Soon after installing the GTX 295 I started experiencing strange issues. 3D Performance was in the pits, video playback had issues and even sound while playing a game was choppy and stuttered. I was at a loss for what could have been happening because I had the latest drivers from nVidia and did a fresh install of Windows 7 x64 Enterprise Edition.

Then I remembered last time I had the symptom of stuttering sound…

Many years ago when the only way you could get even basic RAID functionality was to utilize an add-in PCI card. This was before PCI-Express, so your card was limited to 32-bit/33Mhz standard PCI bus which was limited to 133MB/sec. Depending on your chipset or motherboard layout, you might be using onboard sound or an add-in PCI sound card.

During periods of heavy IO when using a PCI RAID card, the PCI bus would be saturated with data to the RAID card and there would be limited bandwidth for the sound card, causing chopping and stuttering sound. A workaround that sometimes worked was to put the sound card ahead of the RAID card in the PCI slots so it would have priority to/from the chipset.

Knowing this I started doing some research on what hardware my Dell Dimension 9200 was actually using. The chipset inside is the Intel P965 Express chipset, which after looking at the specifications appeared to me to be the obvious issue.

Intel P965 Express Chipset Diagram

The PCI Express slot provided by the Intel P964 Chipset is a fraction of what is available today by modern PCI Express 2.0 chipsets. It came down to the system not being able to quench the thirst of the nVidia GTX 295. Because of this, it was maxing out the available bandwidth on the northbridge and not allowing any other devices to be serviced.

Suspecting this, I upgraded my motherboard (which also required a new case, so needless to day the Dell Dimension 9200 is no longer) to a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P which sports the Intel P45 Express Chipset.

Intel P45 Express Chipset Diagram

All in all, this chipset provides more bandwidth across the board. When I upgraded I kept my Intel Q6600 processor and 4GB (4x 1GB DDR2-667) RAM and wouldn’t you know it, it solved all my problems! Games play super smooth and the sound is perfect.

So if you’ve recently upgraded to a newer video card and are experiencing strange performance issues, you might want to look into your motherboards ability to keep the video card’s higher processing ability quenched without sacrificing servicing additional components.

Cheers!

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The DNS-323 has been a great NAS! I had my doubts at first with a D-Link product, since in the past their networking products that I’ve used haven’t been quality. So my issue was, how do I upgrade from a RAID1 on a two-drive NAS to a new fault tolerant system that has at LEAST 1.5TB of storage. I mean, if you’re going to upgrade you need to make it count, so doubling the capacity of my current NAS was the primary goal.

I did some research and with NewEgg running a sale on the hardware, I settled on the Intel SS4200-E NAS. On the spec sheet, this NAS met my requirements because it supported up to four drives, RAID5 and RAID10! Technical reviews I found of the device put it at the top of the chart when it comes to RAID5 performance.

The inhabitants of the Intel SS4200-E NAS was going to be four Hitachi 1TB drives.

Intel SS4200 NAS

Well, let me backtrack a bit and go over the problem that brought me to even write this post.

Because I already had two 750GB SATA drives in my D-Link DNS-323 NAS, my plan was to setup a 1TB RAID1 in the Intel SS4200-E using only TWO Hitachi 1TB drives. Once the data was copied over, I would re-purpose the 750GB SATA drives in my old NAS as an additional 750GB RAID1 in the Intel NAS. Sounds simple, right? Wrong.

The first major flaw I found with this unit is that it only allows ONE CONTAINER PER DEVICE. Meaning if you have 2x Drives, you’re running a RAID1 or RAID0. If you have 4x Drives, you’re running a RAID5 or RAID10. That’s it! There is no way with the Intel SS4200-E NAS to setup two containers! I could have two independant RAID1 containers, even though I was using four drives!

What the crap?! So much for a business class NAS from Intel!

So I ended up having to buy two more Hitachi 1TB drives (which isn’t too bad, being they’re only $79 on Amazon with FREE SHIPPING! ) and finally settled on a 2.7TB RAID5.

Hardware setup was super easy as the Intel SS4200-E is an ‘almost’ tool free setup. I say almost because some of the thumb screws SHOULD be tightened with a screw driver

Intel SS4200 NAS

The software, EMC LifeLine, is pretty well polished compared to the D-Link and other NAS offerings. It makes great use of AJAX to display real time system status information on the screens and gives you even small features that other NAS devices might overlook. Small things like LED brightness, which trust me, when your office is near the bedroom, this one is a huge feature!

Intel markets this NAS as an entry-level and SOHO NAS. So it’s very entry level, to a fault. Other features are lacking such as FTP support. Your only option with FTP is to turn it On or Off. That’s it! You can’t configure even basic options such as port, permissions of quotas. So be warned if you’re looking into using this NAS as anymore more than at home storage.

The Media Server that comes with it is alright. My XBox 360 saw it without issue and was able to stream all types of media off of it without issue (such as MP3 and DivX). My only gripe with the Media Server is that you have to manually re-scan for updates. I’m not sure if there’s an automatic timer, because there’s no option for that in the configuration.

All in all, I’m pleased with the Intel. It met my basic needs for a home NAS but I can see how it would be limiting for someone looking for more advanced features or someone who requires more ability to configure the small options.

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“The Network Connect session terminated. Do you want to reconnect? (nc.windows.app.23711).”

I did some Googling and I came across this support manual from Juniper which discusses the error codes/messages returned by the VPN client software and what could be causing the issue. Error code 23711 Juniper describes the problem as:

“The Network Connect client disconnected from the secure gateway because the
client’s routing table was altered.”

I thought to myself, “What the hell could be changing my routing table?” At first I suspected it might have been a VPN tunneling issue with my Apple Airport Extreme but that known issue has been fixed since early 2007. The issue obviously was being caused by something on my company laptop.

I tried different media (wired vs. wireless) and also updated and rolled back different network drivers to no avail. Another long Google search put me upon this blog entry at kevinluck.com where he states:

After a bit of googling I found out that there were complaints about the early betas of CS3 and the Bonjour service that they installed affecting networking. And this is what was causing my problem. If you press Ctrl-Alt-Del and look at your processes then you will find a “mDNSResponder.exe” service running after installing Flash CS3. Ending this process allows you to connect through Network Connect.

Presto! Stopping that Process and eventually uninstalling the Bonjour application from my computer fixed my VPN disconnection problem! A big THANK YOU to kevinluck.com for being a great resource and I hope that this blog entry helps others trouble shoot the same issue I had with our Juniper VPN client!

Lord knows I was ready to pull my hair out

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Thought I’d post this little technical issue to my blog in hopes that someone else in the world has had the same issue I’m having right now and perhaps share their solution

I have a Linksys PAP2 VoIP adapter (Firmware version 1.00.22) plugged into an Ethernet port on my Airport Extreme (Gig-E). I also have another Airport Extreme setup as a repeater in my home theater.

When I use my VoIP phone, my wireless clients internet connectivity slow to a crawl. While doing a ping to my gateway (10.0.1.1) I can see my response times become pretty erratic ranging form 50ms to 1600ms, with about 15% of the requests timeout.

I setup the PAP2 VoIP device with a static IP (10.0.1.5) and set it as the default host. My theory at the time was that since it was being NAT’d, the inbound UDP traffic was being transmitted across and flooding my wireless network.

This doesn’t seem to have fixed the problem. I experience this wireless slowdown on both my PC (Dell Precision laptop) and my Mac (PowerBook, MacBook) wireless clients.

Both my AirPort Extreme base stations are running the latest version of the firmware (7.2.1, I believe) and this issue does not happen to wired clients on my primary base station (where the PAP2 is plugged in).

Has anyone else experienced this problem or have any idea what could be happening? I’m hoping I’ll be able to locate a solution somewhere, but so far I haven’t found any resources online that would help.

Thanks!

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I recently flashed my Linksys WRT54G v2 from DD-WRT v23 SP2 to DD-WRT v23 SP3 Beta (05/02). Before flashing to the newer version of the firmware, I was sure to ‘Reset to Factory Defaults’ as well as hold the rear button on the router for 30 seconds, as these were supposed to clear any previous settings and files.

A couple days after flashing the firmware, my wireless connectivity started acting ‘funny’. It would simply drop the wireless connectivity, appearing off line to the client nodes. This issue persisted even after I reverted back to the previous version of DD-WRT that I was running before the upgrade.

After some research I was able to identify my issue. It seems that using the GUI ‘Reset to Factory Default’ as well as the back button on the router is not enough to clear all the settings. What I had to do was actually telnet into the router (which DD-WRT enabled me to do) and manually erase the NVRAM using the following command:

erase nvram; reboot

After that command is executed, your router will reboot and be set back to default settings as the nvram has been completely cleared.

Below is a screen shot of this:

This solved my issue and it might solve yours as well!

Cheers!

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