(1) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/court-martial-res...

(reads article - I've got a five digit /. ID and that was after lurking for several years - respond first, ask questions/read article later)

Oh. You now fail to understand networks in Rust instead of C/Python/nicker elastic. sighs in policy based routing tables.

A modern mtr (traceroute is so 90's) should do things like run up and down the stack for each point along a route. It will still probably need to use the TTL field to find each point (IP) but then use ICMP/TCP/UDP/etc to measure that point in some way or perhaps interpolate it from points either side.

When I want to really get to grips with latency and stuff, I start off with a small dedicated box on a customer network and "smoke ping" with all points measurable on the path. I also have several running from our datacentre and a fair few RIPE Atlas probes too.

traceroute is handy but you must be able to decipher what it is telling you. Wearing a stethoscope does not make you a doctor.

IPv6 support is not required for a router. You'll note they also fail to offer IPX/SPX or ATM and many more.

I think your initial setup was perfectly valid. Then you diagnosed a fault and fixed it with aplomb, in a way that you could verify. The key point is: "in a way you could verify" and you failed safe. Well played.

Proxmox itself has a useful firewall implementation too, although it takes a bit of getting used to because you can set it at the cluster, host and VM levels. I personally love it because it is easier to manage than individual host based firewalls, which I also do, but I'm a masochist! For smaller systems I generally use the cluster level to keep all the rules in one place.

I have quite a lot of customers that we have migrated from VMware to Proxmox. Some of them are rocking zfs instead of vmfs. Mostly these are Dell servers. Proxmox with zfs seems to be more aggressive about disc failure warnings, which I think is helpful.

Pick what OS works for you.

We had to slow down to 80mph in France.

The c is for code. If adopted we could spend forever arguing how the c is pronounced and whether the original had a cedilla, circonflex or rhymes with bollocks, which seems somehow appropriate. Everyone uses xene instead. x is chi but most people don't notice.

acme.sh is my recommendation for Linux and anything else that runs a BASH or similar (pfSense has a glorious integration for it) and Simple ACME for Windows. Both support dynamic DNS with CNAME. Certbot doesn't support CNAME for DNS-01 or at least didn't. I was always a fan of Certbot when all I had was http style challenges available.

Setup a DNS server with a zone called (say) challenges.example.co.uk. You will need to own example.co.uk and add NS glue records for the sub zone. You'll need to sort out dynamic DNS too for that zone.

Now you can create a CNAME record like:

_acme-challenge.mywebserver.mywebdomain.co.uk. CNAME _acme-challenge.challenges.example.co.uk

Now you configure your acme.sh or simple acme to put its challenge into challenges.example.co.uk - it will create a TXT record and things should work out.

It is a lot easier, if you can, to run your own public DNS or subscribe to a DNS service that does everything for you.

I'm (mildly) excited by LLMs because I love a new shiny tool that does appear to have quite some utility.

My analogy these days is a screwdriver. Let's ignore screw development for now.

The first screwdrivers, which we still use, are slotted and have a habit of slipping sideways and jumping (camming out). That's err before LLMs ... something ... something.

Fast forward and we have Philips and Pozi and electric drivers. Yes there were ratchet jobs, and I still have one but the cordless electric drilldriver is nearly as magical as the Dr Who sonic effort! That's your modern LLM that is.

Now a modern drilldriver can wrench your wrist if you are not careful and brace properly. A modern LLM will hallucinate like a nineties raver on ecstasy but if you listen carefully and phrase your prompts carefully and ignore the chomping teeth and keep them hydrated, you may get something remarkable out of the creature 8)

Now I only use Chat at the totally free level but I do run several on-prem models using ollama and llama.cpp (all compiled from source ... obviously).

I love a chat with the snappily named "Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-UD-Q4_K_XL" but I'm well aware that it is like an old school Black and Decker off of the noughties and not like my modern De Walt wrist knackerers. I've still managed to get it to assist me to getting PowerDNS running with DNSSEC and LUA and configuring LACP and port channel/trunking and that on several switch brands.

You?