Posts by Willie Howe
Synology UC3400 Review: The Active-Active SAN That Undercuts Enterprise Prices
When a customer has a hypervisor cluster that cannot go down, the conversation usually ends at a whiteboard with two words: active-active. Synology’s answer to that conversation is the UC3400, their flagship dual-controller iSCSI and Fibre Channel SAN. It is not a DiskStation with a second power supply taped on — it is a genuinely…
Read MoreTP-Link ER707-M2 Review: The Multi-Gigabit Gateway That Doesn’t Tax Your Fiber
If your multi-gig broadband or fiber circuit is sitting behind a gateway that chokes the moment a VPN tunnel comes up, you’re leaving money on the table — and the ER707-M2 is TP-Link’s answer for shops that want the full 2.5G pipe with security switched on. This is the gateway I spec when a site…
Read MoreUbiquiti UXG-Fiber Review: A $279 Gateway With a Real 10G Fiber WAN
If you spec a UniFi deployment around fiber handoff, the gateway has always been the awkward part. The old UXG-Lite pegs out long before your circuit does, and the bigger Cloud Gateways cost more than some switches. The UXG-Fiber is Ubiquiti’s answer: a compact desktop gateway built around 10G on both sides of the firewall,…
Read MoreGrandstream GWN7800 Pro Series Review: The L2++ Switch Line Where Pro Actually Means Something
Fifteen years in low-voltage and structured cabling will teach you one thing: the switch is where a budget either survives or bleeds out. Access points amortize, phones get replaced on refresh cycles, but the switch at the top of every cable bundle is what you live with for a decade. Grandstream’s GWN7800 Pro Series is…
Read MoreUbiquiti UNVR Review: The $299 Rack NVR That Built UniFi Protect
If you run UniFi cameras for a living, you already know the drill: the site works great until somebody asks for ninety days of retention on eighteen 4K cameras. That question is what the UNVR exists to answer, and it answers it better than anything else Ubiquiti has ever shipped in the Protect line. At…
Read MoreOscium Nomad Review: The Wearable Wi-Fi 7 Analyzer That Ends Roaming Guesswork
Four simultaneous radios, Wi-Fi 7, offline surveys, no vendor lock-in — a working guide to the Oscium Nomad and when it earns its $1,710 price.
Read MoreGrandstream GWN7816P Review: A 48-Port Layer 3 PoE Switch That Earns Its Rack Space
Most switch line cards read like a spec sheet written by the marketing department. Grandstream’s GWN7816(P) is different in one important way: it is a genuine Layer 3 switch with dynamic routing at a price that makes you double-check the datasheet. If you run a medium-to-large site with a lot of PoE devices and you…
Read MoreSynology DS425+ Review: The Compact 4-Bay NAS That Finally Got the Networking Right
An installer’s take on the Synology DS425+ DiskStation: verified specs, 2.5GbE + NVMe cache, real use cases, and why it fits the small-office gap.
Read MoreUbiquiti UNAS Pro Review: A 10G Rack NAS Built for UniFi Shops
Ubiquiti UNAS Pro (UNAS-Pro) reviewed for integrators: verified specs, 7 bays, 10G SFP+, redundant power, real use cases, pros and cons.
Read More