Oh I hadn’t realised it had! I’ll have to make sure I update before I play again.

The release notes seem to cover lots of specific crashes, but I’d guess my issue is more generally that if it’s trying to shoe too much stuff on the screen (like a crowded city) then it crashes. I have turned the graphics settings right down and it happens less, but still happens at least once each time I play. I’m keen to check out that patch and see if it helps. Thanks for letting me know about it!

Thanks, yeah I will consider the options. Would be nice to have it in one as the raspberry pi is aging (it’s an original model B) and the gateway should be plenty powerful enough to run it, plus it would rule out the pi-hole to router connection as a possible reason for the unstable network.

Thanks! I’ll put it on my list 🙂

Thanks for all the info and the detailed response!

But it sounds like you only need it to be a wired router, which is good.

Correct, don’t need wifi.

PoE ports as a requirement is what narrows your options considerably I think

I’m happy with doing this through a separate switch, but I’m happier if I can have less things to plug in. It’s not a must have though.

Mikrotik has a lot of routers with PoE out. Their newest model in the RB5009 series can do either passive or 802.3af/at PoE out. Many of their older routers have passive PoE only. Make sure you know what your cameras need.

I don’t have cameras yet, but I’m considering some Reolink ones. Happy to take suggestions. Am I likely to find a lot of difference in the PoE type or are most things compatible with each other?

I’m not overly against keeping them separate. It’s just I have a lot of stuff piling up and consolidating would have been nice 😆

One of the things I use pi-hole for is to set customer DNS entries so anyone on the network will be redirected directly to the self hosted services when the type in the appropriate domain name. So it’s not just about the filtering (which I also want), but also the (network wide) custom DNS entries.

I’m also happy with simple. I’m not overly against keeping the pi-hole and gateway separate but was just wanting to know if combining them would be an option (which is sounds like it is, but not super easy).

It’s a little bit more complicated than I made out. For one, the network is super unstable and restarting the ISP router seems to fix it. I want to replace the router to test the theory that it’s the problem.

Secondly, this is a bring your own router to the ISP situation, but the router came from another ISP, but they are all the same ISP in the end because one company owns a whole bunch of ISPs and sends the same router to all the customers of all the child companies. Long story short, it’s the router they would have issued to me, but they didn’t, because a different subsidiary sent it to me before I changed ISPs to take advantage of a special because I live in a country where the lines are open and anyone can start an ISP using the existing lines but if you get big enough to be competition then the big company will buy you out and pretend it’s still a separate company. But if it doesn’t work well then it’s up to me to solve unless I am willing to pay the ~$10USD for them to send me the ISP router that is supported by them but it will be the same cheap router as I already have. Ok that’s not a very short story but that’s why it was easier to just call it an ISP router 😆

Thanks! It seems OpenWRT was the magic word I was needing.

Thanks, so what I should look for is a gateway running OpenWRT, which can run docker?

Well, every time assets get split between their 3 kids, you reduce the assets accumulated in one couple.

Depends on the flavor.

This is awesome! How long until we have invisibility potions?

So the problem is in how volatile it is. Think of a term deposit or savings account as being the least volatile. Next year your money will have grown by 3% or whatever your interest rate is. Almost guaranteed.

Shares are much more volatile. Next year they might be worth 50% more. Or 5% more. But also could be worth 30% less, something that doesn’t really happen with bank deposits.

Over a long period this averages out. You can normally expect something in the ballpark of 7-10% average annual return over a 10 year period for an index fund type one based on the S&P500.

But if you suddenly need the money, you might be forced to cash out when it’s a -30% year.

There are cash-ish instruments like bonds that are often used in balanced investment funds, but the general idea is that you balance out the risk by having money split between the two kinds.

It’s also a risk appetite thing. You might be a bit flexible so you might think you’ll buy a house in 5 years, but happy to wait another year or two if the share market is down, then you might still be happy to put everything in shares.

If you need the money in 6 months or a year, you’ll most likely want to put it in a term deposit that matches when you need it. There isn’t a lot of gain to be made in that time.

If you’ll need it in a few years, you might choose to split some into a term deposit and some into the S&P500 fund to balance the risk but also have a higher opportunity for growth.

There are funds that manage this for you. You want to make sure it’s an index fund not actively managed (you can generally tell because the fees are vastly higher for actively managed funds), and you should be able to find funds that split between cash/income investments and stocks in different splits based on your risk appetite and timeframe.

I’m not in the US (and assume everyone on the internet is) so wouldn’t be able to recommend anything specific. Where I live you’d expect fees to be less than say 0.5% of the invested amount. I understand the US should be less than this.

But if you see 1%-2% fees you’re most likely looking at an actively managed fund, which you should avoid.

This would have to assume you’re saving long term, not planning to use the money for preferably 10+ years.

Two issues here: Issue one, BG3 itself crashes all the time. This most likely isn’t linux related, because it’s been rock solid up to Act 3 and everyone across all platforms complains about all the crashing in Act 3. Solution - quick save all the time.

Issue two, sometimes Steam Remote Play will disconnect from the game. The game continues to play on the remote PC but the connection is lost, and it won’t let me reconnect (which is something Steam normally lets you do, but this might be because it’s a non-steam game).

Your info on wifi networks to prevent the connection dropping has definitely been relevant and helpful!

Wow thanks for all the info!

Another thought of mine is that wireless devices can perform poorly if they are too close to the AP. (Like less than a meter)

Huh, I wouldn’t have thought of that. I’m pretty close! I’ll try moving it a bit further away.

Mesh networks can perform poorly for applications that are sensitive to latency and jitter. (Such as steam’s remote play)

Last night it was much more stable, I didn’t have any Steam dropouts (only the BG3 crashes which seem pretty common in Act 3 after having none until then, and I’m not the only one). But I do have the option to create a separate non-mesh network from the AP if I need to. If I have further trouble I’ll give that a go.

It’s possible that some of those are related. My assumption is that there’s interference from your own devices and the neighbours. But a mesh network isn’t an ideal environment.

When I changed the channel, the whole lot came with it, hence my assumption.

I have the ISP router and two AmpliFi mesh access points to provide the wifi. The ISP router also has a wifi network, this is the 2.4Ghz one for the IoT devices.

When I try to change the channel for the access points, I don’t get the option for channel 106. I only get the option for 36, 40, 44, 48, 149, 153, 157, 161.

I also noticed that I had missed that there’s a little button in the wifi scanning app to toggle between 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. I noticed if I change the channel, a whole bunch of hidden networks come with it. I think this must be related to the mesh network, it’s a lot of networks though! 8 or 9 of them, two separate ones with the same network name (I presume the two access points), and the rest all marked as hidden.

In the app, what does the width of the bar represent? It says something like Wifi_Network 157 (155) and has a big flat top that seems to cover a range. Is that indicating that nearby channels can interfere with each other?

Some, at much lower strengths. Most of the graph is covered though, and the access point is using the recommended channel. It has band steering so automatically changes the channel to optimise.

Be the change you want to see in the world!

Yes framework expansion card slots are just a bunch of USBC ports, but seems a waste not to get the proper expansion card that slots nicely into the laptop looking like it was built in instead of a boring regular dongle.

I checked out the app you suggested, not entirely sure what I’m doing but the app seems happy with my wifi. My network is strong, others from neighbours are all pretty weak.

Unfortunately I need 2.4Ghz wifi for a bunch of home automation things.