Posts tagged: networking
What IP Prefixes Measure — And Why 100,000 Is a Big Deal
How the number of IP prefixes an ISP announces reveals the true size of their network.
Transit vs Peering — The Economics of Internet Connectivity
Why some networks pay each other and others exchange traffic for free.
Tier 1 and Tier 2 Networks — The Internet Backbone Hierarchy
How the internet's core networks are classified and why it matters for your connection.
Singtel vs Simba — What You Actually Pay For in a Fibre Plan
Why one ISP costs $42 and another costs $30 for 10Gbps, and what the price difference actually buys you.
SGIX and Internet Exchanges — Where Networks Meet
How the Singapore Internet Exchange keeps local traffic local and why it matters.
Oversubscription and "Unlimited" Marketing — The Hidden Math of Broadband
Why "unlimited" internet isn't unlimited and how ISP math keeps the pipes from bursting.
How Submarine Cables Made Tiny Singapore a Global Internet Hub
Why a city-state of 5.6 million became one of the most connected places on earth.
Hardware Bottlenecks — Why Your Wi-Fi Caps Your Speed, Not Your Plan
Why upgrading to 10Gbps won't make your laptop any faster and what actually limits your throughput.
Auditing Your Internet Connection — What Every Packet Reveals
How to inspect your internet connection from the command line and understand what each hop means.
Where Your Prompt Goes: Tracing a Packet from Singapore Through Submarine Cables to the API Server
Tracing the full path of an API request from a Singtel fibre connection in Singapore, through GPON, BRAS, and submarine cables to the inference server.
Switching to a Private DNS Resolver — Cloudflare vs Quad9 Benchmarked
Benchmarked Singtel ONT, Google, Cloudflare, and Quad9 from Singapore — Quad9 wins on privacy and DoH speed, Cloudflare wins on plain DNS latency.
I Published My Public IP on the Internet — Here's What I Did Wrong
How I accidentally hardcoded my public IP in two blog posts, the security implications, and why restarting my router was the real fix — not rewriting git history.
ipv6.rs — Why Pay for an IP When You Already Have One?
ipv6.rs gives you a globally routable IPv6 address and tunnels it to your home machine. Who pays $3-10/month for this, and why?
Every Layer Has a Router — Hurricane Electric (Layer 3) and OpenRouter (Layer 7)
Hurricane Electric routes packets; OpenRouter routes inference calls. Same business model, different layer of the stack — and both win by being the default pipe.
How to Read a Submarine Cable Map — And Why Singapore Has So Many Cables
A practical guide to reading submarine cable maps, understanding landing stations, cable routes, and why Singapore is one of the most connected places on earth.
GPON Optical Signal Levels and Singtel BRAS Topology
Mapping the full GPON signal path from ONT to OLT to BRAS, with practical dBm thresholds for Singtel fibre broadband.
Your Public IP Was in a Blog Post — Now What? A Practical Risk Assessment
I accidentally published my home IP in a blog post. Here's the actual threat model — what's at risk, what isn't, and why a residential IP behind NAT is not the disaster it sounds like.
Bitcoin Was Designed to Leverage IPv6: The Lost Architecture
Bitcoin's whitepaper describes IP-to-IP transactions as the primary payment method — removed in 2011 by BTC Core. The deep architectural parallels between Bitcoin's transaction format and IPv6 headers, CGA addressing, and what it reveals about the original design team.
Network Diagnostics: Fixing Chrome Connection Drops on CachyOS
A systematic walkthrough of diagnosing Chrome connection drops — from DNS verification to ping tests, traceroute, and firewall inspection — with a Mermaid diagnostic flowchart.