In the previous post I had a closer look at the ipv6-only APN of my mobile network operator of choice and how that brings me a step closer to the future of the Internet as it should be. By configuring and activating an additional APN profile, a device can instruct the network to only assign an IPv6 address and to perform DNS64 to reach IPv4 only hosts on the Internet. It works great while I’m in my home country but a bit of care needs to be taken to configure the APN profile properly for roaming.
IPv6-Only in Mobile Networks
For many years, I’ve been using IPv4v6 dualstack on my mobile devices to communicate over IPv6 with servers that also support it. Now T-Mobile Germany (Deutsche Telekom) has taken the next step and offers IPv6-only connectivity over which IPv4 hosts can still be reached.
Linux BIOS Updates Even Update My Mouse – Part 3
All right, I am impressed because the Linux Firmware Updater (fwupd) does not only update embedded Firmware in my notebooks as described in the previous post, but can actually also update the firmware of USB devices!
Continue reading Linux BIOS Updates Even Update My Mouse – Part 3
Linux BIOS Updates Made (Even) Easier – Part 2
In the first part I’ve taken a look at how to update the BIOS of my Lenovo notebooks that run Linux without burning that ‘other-OS’ installer to a CD-ROM. As I use somewhat older Lenovo notebooks, mostly X250’s, X230’s and T430’s, the best option was to convert the CD-ROM ISO images and write them to a USB Flash stick. For newer Lenovo and other manufacturer’s devices, however, there’s an even better way to do this. Continue reading Linux BIOS Updates Made (Even) Easier – Part 2
Linux BIOS Updates Made Easier – Part 1
Triggered by a survey on Mastodon on how often people upgrade the UEFI BIOS in their PC or notebook I thought it would be a good time to have a go at it again with some of my machines at home. The thing with UEFI BIOS updates of my Lenovo notebooks is that update utilities are only offered for Mac and Windows. For Linux and other operating systems, they offer bootable CD-ROM ISO images. Srsly? I have to admit that’s a bit too much hassle unless it is really urgent. But then I noticed that there are actually two methods to get around burning a CD-ROM to update the BIOS.
Command Line Heroes
Yes, I am well over 3 years late to the party but I just recently discovered an interesting podcast that blends computing history with today’s coding and nerdiness of all kinds. It’s called ‘Command Line Heroes‘, narrated by Saron Yitbarek and is produced by Red Hat.
Thieves and Locked Phones
I can still remember the days when mobile phones were a hot item on the list of any pickpocket. Protruding out of pockets, easily stolen, and easily reset and sold. But it seems these days are over.
5G NR Resource Assignment
After the previous post on what is inside a 5G NR CORSET and DCI messages, let’s have a look at how downlink assignments and uplink transmit opportunities for a device are signaled in a DCI. As you might remember from the previous post, the DCI contains, among other information, information on the frequency domain resource assignment and time domain resource assignment.
What is Inside a 5G CORESET?
In a previous post I’ve been looking at the concept of the 5G Control Area Set (CORESET). The essence of the post was that the CORESET is the areas in the 5G NR resource grid on the air interface in which scheduling information for downlink and uplink data is sent from the network to mobile devices. The two main parameters a CORESET describes is at which Resource Block (RB) in the frequency domain the control area starts and how many RBs it spans. In this post, I’ll take a closer look at how the information in a CORESET is organized, i.e. how the downlink and uplink scheduling messages are organized.
Things That Moved Me in 2019
Happy New Year 2020 to all of you! It’s the time of the year again when it makes sense to take a look back at the last 12 months of 2019 to see which tech things and events ‘have moved me’ during the course of the year. Like in the previous years, it is once again quite a mixed list of things spanning from mobile networks to retro-computing.