Tetsuo Time

I had this problem with my network... it started when I got the wireless card for the dell laptop my family has. I have a mostly 802.11n network with only one exception... the wifi printer\scanner is a 802.11g device. The 802.11n part can run at 270Mbps. But only when I have the wireless channel set to "auto" so that it can pick the best channel\s and get full speed. Well the laptop was having a hard time connecting to the router with the setting like that so for the longest time I had it just set to channel 11 which seemed to work but provided half the speed or actually much lower.

When I hooked up the AppleTV to the router via wifi I noticed its connection was abnormally slow compared to say... my Mac which is connected wired. This is no good since we are to be doing a lot of streaming to the former. I decided to go ahead and give putting the wireless channel back to "auto" and see what happens. One thing that I predicted that turned out true was the speed went back up to 270Mbps. But something that I didn't predict was that not only would the laptop still be able to connect but it too would get 270Mbps. It before had always gotten ~20Mbps.

Some people who are accustomed to 802.11g may think that 270Mbps or above is overkill but it really did make a difference for streaming.. especially HD videos such as the ones at Apple's trailers site. Sure the bottleneck is still the WAN but at least the LAN is up to speed for streaming. Before it took at least 30 minutes to load an HD trailer and afterwards it was at least half that if not less.... in other words not an excruciating wait.

I had this problem with my network... it started when I got the wireless card for the dell laptop my family has. I have a mostly 802.11n network with only one exception... the wifi printer\scanner is a 802.11g device. The 802.11n part can run at 270Mbps. But only when I have the wireless channel set to "auto" so that it can pick the best channel\s and get full speed. Well the laptop was having a hard time connecting to the router with the setting like that so for the longest time I had it just set to channel 11 which seemed to work but provided half the speed or actually much lower.

When I hooked up the AppleTV to the router via wifi I noticed its connection was abnormally slow compared to say... my Mac which is connected wired. This is no good since we are to be doing a lot of streaming to the former. I decided to go ahead and give putting the wireless channel back to "auto" and see what happens. One thing that I predicted that turned out true was the speed went back up to 270Mbps. But something that I didn't predict was that not only would the laptop still be able to connect but it too would get 270Mbps. It before had always gotten ~20Mbps.

Some people who are accustomed to 802.11g may think that 270Mbps or above is overkill but it really did make a difference for streaming.. especially HD videos such as the ones at Apple's trailers site. Sure the bottleneck is still the WAN but at least the LAN is up to speed for streaming. Before it took at least 30 minutes to load an HD trailer and afterwards it was at least half that if not less.... in other words not an excruciating wait.

I was watching TV tonight and I saw a commercial from Circuit City. They where advertising Lexmark's new WiFi Printers. I knew of wireless printers before but it seems now they are becoming more affordable and you can get ones that also have wireless image scanning as well. My old HP all-in-one's printing function has crapped out so I've been thinking of getting a new printer. My family hasn't been to keen on getting a wireless printer that only prints though so they may be more likely to buy one that also does scanning\copying\faxing.

The title of this comes from how I thought that all this stuff would have been even more useful 8 years ago when I was going to college and my sister also lived here and we where first getting into networking to share resources. Back then I had my printer set to share but it was in my room so when my sister would be printing stuff out in the morning she would have to come downstairs to my room while I'm sleeping and the printer is shaking my computer desk and generally making noise printing out her stuff.

Ever since then I had been fantasizing about having the printer be in a more central location but never had the right equipment to do it. I do now although I don't need that as much but I would still like to have a WiFi printer anyway. I bet my family would make use of it more than previously if it was in a location that isn't as out of the way to them as it is in my room. I wouldn't mind running upstairs to print and scan as I'm not all that lazy.

The brand I'm looking at for my printing needs is of course Lexmark. I was looking at the spec's of the printers and it looks like they are Mac compatible and include discs with Mac software. I'm thinking that perhaps that also means the wireless scanning function is also Mac compatible. Of course the scanning on my busted HP printer still works but it would be nice to be able to replace it completely with the new printer.

I'm going to want to talk to my family about this when they get home.

The only dissapointment so far is the printers don't seem to be 802.11n compatible. So I would have to turn on 802.11g in my router for them to work. I have it currently with only n since I just have one client hooked up to the router and it is an n client.

A little back story before I begin. This past month or two I have upgraded my house's network router to one that has Wi-Fi 802.11n. So far we have one computer that is hooked up via Wi-Fi. I put a PCI card into it. We also have two sets of cordless phones in the house. Just the other week however my dad was yelling at me because he noticed whenever he uses the white uniden cordless phones upstairs the Wi-Fi on said desktop PC would disconnect.

( Continued Inside... )

A little back story before I begin. This past month or two I have upgraded my house's network router to one that has Wi-Fi 802.11n. So far we have one computer that is hooked up via Wi-Fi. I put a PCI card into it. We also have two sets of cordless phones in the house. Just the other week however my dad was yelling at me because he noticed whenever he uses the white uniden cordless phones upstairs the Wi-Fi on said desktop PC would disconnect.

( Continued Inside... )

This past month I have upgraded my router to one with Wi-Fi (802.11n, a Cisco\Linksys with DD-WRT installed). ( The geekery is inside..... )

That's it for now I'll write some non-computer related stuff later.

I told my family that I'm thinking of moving back home to help cut down costs and that may happen when my lease runs out provided I don't get housing first. But it has gotten me started thinking of what I might do at home as far as networking the computers in the house go.

So I was thinking "What would be the best network setup for a mixed computer network (Mac\PC) in a 2 story house?" There's one thing for sure... I don't want any USB adaptors that require drivers. That wouldn't work for my Mac.

A little background. The last time I lived at home I used HomePNA 1.0 network cards to share an internet connection which turned every phone jack in the house into a network jack and that worked pretty good although the downside to it is because of the ISP we had to use I had to use windows internet sharing which meant that I had to keep my computer on and if I had to reboot for any reason it would cause internet downtime for the others on the network. So I would like to avoid having to use ICS if at all possible. I was thinking of going with HomePNA for the networking part of the equation again but I'd have to get new network adaptors\bridges to get it all setup and I seem to have a hard time finding good non USB adaptors for the new spec. A thing that was cool about HomePNA is that even when the phone service was shut off for whatever reason the network still functioned and it was a lot faster than dial-up... also I could setup both internet and networking over the same line (when we had to use dialup).

The simplest and cheapest way would be to tack up some ethernet cable and use my current router... and that wouldn't be too bad at least for one floor. But I kind of don't want to do that between floors. I would have to tack cable up the stairs or have a hole drilled to snake cable to downstairs. So I'm thinking of some kind of bridge for connecting floor A to floor B. But I have a whole year to think of that. The simplest and cheapest way would also be the fastest but I don't relish having to run wire all over the house.

I know my sister might want a wireless network but I've heard that they don't work too well between floors and I don't have an airport card in my Mac Mini so I'd have to have it ugpraded... so again the cheapest way would be the string cable everywhere way. =P

I also thought of power line networking but reading about it the performance\stability seems spotty. There's also a HomePNA and other named standard that uses coaxial cables (like cable internet\tv) but I don't know if the cables in the house are setup properly to allow that to happen... but I know that's gotta have good performance.

One last thing is I have to find out what kind of broadband service we can get if any. I checked comcast's web site and they say they install in our area but I'm not sure if that was correct information. My Dad said he hasn't seen them out there.. but then again I don't think my family stays there long enough to find out with having to work out of town and all. The other alternative is satellite internet but the latency on that kind of scares me off a bit. I wonder if any wireless ISPs are available and affordable.

While looking at wireless ISP stuff I noticed the KOA Campgrounds in my state have wireless hot spot. That's interesting to me... hmmm.. and other campgrounds too.. that's awesome!

Hmmm... it looks like Cable internet is available in my families area! I ran the adress there through comcast's site a few times and they are offering internet packages... hmm..... I want to go for that, man.

I told my family that I'm thinking of moving back home to help cut down costs and that may happen when my lease runs out provided I don't get housing first. But it has gotten me started thinking of what I might do at home as far as networking the computers in the house go.

So I was thinking "What would be the best network setup for a mixed computer network (Mac\PC) in a 2 story house?" There's one thing for sure... I don't want any USB adaptors that require drivers. That wouldn't work for my Mac.

A little background. The last time I lived at home I used HomePNA 1.0 network cards to share an internet connection which turned every phone jack in the house into a network jack and that worked pretty good although the downside to it is because of the ISP we had to use I had to use windows internet sharing which meant that I had to keep my computer on and if I had to reboot for any reason it would cause internet downtime for the others on the network. So I would like to avoid having to use ICS if at all possible. I was thinking of going with HomePNA for the networking part of the equation again but I'd have to get new network adaptors\bridges to get it all setup and I seem to have a hard time finding good non USB adaptors for the new spec. A thing that was cool about HomePNA is that even when the phone service was shut off for whatever reason the network still functioned and it was a lot faster than dial-up... also I could setup both internet and networking over the same line (when we had to use dialup).

The simplest and cheapest way would be to tack up some ethernet cable and use my current router... and that wouldn't be too bad at least for one floor. But I kind of don't want to do that between floors. I would have to tack cable up the stairs or have a hole drilled to snake cable to downstairs. So I'm thinking of some kind of bridge for connecting floor A to floor B. But I have a whole year to think of that. The simplest and cheapest way would also be the fastest but I don't relish having to run wire all over the house.

I know my sister might want a wireless network but I've heard that they don't work too well between floors and I don't have an airport card in my Mac Mini so I'd have to have it ugpraded... so again the cheapest way would be the string cable everywhere way. =P

I also thought of power line networking but reading about it the performance\stability seems spotty. There's also a HomePNA and other named standard that uses coaxial cables (like cable internet\tv) but I don't know if the cables in the house are setup properly to allow that to happen... but I know that's gotta have good performance.

One last thing is I have to find out what kind of broadband service we can get if any. I checked comcast's web site and they say they install in our area but I'm not sure if that was correct information. My Dad said he hasn't seen them out there.. but then again I don't think my family stays there long enough to find out with having to work out of town and all. The other alternative is satellite internet but the latency on that kind of scares me off a bit. I wonder if any wireless ISPs are available and affordable.

While looking at wireless ISP stuff I noticed the KOA Campgrounds in my state have wireless hot spot. That's interesting to me... hmmm.. and other campgrounds too.. that's awesome!

Hmmm... it looks like Cable internet is available in my families area! I ran the adress there through comcast's site a few times and they are offering internet packages... hmm..... I want to go for that, man.