NudgeCast 1/07/09

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Thoughts on Macworld, an novel powerline networking issue, and an old piece of software worht a second look.

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NudgeCast 7/16/08

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Thoughts on the new iPhone, TV issues, Belkin getting into powerline networking, and a return for "the incredibly useful site of the week."

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I've Had It With Wireless

So, once again my desktop's wireless adapter isn't working. The internet works when plugged in via Cat 5e, but via WiFi I keep seeing the connection lost screen. This happened a few weeks ago, and I've gone through three USB adapters in less than three years. Trust me, it's getting more than a little annoying.

So, I head over to Microcenter, not wanting to wait to ship anything. I park myself in the networking department, committed to finding an answer. The Powerline gear they had was expensive, with a Netgear model at $159 for two adapters, and another one that looked kind of old for $99 that only did 14 Mbps. While I was deciding on which direction to go in, the associate for the area comes by. I figure I've got nothing to lose, so I ask for a consult. I describe the setup (cable modem, Belkin pre-N router, pile of USB keys for router one floor away), and he's as puzzled as I am why these things are wearing out so quickly.

He asks me if the network is encrypted, and I tell him that I run WPA, and that besides, I turn everything off when I'm not using it for the ultimate in security. Now, he's really scratching his head. His opinion of Powerline gear is not too high, and he encourages me to just buy another wireless USB adapter as my experience is less than typical.

All right, I decide to give it one last try. Both Netgear and Lnksys G models are on sale for $39.99. He says "Linksys is made by Cisco, and they're the ones who build the whole internet. You can't go wrong with them." Apparently, I can, but I had known that little factoid already, but was curious if it translated to their consumer products. I left the store with this, rationalizing that hopefully in 2009 there will be new standards for WiFi N networking, and Powerline, and if I get another 10 months out of this, then it will be clearer to buy into a new standard with all new gear for a new and improved network. So much for that plan.

I got home, and loaded up the Linksys, following the instructions. I entered my WPA key, and was instantly impressed with the included software that had some little useful tidbits, with things like the uptime, and the maximum thoroughput that I haven't encountered on previous gear. However, we have a new record, as within 2 minutes, the key was completely dead, and wouldn't connect to my network again. Put it in the return pile, and I got that sinking feeling that WiFi just isn't my cup of tea anymore for connecting my desktop.

Annoyed, I thought through the issues. No 2.4GHz even in the house. No microwave on. Theoretically, how do I know it's not the router? Well, I brought the notebook and with its internal wireless it connected fine, until that crashed, but that's another story. However, the old Buffalo key worked last night once again, so I think it's an intermittent problem.

I'm at a loss to know what to do at this point. I'm even thinking about getting an electrician to come and pull some Cat 5e which would solve the problem, but the budget isn't going to support that, and it's not my forte (something about not wanting to destroy the whole house to solve one problem comes to mind).

I decided to head on over to Amazon and get an idea of what the more current Powerline networking gear looks like and costs. I'm definitely out of my element here, and while I know plenty about WiFi, Powerline is a bit of a mystery, and I have no direct experience with it. Here's the standards:

-HomePlug 1.0 — Released June 2001 — Specification for connecting devices via power lines in the home. Theoretical speed of 14 Mbit/s.
-HomePlug 1.0 Turbo — Faster, unofficial specification for connecting devices via power lines in the home. Theoretical speed of 85 Mbit/s.
-HomePlug AV — Released December 2005 — Designed for transmitting HDTV and VoIP around the home. Theoretical PHY datarate of up to 189 Mbit/s.

Turns out that the one at Microcenter for $99 was only the 1.0 spec which is kinda slow. I was glad I hadn't jumped without some research. Over on Amazon, I found this from Actiontec, and the price was more in accordance with the 1.0 Turbo spec. I'm ready to order it, but then I spot its big brother. All right, lets get serious, and stop playing around with the toys. This looks pretty good, and it supports the faster speeds which should easily outdo my cable modem's 15/2 connection with bandwidth to spare. It also is encrypted (like anyone is gonna break into this anyway), and there are users that state that it has performed across wires on separate circuit breakers (our own Bill clued me in to that issue, see here).

At any rate, I ordered the faster one from Amazon. Will this be any better than WiFi? I have no idea, but it would be hard for it to be worse at this point. Stay tuned for the review.

Jonas

If you're as unsatisfied with your WiFi as I am, these are the two affordable alternatives that I encountered, and I bought the faster one.

WiFi Disconnect

It seems that the rule of thumb on the longevity of USB WiFi adapters is right around six months to a year, and it's rare when something makes it past that. After nine months of trouble free use, last night my Buffalo USB wireless adapter disconnected, and wouldn't reconnect to my router. Annoyed and frustrated, I'm looking at my options, and looking for advice.

Of course, the obvious is to go and buy a new one. Checking the prices, to buy an equivalent would go for somewhere between $30 to $100, with $40 to $60 as the "sweet spot." My research last year suggested that these USB adapters rarely go past a year. It's kind of frustrating because the routers are built much better, and last much longer than that. I kind of would like to solve the problem more permanently. Too bad the N specs never seem to get finalized!

Part of me would like to take a break from wireless, and go hard wired. For me, that means I need to bring the computer closer to my cable modem, or to run Cat 5e cabling through my walls. As the wiring job is probably beyond what I can comfortably do, I am considering swapping my notebook with my desktop. I recently got my notebook's wireless working with the WPA encryption so at least it's a possibility.

Another part of me would like to give some type of powerline networking a go. While this technology that uses electrical wiring to connect got a bad name early on, it apparently has made some strides, and might be a viable alternative. Apparently there is not one standard for these things, which of course gives me a little hesitation. Also, for what they are, they are more expensive than many of the wireless solutions out there. Still, maybe there is something that just seems cool about sending the network through my existing electrical wiring. Anyway, I'm considering this type of product.

Ok, time for some audience participation. Anyone have any experience with powerline networking? Is it good enough to ditch WiFi? Am I better off switching my computer's locations and not buying anything waiting for the standards to be finalized? All opinions welcome!

Jonas

Optimum Wireless?

So, now that I'm an Optimum triple play customer, I've been paying more attention to their news lately (previously I was focused on Fios). Anyway, I spotted this yesterday:

Cablevision added a new wrinkle in their competitive fight against FiOS today. While discussing their first quarter earnings in a conference call this morning, the company announced they intend to offer free Wi-Fi to all of their customers within two years. Non-customers will be able to access the network for an as-yet-undisclosed fee.

Apparently this will cost about $100 per customer to put into place. I'm kind of at a loss to understand why they would do this.

First of all, Optimum is in a heavy Fios area so in order to compete they need to do three things: add bandwidth to keep their internet access as fast as fiber, add HD channels to keep up with Fios and satellite (which they're already behind satellite and will fall behind Fios at the rate they're going), and keep the cost down as we're in a down economy and folks are looking to cut costs. Notice that I don't mention wireless access in this mix.

It's pretty clear to most folks that while WiFi is an amazing technology, and ideal for wireless access in most homes, but it just doesn't have the range to do more than that. To do a whole municipality has proven cost prohibitive in most areas, with very few successes. To do all of Optimum's service area is quite ridiculous. To do anything less won't add much to what we have now.

It's not that I wouldn't want to have internet everywhere. For people that only rarely travel, they could dump their pricey cell phone plan, and get a Skype WiFi phone. For an affordable price, it's an easy way to have access to VoIP calls while on the move. I would also imagine that an iPod Touch would be a great gadget with WiFi everywhere.

However, WiFi has too limited a range. They'd have to put a wireless router on every utility pole of their catch area, and this is not gonna happen. Their data network is already overloaded, and routinely slows down from the "BitTorrent effect" everyday when school lets out. Do we need more devices on this network?

My guess is that they're trying to compete with Verizon that won the wireless auction, and will likely roll out devices to make use of it. Maybe there will be a "quintiple play" at some point from Verizon: phone/internet/TV/mobile phone/mobile data, and Optimum wants to be ready to counter it?

The bottom line as I see it is as follows. If Optimum wants to get into the mobile data/phone business, they're gonna need a different technology than WiFi to link their users to their network (eg: WiMax). In the meantime, they should focus on improving their fundamentals, and offering a compelling service at a more reasonable price. So far, they got that right with their triple play as they got me to willingly part with some cash.

Jonas

NudgeCast 9/3/07

This week's episode looks at a networking company that stands behind their gear, some thoughts about the upcomng iPod line, an incoming consumer electronics product, and a podcast service.

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--Jonas

LoFi WiFi

I had often heard the nightmares about home networking, but thankfully, I have never had anything close to a nightmare, at least in this department. Recently, I did have some difficulties, and after some research I'd like to share the findings.

Just to refresh everyone, my home network is based around a Verizon DSL connection. This connects to a Belkin pre-N router, you know the one with the three antenna on top, and as far as distance covered, is still one of the better choices out there reportedly. I've been running it with WPA security lately. I use two USB connectors (Belkin N1 and Zyxel AG225H) to connect my computers. This week, I was really considering running some Cat 5e ethernet cable through the walls.

Networking is the kind of thing that works well- until it doesn't. Around six months ago, the Zyxel adapter would consistently take a break after 20 minutes of surfing. I mean that it would lose the connection, and take a while to recover it. As I also had the Belkin one, it ended up in the bottom of a drawer, and the alternate one did the job. Now this week, the Belkin N1 adapter, which has run very trouble free over the last several months conked out. Out of every minute, it was connected for around 20 seconds, and reconnecting to the router for the other 40 seconds. I was clicking on the browser reload button more than a few times, and surfing was difficult, at best. (Don't even get me started on what it took to upload this week's NudgeCast...).

Anyway, stuff breaks, and so the plan was to buy something new. Great, a new toy in a shiny shrink wrapped box! The Microcenter circular had arrived, and I spotted a true bargain, a WiFi USB adapter for the amazingly low price of $7.99, after rebate. My experience with rebates notwithstanding, I still was very tempted. however, after some research into this adapter from a lesser known networking company (Trendnet), I decided to pass. It looks like mixed reviews at best, with particular difficulty with networks involving encryption, where it seems to drop the ball, big time, and frustrate many folks. Well, as they say, cheap can be very expensive.

This prompted me to look up just about every WiFi USB adapter on the market. First of all, it seems that those notebook cards work the best, followed by the USB adapters, and the PCI adapters are the worst, generally speaking. Also, there's not too much testing of the uSB adapters. Most networking reviews focus on the router, and for the writeup, they typically connect via a notebook card adapter. That's great for being mobile to test a router's range, but it leaves the USB adapter as an afterthought (which it probably is).

Also, much of this is still proprietary. While 802.11b and 802.11g are open standards, there's any number of speed boosting technologies that fall under various names of "rangemax," "speedboost" or "turbo mode." However, for any of this to work, all of the gear needs to be from the same manufacturer. Most home networks are more of a hodge podge of gear bought at various times from several manufacturers as needs changed and developed. As I didn't want to spend $100 on this adapter, I was looking for something older, but that often means the drivers are old too. It seems that nothing gets really fixed, they just release a new product, even when the older one doesn't work right.

After going through a ton of user reviews on both NewEgg and Amazon, a few trends can be observed. The first is that no piece of networking hardware works for everyone, no matter the price. Plenty of folks are frustrated when a fair amount of this stuff never gets up and running. There is also a constant debate whether we should be using the included software, or to let Windows manage the settings, with folks firmly entrenched in both camps. Next, these USB adapters seem to get quite hot with use and stop working until they are cool again. It's no mystery that there is a lot of tech in that little thing, but some folks are resorting to fans on them to keep the connection up! Finally, there are plenty of people that claim that the adapter stops working after six months to a year. My own experience would confirm this.

So, what's the answer? I'm not sure there is one. Many of us need the wireless as it's still easier than remaking the house to pull cables through. If it's going to stop working, I'd suggest one with a longer warranty, and keep our receipts. Also, I'd rather not pay too much for one of these, as this way when it doesn't work, it won't be as painful. Typically in this situation, I end up buying one of the less popular models, as it has less written about it, and therefore, less negative. Be that as it may, I did make a purchase, and look for the review over on TNL-R in a week or two. I don't want to endorse anything until I've had a chance to use it for a while.

--Jonas

PS: If you've had one of these adapters die in a few months, or experience the heat problem, I'd love to hear about it. This info shouldn't just be buried in some list of NewEgg customer reviews!