Joy of Gadgets

For a while now, the family computers were connected to the Internet using a couple of WiFi routers: one was in a WDS Mesh with my router upstairs in my office. The other router was simply a client set up in Client Bridge mode. All of the routers were Linksys WRT54G(S) running DD-WRT 2.4 SP1.

When I first set this up, I spent roughly two weeks diddling with it and finally got something stable. It generally stayed that way, though periodically, I’d experience random dropouts and other weirdness. The past several days, the WDS mesh would simply fail for no reason and despite my best efforts, I could not bring it up again.

I replaced my Linksys in my office with a UTM-1 EDGE W device I picked up from the office. This is an industrial strength firewall with WiFi, anti-virus at the gateway, and a lot of other cool security features in something about the size of a typical Linksys/D-Link router. I’m sure costs more than what most people want to spend on a router, given enterprises buy hundreds of them and manage them centrally. Home users can get a lot of the same functionality in the ZoneAlarm Z100G Secure Wireless Router for $150 shipped to your door (sorry, US and Canada only).

Unfortunately, this didn’t solve my WDS problem since the EDGE gateway does WDS differently than the Linksys boxes. I set both Linksys routers downstairs into Client Bridge mode temporarily, which allowed the Internet to work, albeit a little more slowly. Unfortunately, this is still not reliable as the WiFi periodically cuts out downstairs.

Today, I trekked over to Frys Electronics and picked up some HomePlug AV gear from TRENDnet (specifically the TRENDnet Tpl-302E2K 200Mbps Powerline Av Ethernet Adapter Kit and TRENDnet Tpl-302E 200Mbps Powerline Av Ethernet Adapter B Class). D-Link, Belkin, and Netgear also make this equipment, but I opted for the TRENDnet gear for one simple reason: I could buy a single TRENDNet HomePlug AV receiver. I needed 3 of them and the price for a pair was, at minimum, $120.

Setup was pretty easy, if you follow the included QuickStart guide. The TRENDnet software tool for configuring these devices (which, unfortunately, requires Windows) was able to find all three of my devices right away. It took me almost no time to get the devices connected together and passing traffic. One of the devices is plugged in near my router upstairs, the other two are downstairs in different rooms.

There are, of course, some limitations with these devices:

• The device–which is much larger than our typical wall-wort–partially blocks the other outlet. I found it worked if I used the top outlet and had the “bottom” facing upward.
• The device absolutely must be plugged in directly to the wall for it to work (i.e. no powerstrips).
• A maximum of 16 devices is supported.
• All devices must be on the same circuit breaker. This basically means you can only use these devices within a single dwelling.

While the TRENDnet Utility shows my devices not getting anywhere near the stated 200mb/s maximum throughput–the spec says the max data throughput is actually 150mb/s–I am getting anywhere from 10mb to 30mb/s to and from my locations. It’s at least as good as the WiFi link if not better as it’s more stable. I wish the price would come down a bit, but it’s still cheaper than cutting up drywall and adding in the necessary outlets.

(Crossposted from http://phoneboy.com/3013/ditching-the-wds-mesh-and-going-homeplug-av)

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For a while now, the family computers were connected to the Internet using a couple of WiFi routers: one was in a WDS Mesh with my router upstairs in my office. The other router was simply a client set up in Client Bridge mode. All of the routers were Linksys WRT54G(S) running DD-WRT 2.4 SP1.

When I first set this up, I spent roughly two weeks diddling with it and finally got something stable. It generally stayed that way, though periodically, I’d experience random dropouts and other weirdness. The past several days, the WDS mesh would simply fail for no reason and despite my best efforts, I could not bring it up again.

I replaced my Linksys in my office with a UTM-1 EDGE W device I picked up from the office. This is an industrial strength firewall with WiFi, anti-virus at the gateway, and a lot of other cool security features in something about the size of a typical Linksys/D-Link router. I’m sure costs more than what most people want to spend on a router, given enterprises buy hundreds of them and manage them centrally. Home users can get a lot of the same functionality in the ZoneAlarm Z100G Secure Wireless Router for $150 shipped to your door (sorry, US and Canada only).

Unfortunately, this didn’t solve my WDS problem since the EDGE gateway does WDS differently than the Linksys boxes. I set both Linksys routers downstairs into Client Bridge mode temporarily, which allowed the Internet to work, albeit a little more slowly. Unfortunately, this is still not reliable as the WiFi periodically cuts out downstairs.

Today, I trekked over to Frys Electronics and picked up some HomePlug AV gear from TRENDnet (specifically the TRENDnet Tpl-302E2K 200Mbps Powerline Av Ethernet Adapter Kit and TRENDnet Tpl-302E 200Mbps Powerline Av Ethernet Adapter B Class). D-Link, Belkin, and Netgear also make this equipment, but I opted for the TRENDnet gear for one simple reason: I could buy a single TRENDNet HomePlug AV receiver. I needed 3 of them and the price for a pair was, at minimum, $120.

Setup was pretty easy, if you follow the included QuickStart guide. The TRENDnet software tool for configuring these devices (which, unfortunately, requires Windows) was able to find all three of my devices right away. It took me almost no time to get the devices connected together and passing traffic. One of the devices is plugged in near my router upstairs, the other two are downstairs in different rooms.

There are, of course, some limitations with these devices:

• The device–which is much larger than our typical wall-wort–partially blocks the other outlet. I found it worked if I used the top outlet and had the “bottom” facing upward.
• The device absolutely must be plugged in directly to the wall for it to work (i.e. no powerstrips).
• A maximum of 16 devices is supported.
• All devices must be on the same circuit breaker. This basically means you can only use these devices within a single dwelling.

While the TRENDnet Utility shows my devices not getting anywhere near the stated 200mb/s maximum throughput–the spec says the max data throughput is actually 150mb/s–I am getting anywhere from 10mb to 30mb/s to and from my locations. It’s at least as good as the WiFi link if not better as it’s more stable. I wish the price would come down a bit, but it’s still cheaper than cutting up drywall and adding in the necessary outlets.

If you want mobile email on the go, but don’t want anything else–including basic phone functionality–Peek may be just for you.

Peek is an email-centric device. In fact, that’s all it does. No web browsing whatsoever. However, the reviews of the device have universally said it handles email fairly well.

The device is a tri-band GSM device (GSM 850/1800/1900) that operates at GPRS speeds only, meaning it will fetch data slower than dialup speeds. However, GPRS is pretty much available everywhere, which means it will work, just very slow.

While it doesn’t say so explicitly anywhere in the FAQ, it appears that Peek’s service does proxy the email before sending it to the device. Given the relatively pokey GPRS speeds, this probably a good thing.

The device will set you back $100 and the U.S.-based service will cost you $20 a month for unlimited data. However, if you take advantage of this special offer, you can get 3 months of service for half off!

Me? My email-only device right now is a Nokia E61i. It’s a bit more complex of a device, but unlike the Peek, it handles web-based email, SMS, and can make phone calls in a pinch.

Via Boing Boing Gadgets, Picture from Geeksugar

In my quest to get an upgraded DSL modem, I think I may have found the modem: the D-Link DSL-2540B ADSL2/2+ Modem with 4-Port Ethernet Router.

Surprisingly, I plugged the modem in and it was able to find my VPI and VCI settings through the configuration wizard! The configuration screens were pretty straightforward and I was able to get the modem up and running pretty quickly. It also, unlike the Zoom X4 5651 modem I had before, seems perfectly happy to have the same IP on the LAN and WAN interface so I can use my static IPs.

Of course, problems with CenturyTel’s treatment of my static IPs did not make the experience painless. CenturyTel doesn’t support this modem, but thanks to the ability to telnet into the modem and use a Linux command line to do some troubleshooting, I was able to clearly identify the problem as being with CenturyTel’s network.

The DSL modem is one of the nicer looking modems I’ve seen. And, unlike every other DSL modem I’ve had, it has an off switch. Not that I use it much, but it beats unplugging the modem

I need to replace my DSL modem. I didn’t “lease” my DSL modem from Centurytel. Basically, I need a modem that supports ADSL 2/2+, so I picked up the Zoom X4 5651 from Amazon.

The modem worked fine enough for what I would consider a “basic” user, but anyone who knows me knows I am anything but that. In fact, the sole reason I have a DSL connection (in addition to cable) is that I pay extra for a block of static IPs. Multiple static IPs on Cable modems are more expensive and more painful.

Anyway, I did what I do on every other DSL modem/router out there and the configuration didn’t work. I spent two or three evenings trying to trick the modem into a working configuration that didn’t involve allocating two of the six static IPs I am assigned.

I brought this to the attention of Zoom’s support staff through their website. To their credit, I did get a response within 24 hours. The answer was “this is not a supported configuration.” Pity, because I have an older Zoom modem here that does support that very configuration quite nicely.

As a result, the modem went back to Amazon. I’ve got a D-Link TR067/069 coming to see if it fares any better.

The folks at Joiku, makers of the awesome JoikuSpot for S60 now offer a similar program for Windows Mobile devices: WMWiFiRouter. Both of these programs turn your mobile phone into a WiFi hotspot!

The theory is that the program uses the data connection on your mobile phone–which is hopefully 3G. That data connection is made available over WiFi as a regular access point to other WiFi-enabled devices. Sort of, at least on S60, as it is only able to use an AdHoc network type, not infrastructure. This limits you ability to use it with, say, a Nintendo DS or Sony PSP. However, it works great with computers.

JoikuSpot is also currently 40% off: 15 Euros instead of the normal 25! While that’s still a lot of clams in U.S. Pesos, it’s still a nice investment. Where else are you going to get a portable WiFi router for that price?

A while ago, I had purchased a Linksys WTR54GS as a travel companion. Not to be confused with the legendary WRT54GS, which is a desktop router, it is a fairly serviceable router that slides into a nice little compact carrying case complete with an Ethernet cable to jack in a computer or to something else.

The main problem I had with the WTR54GS? The firmware. Linksys never bothered to update beyond the initial shipping version, and the firmware is crap. The router’s web interface was slow and frequently experienced weird glitches. A problem with nearly every Linksys router since they switched to using VxWorks instead of Linux.

The folks behind DD-WRT figured out how to liberate this device from a life of running VxWorks. I followed the rather convoluted steps for getting DD-WRT onto the router. One small hitch I ran into was that the referenced Sercomm utility crashes under XP. However, a quick Google search resulted in finding an update to Sercomm that would make it run under XP.

After about 10 minutes, the WTR54GS was running DD-WRT. The web interface worked and was nice and peppy. All the functionality of DD-WRT is now in my travel bag, ready to convert WiFi to Ethernet or vice-versa.

Now if only Linksys would drop this VxWorks crap, their current routers might not suck so bad.