I purchased the patch panel from Amazon back in June of this year. Today I finally got around to installing it. One of the main reasons for the delay was that I had to properly ground the patch panel to an electrical outlet. I did this with an old PC power cable and solder the ground wire only to the metal frame of the patch panel.
In addition to the patch panel, I also purchased this wall mountable network rack. This 7U rack has enough room for our new 10Gbps networking equipment that I talked about in this post. These included the UDM Pro Max router / firewall, and our 10Gbps networking upgrade with our new USW Pro XG 10 PoE switch.
We also upgrade some of the satellite switches in the house with:
Using the UDM Pro Max, we can have dual Internet Service Providers (ISP). We are currently using TelMax and Rogers with a 75% and 25% traffic split, respectively. If one goes down, the other automatically pickup all the traffic, so we have Internet redundancy.
The UDM Pro Max allows us to have our old UDM Pro to be a cold stand-by in case the unit fails.
I think we can all agree that the latter 10Gbps system is much neater. I’m quite happy with the reorganization and the upgrade.
After all of this, we now have the most current speed tests:
The above shows the TelMax speed test.The above shows the Rogers speed test.
Today is the first time that I register advertised speed with my TelMax subscription.
Now our household wired networking infrastructure is ready for WiFi 7 upgrade. That is a project for next year.
We loved our trip to China in the past two years that we decided to do another trip this year. Since we now live in the age of hypermedia, here is a post with more video and less words. Enjoy.
Day
Description
Link
Day 1: October 18 Toronto to Guangzhou
We left Toronto on October 17th (early 18th 01:30) and arrive in Guangzhou at 05:00 on the 18th. We spent the day getting to know our flat at Foshan, Shunde, and explore the neighbourhood.
Move from our airport hotel to a hotel that is located in the centre of Chongqing. We then met up with a good friend who is also visiting from Canada but he is a Chongqing native. We spent the day exploring Chongqing city.
Highlights of the day was: * Jiefangbei 解放碑中央商务区 * Shancheng Lane, Chongqing 山城巷 重庆 * Chongqing Hot Pot 重庆火锅 * Huangge Ancient Road 南山 黄葛古道 * Beautiful Chongqing Night Scape
Exploring the Chongqing SPA!; Visit the other side of the river; Walk the Beicang 北倉; “Shibati” (Eighteen Ladders) 十八梯; Pose in front of Hongyadong 洪崖洞;
This is the last Song Dynasty held-out during when the Mongols invaded China and created the Yuan Dynasty.
During the battle, the Mongol heir prince was killed with a rock bombardment denfence. This event was a pivotal moment that determined Europe’s future. Because of the heir’s death, the remaining princes fighting in Eastern Europe decided to turn back to fight for the crown.
Day 8: October 25 Departing Chongqing 重庆 on the Yangtze River Cruise 长江游轮
We had our last breakfast in Chongqing and explored unique architecure of Chongqing’s mountainous neighbourhood. Went back to the SPA until we were picked up to board our river cruise.
Day 11: October 28 End of the Yangtze River Cruise and Arrived at Yichang 湖北 宜昌
The cruise ended for us at Yichang where the Three Gorges Dam is at. After a tour of the dam and its museum we rested at our hotel and organized a private tour on the near by gorges and enjoy the sunset. We also had an excellent Hubei 湖北 dinner.
Explored the Hunan Museum 湖南博物院. Unfortunately I wrecked my glasses just as we were entering the museum so I did not end up seeing much. We went to a local mall to have my glasses replaced with my latest prescription at half the Canadian price!
Day 15: November 1 Exploring the wonders of Zhangjiajie 湖南 张家界
We hired a local private tour and explore scenary that inspired the Avatar planet in the movie. Also got a local hair cut and ate a local authentic meal.
Day 16: November 2 Door Way to Heaven of Zhangjiajie 湖南 张家界
Climbed 999 steps to the door way to heaven at Tianmen Mountain 天门山. Treated the wonderful tour guide to a local, delicious lunch and get ready to board the high speed rail back to Guangzhou.
Day 19 to 22: November 5 to 8 Boluo 博罗, Fenggang 凤岗, Dongguan 东莞, Shunde 顺德
Took an intercity train from Shunde to Dongguan and met up with Carol’s cousin for some country scenery and food. Spend a couple of days in Dongguan reacquainting with Dongguan food scene, and the head back to Shunde.
Day 26 to 27: November 12 to 13 Shunde 顺德, Foshan 佛山
The most impressive furniture mall I have ever been to, Louvre Furnishings 罗浮宫家居. We had a below average taste but above average dim sum at Zhuroupo Private Home Cuisine 猪肉婆私房菜. Visited our local park by the river, and then took our flight back to Canada in the evening.
Recently, I added TelMax as our Internet Service Provider. One of the requirements for their service is an externally accessible IP address. When the service was provisioned this past September, this requirement was satisfied. However, in the middle of this month (November), the service was switched to CGNAT. You can click on the link to learn more about CGNAT, but effectively, after their CGNAT rollout, I no longer have an externally accessible IP. This was frustrating, especially when I was in China working remotely and depended on this external IP. I understand that TelMax wants to tier their services so that a dedicated IP address is in a higher tier service. However, to make this change unannounced and unscheduled is really not professional. Their sales staff at the time also promised that an external IP will be available as part of the residential offering; clearly, it was not, so buyers beware.
Long story short, this past Friday, I called into their customer service and had my service upgraded to a business service where a dedicated IP is part of the offering. Kudos to the customer service rep who handled the migration and provisioning. This new service also gave me 4Gbps symmetrical throughput, so that is a nice to have.
Unfortunately, the service did not last, and in about four hours, the service went down. Since this happened off business hours, I called back on Saturday morning. TelMax first line support during non-business hours is effectively useless. The result of the Saturday call was, “Thank you for the information; sorry about your situation; and someone will get back to you.” Very open-ended without a commitment for a time range of resolution. You are effectively left hanging. Apparently, today I learned that it can be up to 72 hours for someone to get back to you. This is clearly not acceptable for a business account, in my opinion.
On Sunday, feeling frustrated and unloved by TelMax, I went to their online portal and wrote a lengthy support email describing my situation. Crickets, not even an auto reply email. I called them on Monday and got hold of their tier 2 support and tried to get the service back up and running. Full disclosure here. At this point, we all thought the issue was at TelMax and not with me. My firewall was working fine because the rest of my network is humming along. We even switched out the cable thinking the cable may be defective. I asked whether there is any way to verify that ethernet port labeled 10GE on the fibre modem is working or not. He told me it is working. I found it strange why there is no physical link indicator then? He decided to escalate the issue, and the call ended.
2+ years old SFP+ module failed
No one got back to me for the entire Monday. Today I woke up and decided to use my spare laptop to directly test the 10GE port on the fibre modem, and behold there was activity! This confirmed that TelMax equipment was fine at least electrically. The problem must reside with my equipment. I swapped out the SFP+ module with a new one and the physical connection was resolved. Whew!
Since TelMax connections are bound to the physical network interface ID (MAC address), I still had to call into customer support this morning and talked to another tier 2 support rep named Sue. She was wonderful and much more knowledgeable. A few minutes later she had it resolved by rebinding the service to the new SFP+ module’s MAC.
Take aways from these collective events:
TelMax should not switch their networking architecture unannounced and unscheduled when it impacts existing customer experiences. I spent literally hours in China trying to resurrect services with CGNAT. Ultimately, I had to switch back to a backup Rogers connection.
When your ISP is down, don’t assume it is just their fault even though 99% it is. 😁
TelMax support staff’s technical knowledge can range from nothing to super helpful. On the Monday call, the staff should have advised me to use a spare laptop so that we can eliminate my networking equipment as the issue. In fairness, I should have caught this as well, but I’m a bit rusty and I am the stupid customer here.
The TelMax support experience is too open-ended. There is no ticket, no status check, nothing.
In the end, I was in the driving seat to resolve this issue, and it was not TelMax. This is not a good customer experience. I wish TelMax would improve their support capabilities and perceptions as fast as possible. I wish them luck.
I recently was in a situation where I am remote and all of my standard VPN clients stopped working. All I had was a private opened ssh port to my remote server. Luckily I had the foresight to setup this private port before I left home!
I was able to get certain SOCKS to work using the ssh -D option, like:
With this I was able to browse the basics after making the required SOCKS configuration with my WiFi network settings. However, accessing hosts on my private network is still an issue. I can also get macOS Screen Sharing to a specific remote host (e.g. HOST2) to work by establishing a port tunnel using:
I then proceeded to create a Screen Sharing session using port 5901 instead of the default 5900 on my localhost.
With the help of chat.deepseek.com, I was able to discover a nice tool called sshuttle. This seems like the perfect solution for me. Unfortunately I was not able to install sshuttle because GitHub was blocked where I am. I had to install the utility manually. First, I had to configure my local git environment to use the SOCKS server that I created earlier.
Now that everything is working. I then install sshuttle properly with brew.
HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 brew install sshuttle
Once this is done, I removed the temporary install at ~/Applications/sshuttle and rerun the sshuttle using the brew version.
Everything is now working the way that I want. Effectively, it is as good as a VPN with all traffic being routed through my private ssh connection. Thanks to modern AI tools like DeepSeek I was able to figure this out.
When you are visiting China, and you are not living in a hotel, such as:
With a relative in their own home;
Vacation home hosted by a third party;
Other bread and breakfast places;
You are required to register your place of residence at a police station. We were staying in Foshan city in Shunde area (borough) at 喜悦来国际酒店公寓. We rented a small place with an online platform. We needed to register with the police station within 24 hours of our arrival.
The requirements are laid out by the police station in the PDF document below:
The page containing the entry stamp for the current visit;
We needed a copy of the ID (front and back) of the visiting relative which we previously used to apply for our Q2 Visa. You must also provide the relative’s phone number as well;
From the landlord or management who leased the room to you:
The rental contract;
Either one of:
The business registration of the management company who leased the property along with the ID card (front and back) of the person responsible for the company;
The ID card (front and back) of the owner of the property and the deed of the property;
Not all police station will perform the registration service, so you will have to ask around. For this trip in 2025, we had to register at:
We arrived in Rome on a red-eye flight from Toronto with Air Canada. Aside from the usual chaotic boarding process at Pearson, the flight was quite good. I personally found the 9-hour flight literally flew by.
We met our airport transfer to the Eurostars Roma Aeterna Hotel. He was a nice gentleman (WeChat: 张巍.罗马) from Tianjin and had been living in Rome for more than a decade. We were lucky and were able to check into our hotel room early.
We then proceeded to our prearranged Vatican City tour. The tour was rescheduled at the last minute due to a change in the Vatican schedule. Not being able to cancel, we decided to do the 3 p.m. tour; otherwise, we would be forced to forfeit our tickets. You can imagine that we were really tired.
The tour was excellent. Our guide, Peter, aptly named while visiting St. Peter’s Cathedral, was super knowledgeable. I enjoyed the tour even in my zombie state.
After the two-hour tour, we wanted to take a taxi or Uber back. This was a total fail. The average wait time quickly turned from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. We decided to walk the 6km instead.
We made it on time for dinner back at the hotel’s restaurant and called it an early night.
The next day, we caught up on our sleep and headed out late afternoon towards the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. I have never seen so many tourists in my life packed into such close quarters. Honestly, I cannot appreciate the sites, and this visit has confirmed my firm belief that the best way to experience Rome is with the 4K HDR OLED TV in the comfort of one’s home. By the way, touching a piece of natural marble in Rome is no different than anywhere else on the planet. They are all millions of years old.
The day after, we did the Colosseum tour. This was also a bit underwhelming for me. Again, I got more out of a documentary than being physically there. I am sure it is just me.
Overall, I felt Rome to be a good place to visit if you are a history buff or a devout Catholic. For me, we checked our box, but I can do without the graffiti, the trash, and the constant fear of being pickpocketed. Also, the best way to get around Rome is on foot, so if you have problems walking, then it may be a challenge getting around.
Below are the videos that we collected over the three days.
Last month one of my SolarEdge inverters stopped generating power. I called New Dawn Energy and they had SolarEdge to remotely diagnosed the system. It turned out this time, it will take more than a simple firmware update. A replacement is approved through their RMA process. This all happened on August the 22nd.
This is the second replacement in three years of operations. SolarEdge really needs to improve their quality process.
Today, the unit finally got replaced after 25 days. During this time 50% of my total solar power was dormant. For something that you think should be part of utility, this is certainly a very long lead time for replacing something that I think would be pretty critical if I was off-grid. Glad I was not!
For those who want a visual chart to see where our tax brackets lie, I took the time to have ChatGPT AI generate a python program that created the following chart:
Check out the marginal tax rates for 2025. (click to enlarge)
Salaries with significant tax rate jumps:
$13,000: 15.0% → 20.1% (+5.1%)
$64,000: 20.0% → 24.1% (+4.1%)
$72,000: 24.1% → 29.6% (+5.5%)
$94,000: 29.7% → 31.5% (+1.8%)
$110,000: 31.5% → 34.8% (+3.3%)
$116,000: 34.8% → 37.9% (+3.1%)
$128,000: 37.9% → 43.4% (+5.5%)
$163,000: 43.4% → 45.0% (+1.6%)
$189,000: 45.0% → 48.0% (+3.0%)
$233,000: 48.0% → 49.5% (+1.6%)
$263,000: 49.5% → 53.5% (+4.0%)
This has been quite helpful in our tax planning. I hope you will find some utility with this.
TelMax started to roll out their fiber infrastructure in my neighborhood during the summer. Last month, a sales team knocked on my door and asked whether I was interested in switching. I told them I was, and it was the symmetrical 2Gbps speed that caught my attention. I also shared my concerns:
The ability to establish bridge mode with an external IP address;
I have interlock bricks on the side of the house, so I wanted to ensure the installation was clean and neat with the interlocks;
I have the flexibility to where I terminate the fibre cable in my basement;
The sales person told me all of my issues will be addressed to my full satisfaction. I inquire how long will it take for the installation process? They told me it should be up and running within 30 minutes.
I took the plunge decided to sign up on the last week of August, and got an appointment for September 8th (today) for installation. The appointment is suppose to be today from 8am to 12pm, see the email below:
Email from TelMax from the day before.
The installer came at 11:49am and told me that the installation is broken into two parts. He is just the first part, which is to install a fibre cable from the side of the house and into the house where I would like the modem and WiFi units to be. Since I didn’t care for the Eero units, I left them in the box and instructed the installer where he can place the Adtran modem. This part of the installation was fairly painless. Overall I think the installer was courteous and did a pretty good job running the wire in my basement.
After the second party connected the fibre cable to the curb.
The second part of the installation came around 2 hours later. They installed a flexible, orange conduit that contains a fibre cable from the curb to the side of the house. I told him that I have interlock bricks by the side of the house, and then to my surprise he said that they don’t handle the interlocks. Another party will come later to fix the interlock.
Once again we are in a waiting mode with a safety hazard on my interlock. There is again no expectations set, no scheduling, no appointments. We are now with more anxious waiting. I guess that is how it goes.
Where we are now as of 5:26pm:
Wait for the interlock guys to come;
The modem still shows a red LED so not yet connected;
Feeling a little anxious because the promised of 30 minutes has turned into a drip by drip installation experience by different parties providing services for TelMax but not really from TelMax;
TelMax is a typical case of over promise and under deliver. For a new service being introduced to a new neighbourhood, its opportunity to shine has been turned into mixed feelings of anxiety and customer service uncertainties. This is NOT how you should roll out a brand new service in my opinion.
Update September 8, 5:30-6:00pm:
I logged into the TelMax site and logged in. I contacted their customer support via email and indicated my current status. There was no ticket generated, so we will see what happened.
The process is still fluid, and I will update this as the installation process continues.
Update September 8, 6:11pm:
Someone called me from TelMax provisioning team (not their customer support team) and wanted to know the status of the modem. I told him the optical LED on the modem is still red and he confirmed that there is still a line integrity issue.
This call was not the result of my previous support email that I sent. I also took the opportunity to let him know about the outstanding interlock brick issue, and he told me that is a separate team.
Net-net, they will have to send someone out tomorrow to check the line. I am lucky to be working from home otherwise not sure how other customers can deal with this fluid situation.
Update September 9, 11:49am:
Called TelMax customer support at 1-844-483-5629 spoke to a wonderful lady and told her of my situation and inquired about what is the next step, since I have no visibility on when this will be resolved. She told me that she coordinated with dispatch and that someone, named Bill, will be coming between 4pm to 8pm this evening.
Update September 9, 5:09pm:
I received a text message from 1-289-212-4413 at 5:09pm.
Once again another let down. I freed my evening in preparation for the visit, to learn from the above text message that it is now moved to tomorrow morning, which I am only partially available. Perhaps I am not being patient enough, but I am beginning to feel from frustrated to annoyance.
Update September 10, 1:16pm:
A technical service guy came near noon. His name is Carlo, and he was the first person who I felt really know what he’s doing. Kudos to both Carlo and Peter in identifying the cabling issue and completed the provisioning. Now we are up and running. Problem solved!
Update September 12, 11:56am:
TelMax sent an email to me indicating that the installation process is completed, which is largely true since I am now using their Internet service. However the interlock bricks and the exposed fibre cable is still an outstanding issue. I just sent an email to their support for follow up. So far, no responses.
Update September 16, 6:33pm
This morning at around 8am I called customer support to enquire about the interlock bricks, because the wire is still exposed and it has been more than a week since initial engagement for the deployment. The customer service rep was trying to be helpful but the net-net result is that he listened and took notes. We ended the call with him promising me that someone will call me today to follow up.
We are now in the evening, and no one has called. I also took the opportunity to reach out to the original sales staff, who to their credit is trying to help me out. So with another day gone, the orange wire is still a safety hazard on my pathway. I still do not have an idea of when this will be resolved.
Update September 16, 6:47pm
After venting out my frustration by writing the previous update, I finally decided to just contact my landscaping contractor who originally did my interlock and get it fixed. They got back to me immediately with a timeframe of either Friday or Monday. It is wonderful to deal with professionals. No fuss no muss. No customer support that never gets back to you. I felt like a load off my shoulders.
Yes this is additional cost but I rather pay to get a good night sleep and lower blood pressure.
Update September 17, 5:06pm
About an hour ago DHM, a wonderful interlock contractor showed up and told me that TelMax asked them to come and fix up my interlock. They did excellent work, and the line is finally suppose to be where it is, below the ground and underneath the bricks.
The person from DHM were great guys, and I thanked them profusely. Their workmanship was topped notch!
So all in all it took 9 days from September 8th until now. We can finally claim that the deployment is completed and the service is working normally. Given the multi-party or contractors involved for the deployment, I personally think TelMax could have made things easier and put my mind at ease by keeping me the customer fully informed of the status. They failed in the coordination, and turned what could have been a wonderful experience into one filled with anxiety and frustration. I hope they learn from this will treat future deployment with proper communication.
I want to put in a special thanks to Khushboo Mistry, who really helped me in coordinating and navigating within the TelMax team to finally get this done. As a person on the Sales team, this was not part of her job. She really did above and beyond for me. For this, I really thank her for it.
So in conclusion, here is my assessment:
A – for Internet service;
A – for professionalism of all staff involved; from sales, technicians, and to the DHM the contractor who fixed my interlocks;
F – for communication and customer support department; mainly for unpredictable planning and scheduling; non-existent feedback loop; and no commitment and expectation setting;
It is unfortunate to have one part of the organization to spoil the experience. I wish they will fix their customer support and scheduling process. It is people like Khushboo who will make TelMax a great company, and not the poor organized deployment and installation process that someone else in the company came up with.
