and reveals any problems in the route.

After installing Pingplotter, start up the program. Under Address to Trace:, put bbc.co.uk. Set the trace delay to 1 second, and Samples to Include to 1000. Click on TRACE and let it run for a minute or two.

We are testing bbc.co.uk as BBC is a renowned UK-based news site which we have identified as being closely equivalent to European connections. Replace bbc.co.uk with yahoo.com or www.harvard.edu (must include the www) to test US connectivity. Google.com can be used as well but we have been informed (unconfirmed) that there are certain agreements that have been given to prioritize Google traffic.

There is a lot of information coming out of pingplotter, but we shall only focus on two statistics:

1) The AVG Ping which means average ping (the time it takes for a packet to reach to its destination) Lower is better
2) The PL% which means packet loss percentage (the packets that do not reach their destination and get lost) Lower is better

Below is a sample ping report generated from Pingplotter. You do this by clicking on Edit and then Copy as text (statistics only)

[pre]Target Name: bbc.co.uk
IP: 212.58.224.131
Date/Time: 18/9/2008 7:52:15 PM to 18/9/2008 7:54:35 PM

Hop Sent Err PL% Min Max Avg Host Name / [IP]
1 139 0 0.0 0 0 0 mygateway1.ar7 [192.168.1.1]
2 137 77 56.2 7 233 19 [219.93.218.177]
3 139 0 0.0 6 83 8 [219.93.218.101]
4 139 0 0.0 6 19 6 [58.27.107.41]
5 139 0 0.0 23 109 25 [219.94.12.21]
6 139 0 0.0 29 216 38 [203.106.253.225]
7 139 0 0.0 28 251 39 [202.188.126.132]
8 139 0 0.0 29 205 30 [58.27.103.97]
9 139 0 0.0 28 175 30 [58.27.103.121]
10 139 0 0.0 222 339 223 [203.106.86.86]
11 139 0 0.0 304 513 317 bbc-gw0-linx.prt0.thdoe.bbc.co.uk [195.66.224.103]
12 137 40 29.2 314 320 317 [212.58.238.153]
13 139 57 41.0 316 345 318 bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.131][/pre]

I have highlighted in red the parts that i want to focus on. This was taken from a particularly bad day and on a particularly bad IP range.

The AVG ping is 318 ms which isn't too bad. In general you want a ping that is below 400.

However what is bad here is the loss percentage which is at 40-50 %. This means for every two pieces of data you send, only one gets through! This affects the speed of bandwidth sensitive apps such as video streaming and downloads. In extreme scenarios, even surfing becomes laggy.

Generally you don't want any loss at all though a loss of less than 10% should be still good enough for decent performance.

Keep on trying new IP ranges till you can find one that has the lowest loss and a decent ping.

LOW LOSS + LOW PING = WIN

A low loss is more important than a low ping!

So even if an IP range has a fantastically low ping, but high loss percentage, then that IP will not be as good as one with a higher ping and a low loss percentage.

Hopefully now you have found a good IP range! Don't get disconnected if you want to retain it!

Source: BolehVPN Troubleshooting Guide

Link Tag Behaviour

Reuben — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:16:58 +0800

Current situation: when you click on the "http://" button at the top, it prompts you to enter the url and then the description of the webpage.

I find this a bit interrupting when trying to compose a full sentence and then linking part of it. Interrupts the flow.

Suggested amendment: You select the text that you want to hyperlink and then press the url button which prompts you to enter the url you want the word to link to.

I believe this is much more intuitive.

Small niggling thing but just bugged me Please post your thoughts on the issue!

DDoS Attack on TM

Reuben — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:53:39 +0800

Over the past few weeks loss has been pretty bad on many IP ranges to certain routes especially international ones.

Also I notice that my servers in Cyberjaya have been experiencing intermittent connectivity. I was told by the DC people that they were being DDoSed attack.

Yesterday, my website hosted in TM also went down for a few hours and when I called IPServerone, he too told me that TM is being DDoSed to the point it even affected local routing. He said this is rather common during the run up to Raya.

I'm just wondering, is this why our routing lately has been so lossy? I have submitted a report to TM which has been escalated to Level 2 but as of yet have not received any word.

Can anyone confirm that a DDoS is actually happening on TM? It used to be only at night with loss rates creeping to 30-40% while in the day it was in the single digit numbers. However, now it seems to be perpetually bad unless I manage to get on the 60.54 IP upon which all my troubles disappear.