Phuket Information Technology Blog » Quality Control

TOT Squid caching proxy failures

admin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:44:15 +0000

Getting a lot of these errors today, looks like the connections limit is too low on TOT server?

Cisco Website Nightmare

admin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:11:09 +0000

Congratulations, Cisco.

I just wanted to download a firmware update for our business switch. On your website you put me through a lot of messy windows to the excessive registration progress. I had to resubmit registration form 6 times. Congratulations! You made it absolutely sure we would never buy your products again. We prefer companie who made support EASY. Perhaps your company nose is pointing way too much upward. Goodbye…

Cannot send email to self using TOT SMTP

admin — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:46:36 +0000

With several customers we are experiencing a problem when email sent to the same address as From: address through smtp.totisp.net (currently resolving to 118.175.8.10) never makes it to the destination. No errors are reported. One of these customers has both TOT and TT&T ADSL lines; sending through TT&T SMTP works and sending through TOT SMTP does not. We would like to hear from people who experience the same problem.

Some mail sent through TT&T Maxnet SMTP is delayed for many hours

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:49:31 +0000

Today one of our Phuket customers asked us to investigate an email problem. They receive emails from two other Phuket companies with up to 17-hours delay. All other emails were received on time. After we checked the mail headers we saw what these two companies were sending through TT&T Maxnet SMTP server.

Excerpt (emails and some IPs changed to protect identities, times highlighted):

Received: from testing-out01.tttmaxnet.com ([202.69.137.169] helo=tttmaxnetpps.tttmaxnet.com)
by forever.phuketsolution.com with esmtp (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from )
id 1LxVlv-0000b1-O5
for aaa@bbb.com; Sat, 25 Apr 2009 07:29:38 +0700
Received: from pps.filterd (tttmaxnetpps [127.0.0.1])
by tttmaxnetpps.tttmaxnet.com (8.14.3/8.14.3) with SMTP id n3O6nxUE028614
for ; Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:53:01 +0700
Received: from smtp-out01.tttmaxnet.com (smtp-out01.tttmaxnet.com [202.69.137.228])
by tttmaxnetpps.tttmaxnet.com with ESMTP id dtkmu0949-2
for ; Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:53:01 +0700
Received: from aaa.bbb.ccc-ddd.dynamic.tttmaxnet.com (HELO MAIL) ([aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd])
by smtp.tttmaxnet.com with SMTP; 24 Apr 2009 13:53:00 +0700

If you experienced similar delays with TT&T Maxnet please let us know.

The proper solution for companies is to use the SMTP server from their hosting provider. Please feel free to contact us if you want to know how to set it up.

Cheap power extenders as a fire hazard

admin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:18:57 +0000

We see this hair-raising sights in many, many offices in Phuket. While buying expensive computer equipment, many people forget to take care about small simple things like the proper power connectors. Most of the power extender bars sold in Phuket are actually a real fire hazard. Their brass contacts are very weak and do not have enough spring action to hold the power adapters tightly. In many cases they are sparking with the slight movements of the cables. They are often located in dusty places behind the desks or cabinets; dust can be easily ignited by the spark.

People having this kind of connections at home or office are also usually suffering from constant equipment failures. Do I need to mention what most modems, routers or access points on the island are not connected to the UPS units, while they supposed to be? It’s difficult to find the proper connectors sometimes, especially for APC UPSes, but it must be done if you want your equipment to last…

Danger:

Proper way:

The only power bars we found on Phuket what have good enough contacts are WonPro power bars sold in Home Pro:

Working conditions on keyboard factory in China

admin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:40:44 +0000

High Tech Misery in China article describes the awful working conditions in one of the keyboard-making factories in China. This is one reason what the hardware is so inexpensive these days.

Rusty notebooks

admin — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:24:44 +0000

Metal grilles beloved by Compaq/HP are not suitable for a tropical climate; this is a worst example as the grilles are contacting with the hands and the sweat make them rust very quickly.

Fake Kingston USB drive

admin — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:12:49 +0000

Was sold in China to one of our customers as 1Gb drive for a very low price; the actual capacity of the flash chip is just 64Mb. Controller is programmed to report 1Gb to the PC. Note what the markings on the flash chip are sanded off.

Tropical dangers for electronic devices

admin — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:19:44 +0000

Ants came in and ate the cooling gel on top of the chips inside this cd-rom. We saw three much worse cases, all with the Sony notebooks – probably Sony discovered some yummy recipe for the gel it is using?

Fake Sony notebook power adapter

admin — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:12:06 +0000

The metal bars wrapped with masking tape (shown below the case) were put inside the case just to increase weight and make the adapter feel more “solid” in the hand.