just to check my understanding: a 4 port card provides different capability than a 1 or 2 port card with a switch attached, yes?

thanks for all the info!

i am definitely a person who will always change the defaults for no particular reason. so I appreciate the warning. except I don’t quite know what you mean by “assignments”. do you mean like the names? eth0? or their functions? I do like the idea of having a physical jack that’s always guaranteed to allow access no matter what I foul up otherwise.

all these years I have been running my home network with a collection of routers just kind of attached together in a way that shouldn’t work due to “double nat” according to everything I ever read, but it is pretty much functional if not at all optimized. maybe if you don’t believe in double nat it won’t happen to you.

thanks! so for example: Intel Gigabit Dual PORT GIGABIT ETHERNET PCIe NIC Card EXPI9402PT NC360T which is CA$30. Does that sound right?

What’s a server card?

I’d prefer to avoid VMs if possible I never had much luck with them.

that sounds useful.

i like to keep things separate when plausible.

I was hoping to make use of one of the various computers I have cluttering this place up so I could justify continuing the collection. ;)

Do you know how to determine suitability of an existing card, or how to correctly purchase a replacement?

Does “interface” mean you need separate cards? Or you have a single card with multiple interfaces?

Is DMZ like a guest network?

I looked up “IDS/IPS” and it wounds like something I would prefer to avoid doing if I can.

The best internet I could subscribe to where I’m at is 1024 Mbps down, 50 Mbps up. I’ll add that to the post I guess it is relevant since so many people have fibre. (sigh)

The tiny bearing do not inspire confidence in me. I am always picturing something a bit more substantial.

I have the impression these are basically disposable. However logitec recently has created some relationship with ifixit so perhaps there is some chance to salvage them. Especially if you have a bunch of differently-broken devices hanging around.

Maybe you could get a transluscent replacement ball. To get the full rgb experience. I am pretty sure the tracking can work with that?

I do not know about cat livers.

But my general personal opinion is that vets can tend to over investigate.

When you are getting into a series of tests for a cat (or for yourself), some good questions to ask are along the lines of:

• what will change depending on the outcome of this test?

• what would be the worst case scenario of not doing this test?

• what are the risks of running this test?

Sometimes questions like this have led the vet to explain there is basically nothing to be done regardless of findings and the reason for the test is “to know”. If they suspect a diagnosis for which the treatment is $20k, and you will under no circumstance be able or willing to pay $20k, then there is effectively no treatment. So the real purpose of the test is to satisfy intellectual curiosity. If the test itself is expensive and/or uncomfortable for the animal, why bother?

If a likely outcome is more testing, then you need to keep digging. Endless investigations with no likely change in treatment is a service for the human to feel like they are doing the right thing, not a service for the cat to be more comfortable or healthy.

As an example, a cat developed a limp with no apparent discomfort for no known reason. He was an adventurous outdoor cat so some kind of injury was possible. I took the cat to the vet who found nothing on physical exam and xray. The vet wanted to then do a bunch of other imaging. When I learned what he thought could be going on, I read about the conditions. The treatment for those of which treatments even exist, is a very expensive (equivalent to several months of my take home income), invasive surgery with long recovery time. Complications always possible with such a procedure. You then have to do long term physical therapy to the cat. I am sure the cat in question would be miserable about all of this. And after all that, the chances that it will actually solve the problem are less than 50%. So therefore we elected to stop investigating.