Microsoft's Resilient File System - Part 2

In a previous post I laid out the background for Microsoft's ReFS.

A recent article in How-To-Geek provides more details and compares ReFS to NTFS.

The points covered are:

• What Is ReFS?
• ReFS Protects Against Data Corruption
• ReFS Drops Some Old NTFS Limitations
• ReFS Can Be Faster, Sometimes
• ReFS Can’t Replace NTFS (Yet)
• How to Use ReFS

There's also a good video explaining ReFS.

And a series of really technical blog posts covering ReFS.

In a related event, Microsoft has "corrected" an error that allowed OneDrive to use ReFS. The same "error" impacted older file systems, such as FAT32 and exFAT, as well.

Winaero has reported that in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Microsoft has "removed the ability to create ReFS partitions from regular retail editions of Windows 10. The updated list makes the ability to create new ReFS partitions exclusive to Windows 10 Pro for Workstations and Enterprise edition."

Hmmm.

AT&T Messages

I didn't know you could do this!

Just go to https://messages.att.net.

It's a little bit clunky and AT&T seems to be deprecating some of it.

For example, you can click on the phone number in a message and a dialog box pops up offering to "Create New Contact" but that doesn't work.

And messages sent from this application don't get pushed back to the phone.

Still, pretty nice.

LAN Diagram

I thought that I had posted about my LAN configuration before but I can't find it.

I'd been following Steve Gibson's Three Dumb Router solution to IOT insecurity. But I've also come across several discussions of using Ubiquiti's EdgeRouter X.

My equipment closet had become a rat's nest with long Ethernet cables wadded up behind all the equipment. Of course they were either not labeled or had the wrong labels on them.

So I redesigned my LAN segmenting it into a home (safe) network and Internet of Things (IoT) (unsafe) devices.

I bought color coded patch cables from Monoprice - red for Internet, green for home and blue for IoT.

To manage the connections to each segment I added a 8-port Gigabit switch to each segment.

I haven't implemented the EdgeRouter X yet so I'm actually not yet isolating the 2 segments. The dashed lines represent the current configuration.

Update: Did you find the problem in this configuration? Look again. Look closer. Then scroll down.















The NETGEAR ProSafe FS108NA is 10/100 mbps, not gigabit. I discovered this when I copied a large amount of data to the Drobo 5N. It was SLOW.

I have since replaced the NETGEAR with a D-Link GO-SW-8GE.

AT&T Microcell

I upgraded my wife from an iPhone 5s to an iPhone SE over Christmas. Ever since she's been complaining about signal strength.

I called AT&T and they admitted that one of the towers near my house was down and had been down for a couple of weeks.

I whined at them for a while and finally convinced them to give me a free microcell.

The AT&T MicroCell acts like a mini cell tower in your home and connects to your existing broadband Internet service. You receive improved cell signal performance for voice calls, texts, and cellular data applications like picture messaging and Web surfing.

After a couple of odd interactions with AT&T a Cisco DPH154 arrived.

Activation was easy.

And it worked. Really well.

Before

After

An improvement of 45dB! Also, notice the difference of the indicator in the status bar, i.e. "Wi-Fi" vs. "M-Cell".