Everyone has heard about wireless networking and a significant proportion of homes and business are now using wireless networks. The value provided by these networks in terms of flexibility has been enormous but imagine if you are were also able to provide power without having to worry about power cables all over the place?  It would be another step change in usability and flexibility.

Intel amongst others have been doing a fair amount of research and development work recently exploring the possibility of developing wireless power delivered using something called magnetic induction. Using magnetic fields driven by a transmitting resonator an object would have a receiving resonator which is tuned to efficiently absorb energy at is natural frequency from the magnetic field.  Intel have demonstrated the technology powering light bulbs at  a distance of a few feet, the next steps are to make the resonators smaller suitable for being used in things like laptops. Obviously there is a long way to go but there is definitely hope for a wireless powered world as well as the network.

Well we can’t do wireless power yet. But what is available is wired and wireless networks through the power cables which in certain situations and buildings can be an effective way of ensuring an effective network throughout the building.  The Netgear WGXB102 Wall-Plugged Wireless Range Extender allows you to use the power wiring in your home to provide a second access point in a room that might be on the edge of your current wireless network.  I am thinking of trying this in Dubai where the concrete walls and floors mean that our wireless network is weak in certain rooms.

We have talked a few times on this blog about wireless networks and some of the ways to make you network more secure. But I thought I would write yet another post on wireless as I was recently asked by a very confused friend, what was the difference between all the different flavours of WiFi that you see on the market. What is all this 11b, 11g and 11n and what does it all mean, and what should I look out for when buying an access point? Well it is a good question and I will give it a go. All these refer to various standards that have been agreed for WiFi equipment. In fact the original standard was 802.11a, but this was soon replaced by the other standards each one following on from the other. The changes essentially relate to a changes in the provided bandwidth or range of the wireless signal.

802.11b

Created in 1999 802.11b can be considered to be the lowest or a base standard nowadays and supports bandwidth up to 11 Mbps. The majority of access devices on the market will still support this standard.

802.11g

In 2003 the newer standard 802.11g appeared which increases the bandwidth of the signal to 54 Mbps, with similar or only slightly less of a range.

802.11n

802.11n is the newest standard (although still in draft and not finalised) and is now fairly common in newer devices. It provides significant increases in signal range and bandwidth. The signal is also more resistant to interference from other devices. The standard is backward compatible with both 802.11g and 802.11b though you will be limited to the bandwidth of the earlier standards.

What to look for when buying

When buying an access device, due to generally good backward compatibility you should generally look for a device that supports the newer 802.11n standard. Something like the Buffalo AirStation Nfiniti WZR-G300N Wireless-N Router. All your existing devices should be able to connect even if they are based on earlier standards and newer devices will be able to take full advantage of the new standard’s benefits.

Quite a lot of people these days are running home servers, or at least a central computer that has a large amount of storage. This can be used as central storage for the large amount of digital content that we are now beginning to collect in the average family, or at the very least used as a backup facility for all the family’s laptops and iPods. One of the main reasons for doing backups of your data, is that we now often have an emotional attachment to a lot of this data. Would you be happy about losing all your digital photographs for instance, or the whole of your music collection? I thought not. So if you are not backing this data up already you really should be !

However if you are backing your data up to a central server, you really need to protect that computer with an UPS device. UPS - stands for Uninterruptible Power Supply. By the way a Server is just a fancy name for a piece of software or hardware that performs some service for other software or computers on a network, if it is hardware it may be doing other things as well.

An Uninterruptible Power Supply is one which continues to supply power during a loss or drop of input power, but will also act as a surge suppressor, filter noise and provide protection against power spikes. All these things are potentially dangerous for a computer system and potentially damaging your hard drive. You may think that in the UK we have a very stable power supply which is largely true, but we still get power cuts once or twice a year as a result of storms, lightening etc. There also drops in current which are also an issue, and which may be caused by everyone in the UK switching the kettle on at half time in the FA cup final, for instance!

So I would recommend anyone with a important computer that holds important data, that they look into a UPS system. They are many available at in a huge range of costs, so do your homework, but something like the APC BACK-UPS CS 350 would be a good place to start for a home user.

So just to recap the benefits of an UPS are;

1. It gives you time to shut down your computer properly.
2. Will take the hit from any lightening strike. much cheaper to replace the UPS.
3. Will maintain the proper voltage, even during power spikes and sags.
4. Gives you “peace of mind”.

Do you use an UPS?

One of the biggest ideas from a technology perspective to hit the UK recently has been the BBC iPlayer. After a slow start this technology has really begun to take off, especially since the ability to stream programmes rather than just download them was added. In fact the popularity of the service has grown so much that the UK Internet service providers (ISP) are now complaining about the strain that it is putting on their networks. Being based in Dubai where the available TV is generally very poor, I am extremely envious of the UK residents ability to access the technology. Especially since I am still actually a holder of a UK TV licence!

Future plans

However having now got the technology now more or less sorted out the BBC are looking to add incremental new features to the service over the coming months, which should increase the usability and appeal of the service still further. So the UK ISP’s had better get their networks sorted out!

Wii to become iPlayer access device

One example of this incremental approach is the fact that the iPlayer will soon be available on the Nintendo Wii, which has become the fastest selling games console ever launched in the UK. The iPlayer will be soon be a channel on the Wii with an early test version available from this month, followed by updated versions later in the year. If you do plan to use this service, you may find that a USB Datel Direct LAN Adapter makes good sense rather than relying on the WiFi, especially if streaming.

Do you use the iPlayer?

I don’t know about you but my family and I now seem to have collected a vast array of gadgets and computer equipment that all require some sort of USB connection. USB drives, external hard drives, printers, MP3 players, mobile phones, digital cameras etc. The list seems almost endless and there never seems to be enough USB ports available, so some members of the family always end up annoying other members when trying to borrow access time to USB ports on people’s laptops.

I have been looking at actually organising and designing the computer system at home, rather than continue with the rather organic and haphazard growth pattern that presently exists. One idea that I am looking at it to centralise a number of the key aspects, such as storage, and access to printing. One other aspect that may well be worth applying this approach  to is the provision of centralised access to USB ports. This would enable anyone who wanted access to MP3 files to transfer to their player or mobile phone could just use a USB hub that was somewhere publicly available and did not require entering the forbidden zone of someone else’s bedroom!

The Belkin Network USB Hub looks like just the sort of thing that could do the job on my WiFi network, allowing 5 USB devices to be connected at one time.

How do you solve your USB port access problem?

When I started working with computers way back in the good old days of computing, when we had 80Mb hard disk drives the size of washing machines (I kid you not!), I would use what was called a dumb terminal. This looked like a PC in that it had a screen, although with no graphics capabilities, and a keyboard, but had no local resources for computing and relied on a large central computer to do all the work.

This model called the client server model, apart from demonstrating how ancient I am, was the standard computing model at the time, but went somewhat out of fashion with the rise of the PC. Although this approach never really went away completely, it has recently been making a comeback for a number of reasons.

Firstly with the continuing rise of web based applications, there is less and less need for significant local compute power; you just need to run a browser. Secondly a lot of home users and office workers rarely, if ever, really use all the computing power of their PC when running their email, browser and the odd office application. Thirdly any system that is centrally managed is far easy to administer. Do what to upgrade a program on one central server, or go around every PC that uses that program and do the same upgrade multiple times? This approach is now being looked at again for small business and in areas like education as there are also potential cost benefits to this approach. It is not so obvious in the home environment, but is a good potential model for a home which owns a lot of computers and where there is a lot of “support” required. I personally thought about it as an approach on a number of occasions.

The term “thin client” has come to be the term used to describe the low power computing devices that managed the experience for a user. Thin because the device does not have to have a thick layer of applications installed. An operating system, capable of supporting a network and a web browser are probably the minimum requirements. A number of the hardware vendors now provide relatively inexpensive thin clients, a good example of which is the HP T5720 Thin Client Desktop. Of course for the technical minded or for those on a budget, older hardware can be remodeled as a thin client, potentially extending their useful life.

Has anyone tried implementing a thin client solution at home, in a business or at a school? It would be interesting to hear about your experience.

In the last post we talked about the tactic of searching for available WiFi while on the road and looked at a tool to help with that. But there is a wireless alternative to WiFi, and that of course is through utilising the mobile networks.

3G vs. WiFi

If you need a reliable connection and you need it from just about anywhere not just your favourite coffee shop, then WiFi is not really going to cut it. You will spend more time searching around for a connection than you will actually doing anything online. A more reliable approach that will work from just about anywhere including on the commuter train for instance is the mobile data services.

Just plug a 3G card such as the 3G-Gprs Vodafone Mobile Connect Card into the card slot of your laptop and you are online and good to go. In most cases it will be as simple as that. 3G will give you and bandwidth of five or so times the bandwidth you can expect from a dial up connection. While this will general not give you the bandwidth you would get from a WiFi connection back in your favourite coffee shop, it will normally be perfectly adequate. Even in the worst cases where you loose 3G, the card will fall back to Gprs which will still effectively support your ability to read email.

Continuing the theme of travel with a laptop, what has become your standard method of obtaining Internet access?

The old and new

For myself, in the bad old days it was a tedious process of finding a suitable telephone line to enable dial up access. This was often a difficult mix of trying to find the right socket adapter for whatever country you happened to be in and trying to get your modem to work. Once all that was sorted out there was still the matter of the line cost, which if you were in a hotel could often be quite substantial. Move forward a few years and things have improved; we are no longer tied to land based phone lines. In fact I can’t remember the last time I resorted to dial up to read my email, if I had to I probably just wouldn’t bother at all.

Broadband access

Now we will generally have a choice of wired or wireless broadband access and data services through a mobile phone network. Which is of course a big improvement, but what about the cost? Here things are not so different. With very few exceptions as a business traveler you will still be charged high rates for Internet access, and mobile data services costs will always mount up. However there is one thing that has changed all that, and that is the relatively wide availability of free or inexpensive WiFi which can often be found even in the most unlikely of places. Lots of establishments around the world such as pubs and coffee shops now provide free WiFi access, and there is often free WiFi schemes set up by local groups.

Finding WiFi access

The trick is of course to find the available access points, and if you can manage this without booting up the laptop so much the better. One tool I have found invaluable for this sort of thing is the Hawking Tech. HWL2 Hi-Gain WiFi Locator, which works really well and will even boost weak signals if used as your adapter.

What is your preferred way to find that elusive WiFi signal? If you don’t use WiFi what is your preferred method of getting on line while traveling?

So did you get the wireless network sorted out over the holiday period? If you are one of those people who still haven’t managed to get around to doing it yet, then really what are you waiting for? As mentioned in a previous post in this series, a home wireless network will really add significantly to the use and enjoyment of your home computers, the Internet and all those gadgets that increasingly are wireless enabled, such as mobile phones.

In the previous post we had a look at wireless access points. However those require that you already have a separate modem to manage your broadband Internet connection. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have just one device that did everything you need to get your wireless network up and running securely?

Well you can. The majority of the wireless networking manufacturers also produce units that will act as a cable or ADSL modem, a wireless access device, and router all at the same time. One word of caution, as these units are multi functional an important thing to look out for is the ease of setup. Some very good example of these can be found, such as the Netgear 54mbps wireless ADSL firewall router, or the D-Link DKT-710 Wireless G ADSL2.

So now you have no excuse, get working on that wireless network!

If you remember we had a look at wireless adapters in Wireless Networking Part 1: Wireless adapters. In that post we looked at buying a wireless capable computer and what you might need to make an older device wireless capable. Now that you have your wireless capable device we need to create or find a wireless network to connect to. You can find wireless access at many hot spots around the country, although often you may have to pay for the privilege. However more and more restaurants, cafes and pubs are starting to provide free access to their customers so it is worthwhile getting to know the places near you.

Wireless Network

The true power of wireless though is best appreciated when you create a wireless network at home. This will allow you to share your internet connection with everyone else in the house and to provide access from anywhere within range of your access point. This means you should be able to connect to the internet, from in front of the telly, at the kitchen table or even out in the garden.

Wireless Access Point

To create your wireless network you need to have a wireless access point. The access point will connect to your broadband modem. In some cases the access point can also act as a firewall providing increased security. All access points will allow you to restrict access to your wireless network and provide encryption of traffic. More about security in a future post.

Access points are available in a range of prices, but for home use something like the NetGear WG602 should provide perfectly good coverage in the average UK home. An alternative for someone who is looking for more functionality such as the firewall capability mentioned above might something like the D-Link DIR-655 Wireless Router.