ReelSmart.com » Networking

State of iPhone Tethering, NetShare STILL Works

Stephen Antonucci — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:42:32 +0000

Some road warriors may be a bit disappointed that AT&T has still not announced plans for tethering their iPhone to their computer to share its network connection. This is a real help to some users as they can use their iPhone's 3G cellular connection with their laptop when there is no WiFi to be had. As I am sure AT&T eventually bring a tethering plan to the iPhone, especially since iPhone 3.0 includes features for tethering via Bluetooth and USB in the OS. Don't expect it to be free or even cheap. Tethering plans tend to run $30 or more a month with most carriers. In the meantime, Cleve Nettles over at 9to5mac has a quick tutorial to get tethering working with your Mac in a few easy steps. AT&T was probably the main reason that Nullriver's NetShare, an app that allows you to use proxies to share your iPhone's cellular connection with your Mac, was quickly pulled from the App Store. I was one of the lucky ones who purchased this app as it was only available for a few hours before being yanked forever from the US iTunes App Store. Well I am happy to say that NetShare is STILL working with iPhone 3.0! Best $10 I ever spent. Other solutions for serious road warriors is to buy a separate broadband plan and pick yourself a CradlePoint Router [see my review] or check into the new MyFi Mobile Hotspot from VerizonWireless. With these devices you can have WiFi almost anywhere even in your car! These solutions are a bit more expensive, but may well worth it to some users that need a connection 24/7.

Apple Releases AirPort Utility 5.4.2

Stephen Antonucci — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:34:08 +0000

Apple has released AirPort Utility 5.4.2, an update of the software for their wireless AirPort Express Base Stations, AirPort Extreme Base Stations and Time Capsules. Apple claims fixes addressed include:

An issue causing AirPort Utility to be unable to read certain AirPort wireless device configurations.
An issue causing AirPort Utility to sometimes be unable to discover an AirPort wireless device when Back To My Mac is enabled.
An issue causing AirPort Utility to sometimes be unable to download firmware.
An issue causing AirPort Utility to not correctly import Access Control Lists created in AirPort Admin Utility 4.x. AirPort Utility 5.4.2 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
Adds the ability in AirPort Utility to show all wireless passwords in the “Equivalent Network Password” sheet.

Russia Does Not Need Dell Either

Stephen Antonucci — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:00:47 +0000

At the official opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Vladimir Putin, Russian Prime Minister, delivered a 40-minute speech touching on everything from why the dollar should not be the sole reserve currency to how the world needed to enter into a smart energy partnership with Russia. The Dell slapdown took many of the people in the audience by surprise. Putin then went on to outline some of the steps the Russian government has taken to wire up the country, including remote villages in Siberia. And, in a final dig at Dell, he talked about how Russian scientists were rightly respected not for their hardware, but for their software. The implication being any fool can build a PC. Michael Dell probably thinks that Russia should close down the country and give it back to the people! Time for questions. First up was Michael Dell, while praising Russia's technical and scientific prowess, he asked, "How can we help" you to expand IT in Russia. Answer from Putin, "We don't need help. We are not invalids. We don't have limited mental capacity."

Nortel Seeks Bankruptcy Protection

Stephen Antonucci — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:44:07 +0000

Nortel Networks has filed for bankruptcy protection on today, a day before it was scheduled to make an interest payment of about $107 million. Nortel and a number of its affiliates filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. NY Times.

AT&T and Apple Enjoying a Latte

Stephen Antonucci — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:27:04 +0000

AT&T has taken over the Wi-Fi access service from T-Mobile at more than 17,000 U.S. hot spots and 70,000 globally Starbucks locations. Apple's iPhone and iPod touch users have had the option of using the iTunes Wi-Fi Store and seeing what the last ten songs played in any of these enabled Starbucks since around October 2007. AT&T DSL subscribers who get free Wi-Fi access with their connections now have this access. According to AT&T, Starbucks card holders will get two hours of free Wi-Fi per day, and employees (partners) will get free access. I wonder how much of AT&T being the sole iPhone network provider has played into this partnership.

From the press release: Beginning this spring, Starbucks Card holders can enjoy up to two hours of free Wi-Fi service per day at Starbucks locations offering Wi-Fi access, while more than 12 million qualifying AT&T broadband and AT&T U-verseSM Internet customers will have unlimited free access to the Wi-Fi service. In addition, more than 5 million of AT&T's remote access services business customers will be able to access Wi-Fi service at Starbucks locations. AT&T will soon extend the benefits of Wi-Fi at Starbucks to its wireless customers.

AT&T is also changing access pricing, which used to be $10 per day and $6 per hour under T-Mobile. Under the AT&T flag, access now costs $6 for two hours of use. $20 remains AT&T's monthly access price, unless you're a broadband customer, most of whom get access for free. AT&T's hotspot locators (which of course doesn't include the Starbucks locations yet) is available here.

ShareTool Allows Mac Users Access To Their Home Network

Stephen Antonucci — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:58:45 +0000

ShareTool is a $20 utility that allows Mac users to access all of the Bonjour services on your home network from anywhere in the world. This includes iTunes Music Sharing, Screen Sharing, File Sharing, and more. With ShareTool, you can listen to your entire iTunes music library at work, control the screen of any of your home computers, or grab that important file you forgot to bring with you. You can try it out for 15 minutes for free.

OpenDNS May Speed Your Surfing

Stephen Antonucci — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:01:08 +0000

DNS (Domain Name System) is something most people using a computer on the Internet take for granted. When you type in a URL in the address bar in your browser it is DNS that translates this into numbers that computers understand. DNS is like a huge phone book for the Internet. You want to get to ReelSmart.com and it is DNS that does the lookup to find what IP address ReelSmart.com resides at. Without DNS you go nowhere. DNS is usually done by your ISP. Unfortunately, many ISPs do a horrible job of it. They sometimes run DNS on older under powered neglected servers that are way too busy. This can slow your browsing down. Some people blame this slowness on their broadband connection when it is actually a slow DNS service from you ISP that is to blame. OpenDNS is a free service that you can use that can speed up these lookups and offer many other features. All you need to do to get started is use these IP addresses 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 in your Network settings. OpenDNS has a easy to follow guide, the entire process of adding the new DNS settings and creating an account will tale less than two minutes. It Is Not Just Faster, Its Safer and More Convenient OpenDNS does offer faster DNS lookups than many ISPs, but they do more:

Correct spelling errors so if you try to visit www.craigslist.or or www.yahoo.cmo they will automatically correct it for you!

Shortcuts allow you type say "mail" in your browser and you will be brought to https://www.gmail.com. You set the shortcuts.

Anti-phishing at the DNS level so if you try to visit http://www.internetbadguys.com you'll see a Phishing Site Blocked message. That's cool and safer. Possible saving you time removing spyware from your Windows box.

Safeguard your kids, protect your students, or limit your corporate liability by blocking adult websites. Hundreds of school districts are using OpenDNS to achieve CIPA compliance.

Domain Blocking allows you to secure your network and have control over what resolves.

I have been using OpenDNS for about 8 months and have been very happy with the results. Verizon does a nice job with DNS, I must say. Even though I have a Verizon FiOS connection at home I like the features of OpenDNS.

Stream Media from Mac to PS3 with Medialink

Stephen Antonucci — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:32:30 +0000

Access your Mac’s media on your PS3 with Nullriver's Medialink Software $20 (free trial available). Once installed on your Mac, Medialink resides in the System Preferences where you can choose exactly what sources you want to share, like your iTunes or iPhoto Library. On the Playstation 3 XMB (XrossMediaBar) you can access all of your selected sources under Photos, Videos, or Music and selecting the Nullriver Medialink server. Medialink supports many different file types, including: MP3, WMA, WAV, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, H.264, AVI, WMV, ASF, DIVX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP and many more. Medialink will not play DRM protected bought from the iTunes Store on your PS3 however.

USB727: Broadband Anywhere for My MacBook Pro

Stephen Antonucci — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:17:50 +0000

BroadbandAccess/NationalAccess service for a the last few years. This service allows road warriors to connect to the Internet where no "hotspot" exists. This is a real connivence that allows me to get email, surf the web, remote desktop to my home or office from almost anywhere. With my recent purchase of a new Apple Intel MacBook Pro I needed to upgrade my older Verizon Wireless PC card. The new MacBook Pro has a different PC slot than my older PowerBook had. The MacBook Pro uses an ExpressCard/34 slot which is narrower than the PowerBook and PC laptops I have. So I opted to get a USB727 that Verizon is now offering so I could use it on all my computers. This is especially a good choice for MacBook owners that lack any PC slot.

Comcast Traffic Shaping Also Affects Gnutella and Lotus Notes – UPDATED

Stephen Antonucci — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:44:26 +0000

I posted about Comcast the number two ISP in the U.S., using traffic shaping to slow and block BitTorrent users. More reports are coming in that methods Comcast are using are also affecting Gnutella and Lotus Notes users. The Electronic Frontier Foundation joins the Associated Press, as well as several others in confirming Comcast's traffic shaping practices using forged TCP packets with the RST (reset) flag set. This is a dangerous precedent that truly shows that Net Neutrality is in trouble. It is one thing to "manage your network" as Comcast suggests and purely another thing to target certain types of users and protocols. Comcast is filtering the port 1352 traffic, according to Kevin Kanarski, who is actively working with IBM/Lotus and now has proof that Comcast traffic shaping is affecting Lotus Notes. This affects many employees who work in large companies that use Lotus Notes and need to get their email and attachments at home. Comcast from what I have read denies that they are doing this. But have been caught with tests run by several sources. I guess this a lot like when they denied they were slowing competitors VoIP services. According to tests by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Comcast is forging TCP RST packets which cause connections to drop (a technique also used by Internet censorship systems in China). These packets cause software at both ends to believe, mistakenly, that the software on the other side doesn't want to continue communicating. "Comcast keeps telling its users that the problems they're seeing are not its fault. It's time for Comcast to come clean about what it's doing and take its users' reports seriously."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation: When an ISP starts arbitrarily zapping some of the protocols that its customers use, they instantly endanger the cascade of innovation that the Internet has enabled. Before this kind of traffic jamming, anybody — huge businesses, small start-ups, college students and children in their bedrooms — could build new, innovative protocols on top of the Internet's TCP/IP platform. If this type of conduct is allowed to continue, many innovators will have to get active assistance from an ISP in order to have their protocols allowed through the ISP's web of spoofing and forgery. Technologies like BitTorrent and Joost, which are used to distribute licensed movies and are in direct competition with Comcast's cable TV services, will be at Comcast's mercy.

It is time for some Comcast customers to step up and complain loudly and drop them for another ISP. Problem is some subscribers have NO CHOICE. Is it that the large ISPs like Comcast feel their lobbying machine have already sufficiently killed Net Neutrality? If consumers do not put a stop to this the Internet will soon be a very different place. One controlled by a few large companies that can stifle competition easily and the result will be the death to innovation on the Internet. At least in the U.S.

More Windows Vista Woes: Choose Sound or Speed

Stephen Antonucci — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:25:59 +0000

Playing Music Slows Vista Network Performance? From Slashdot: "Over the months since Vista's release, there has been no doubt about the reduced level of network performance experienced compared to Windows XP. However, some users over at the 2CPU forums have discovered an unexplained connection with audio playback resulting in a cap at approximately 5%-10% of total network throughput. Whenever any audio is being sent to a sound card (even, several users report, while paused), network performance is instantly reduced. As soon as the audio is stopped, the throughput begins to climb to its expected speed. It's a tough one for users — what do you pick, sound or speed? So much for multi-tasking."

Flushing the Cache on a High Fiber Diet?

Stephen Antonucci — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:36:17 +0000

Forget using the power lines for broandband. How about "Broadband By Sewer?" Well the people doing the cabling may have a REALLY "sh%$ty" job. But this is an idea that does save money. Posted on BroadbandReports.com, This has been recently deployed by UK's University of Aberdeen who has spent the summer running fiber through their sewer system in order to offer students fiber broadband service in their dorms as they return this fall. The University is using a system developed by H20 Networks (just think of the other names they could have used) that uses sewer lines to deploy fiber quickly and relatively inexpensively. "The Focus System reduces road digging by up to 80% and, in many cases, removes any wayleave permission requirements. We can deploy up to 2000 metres per day. . . During the next 12 months H2O will install over 200km of dark fibre links or networks for its customers." Paris has also been deploying a significant volume of fiber in the city's sewer system. Maryland-based CityNet Telecommunications made a splash back in 2001 for developing a fiber-laying sewer robot, but after $275 million in VC investment the idea never quite flushed. With Corning's recent bendable fiber breakthrough, perhaps this will be an increasingly common deployment method. Obviously, this isn't to be confused with Google's TISP (photo above) April Fool's joke system. A ROYAL FLUSH may be available in your area!

Apple Brings Airport Update

Stephen Antonucci — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 01:47:50 +0000

Many have reported problems with WiFi since the OS X 10.4.10 update. Apple has released the Airport Extreme Update 2007-4. Apple doesn't say much about what the update contains but does say it "is recommended for all Intel-based MacBook, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini computers and improves the reliability of AirPort connections." Maybe this will fix your issues, if you had any.

Finding Your Network With Dynamic IP Addresses

Stephen Antonucci — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 17:27:21 +0000

Chances are if you have DSL, Cable modem, or FiOS for your high-speed connection to your home, your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is using a dynamic public IP address. What this means is the "public" IP address is basically "leased" from a pool of IP addresses your ISP has designated for its users. Your IP address is a bit like your phone number. as this is how other computers and services on the Internet can connect to you. Unlike a "static" IP address, the dynamic IP your ISP is leasing to you can change. It can change when you reboot your router, power down your modem, or on any interval your ISP has set. Usually the only way you can get a "static" IP address is to pay extra for one, if your ISP offers this service.

Business connections usually include "static" IP address(es) in their connection agreement. The cost for a business package, if it is available, is much higher than what you will usually pay for a residential package. Why does this matter to the consumer, you might ask? For browsing the web, email, and many common tasks, nothing. Having a "dynamic" IP address that can change on your high-speed access is basically seamless to an average computer user. But what if you want to access your network or your computer remotely? Well I have a great suggestion for you.

Wireless Security for Home Networks

Stephen Antonucci — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 00:30:11 +0000

Setting up a wireless router at your home is a pretty easy process. Inexpensive NAT routers with built-in wireless are available from Linksys, D-Link, Apple, Netgear, etc. Securing your wireless network is not as easy as it should be, as these routers have several choices to help you lock down and secure your home wireless network. They may offer WEP, WPA, or Mac Address filtering and usually ship in an insecure state. Which should you use? The problems really begin when people do not understand basic wireless security and end up leaving them in the insecure state they came in. The router makers sometimes do not do a good job explaining security or in some cases make claims that are simply not correct.