First up, Brian Burch, HP’s director of marketing for connected entertainment, took me on a tour of the HP Smart Home, an actual 2,000-square-foot, fully functional house built on the company’s HQ. Check out a demo of the MediaSmart TV and Connect, as well as a teched-out kid’s room that would bring a smile to even the most pouty teenager.

Netgear's Digital Lifestyle Home isn't as impressive, mainly because it isn't a house at all, but rather a big room furnished by IKEA. But Phil Pyo, Netgear’s director of product marketing walked me through his company's Digital Entertainer set tob box (where you can see how YouTube looks on the big screen) as well as a few other home networking gizmos (think: powerlines).

The only thing these houses of tomorrow are missing? Jetpacks. Lots and lots of jetpacks.

Brian Burch, HP's director of marketing for connected entertainment, took me on a tour of the HP Smart Home, an actual 2,000-square-foot, fully functional house built on the company's HQ. It's pretty cool, and packed with gadgets like the MediaSmart TV and Connect, control display for home functions and a teched-out kid's room that would bring a smile to even the most angst-ridden teenager. Here's a video walk-through of the house (or as I called it "Cribs: HP").

Netgear's set up wasn't as impressive. For one, it's really just a big room in an office building, not an actual house, and while HP's looks like it's furnished by Pottery Barn, Netgear's is all IKEA. But, it too was packed with networking gear and gizmos. Phil Pyo, Netgear's director of product marketing, showed off the room and demoed the company's TV set-top box, powerline connectivity, as well as some of its storage devices. Take the video tour here:

Sadly, no jet packs this time around. Perhaps if I visit the Pentagon's home of tomorrow...

Das Ding in der Mitte, das aussieht wie ein Serverschrank mit aktiviertem Kindchenschema, heisst Netgear ReadyNAS Duo und ist meine neue «Network Attached Storage»: eine Art Miniserver, der jetzt laufend mein ganzes Projektarchiv und Backup (und meine iTunes-Library) aufnehmen darf – und damit dann von allen meinen (ok, zwei) Computern aus plus optional übers Internetz erreichbar ist.

Hier ein paar erste Eindrücke – ein richtiges Review folgt, wenn ich mich mit dem Dingchen richtig eingelebt habe.

Gestern hab ich den Babyserver von der Post geholt und ihn dann abends gleich angefangen einzurichten. Erster Freudenanfall: Das Ding ist wirklich klein und schön. Erster Unfreundenanfall: Ich liebe es, wenn ich genau die passenden Netzkabel für meine Steckdosen erhalte, zumal ich schon in einem Schweizer Shop bestelle.

Aber egal, sowas wie Netzkabel hat man ja in der Kabelschublade noch rumliegen. (Sieht das bei anderen Leuten eigentlich auch so aus?)

In more relevant news: Das Ding ist wirklich smart. Es kann zwei SATA-Harddisks aufnehmen; bei mir ist eine schon drin (750GB), die zweite kann ich auch später ergänzen (sogar im laufenden Betrieb, wenn ich das dann unbedingt möchte). Ist nur eine HD drin, dann funktioniert das Gerät mehr oder weniger als normale «externe» Backup-Harddisk. Sobald eine zweite angehängt wird, konfiguriert sich das System zu einem RAID-1, spiegelt also die komplette erste Platte auf die zweite – komplette Redundanz (lustig, dass das Wort zumindest auf einem Bereich was Gutes heisst): Wenn es eine Platte lüpft, kann man nahtlos mit der andern weiterarbeiten. An sowas zeichnet sich schon ab, dass man es nicht nur mit einem externen Speichermedium zu tun hat, sondern im Grunde genommen wirklich mit einem kleinen Server – mit eigenem Betriebssystem (linux-basiert, glaub ich), RAID-Controller und so.

Auch von aussen viel Freude. Die Harddisks werden zum Beispiel nicht direkt ins Gerät geschraubt, sondern in so Laden, also Halterungen, die man dann hineinschiebt. Sowas wirkt gut durchdacht und was auffällt: Die Verarbeitung von dem Gerät wirkt überzeugend, das Metallgehäuse solide, und die Tür des Kindchenschemaserverschrankes ist wirklich eine Klapptür (*freu*).

Hinten kann man – ausser der Ethernet-Connection des Dings an sich – optional noch USB-Datenträger anhängen, die dann als einzelne Shares des Servers ansprechbar sind. Genau das funktioniert bei mir nicht so richtig, wird aber wohl an der Mac-OS-Extended-Formatierung der USB-Platte liegen.

Ja. Ansonsten kann ich berichten, dass das Ding aufzusetzen schon nicht ganz so trivial ist wie bei einer externen USB-Disk, aber es erscheint mir bis jetzt durchaus machbar (und ich bin keine besondere Netzwerkauskennerin). Allerdings hab ich die schwierigeren Sachen wie FTP-User- und Rechteverwaltung noch vor mir. Und die Dokumentation ist ein bisschen dürftig. Und der iTunes-Streaming-Service funzt auch nicht wirklich, aber das mach ich jetzt eh anders. Überhaupt kann das Ding soviele Sachen (Protokolle, Dienste, Services, Zusatzprogramme), dass ich mich schon noch ein bisschen vertiefter damit werde auseinandersetzen müssen. Im Moment erfreue ich mich des Kindchenschemas, des beruhigenden, leisen Brummelns des Gerätes, der Einfachheit und Zuverlässigkeit seiner Einbindung via AFP und verschiebe dabei meine Musik. :-)

I decided to try and remove the sky firmware and reinstall the original sky firmware. I discovered a good guide on how to do this on the skyuser forum, this is the post i used.

I've spent the last few days trying to recover the router, as the recovery tool you have to use causes Vista to Bluescreen! I initally thought i'd bricked the router but as i spent more time researching i discovered that it could still be saved!

So this post is basically to provide more advice to people wanting to re-flash their router, mainly highlighting a couple of things missing from the guide in the skyusers post above.

1. DO NOT USE VISTA! The Netgear recovery tool does not work properly on Vista, and every time i tried it caused my computer to bluescreen.
2. Make sure you only have one firmware file in the directory. This is the problem i had and until someone mentioned this on another site i had two firmware files in that directory. As soon as i took one out it worked. Just for reference, when both files were there the recovery tool didn't see the device. I tried several computers but no luck. I went back to the original XP machine i used and made sure i had just one firmware file and it worked stratight away.
3. You may need to set a static IP address. If you do, use the following settings:

IP Address: 192.168.0.2

Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0

Default gateway: 192.168.0.1

DNS Server: 192.168.0.1

Without the post on the skyuser forum i would not have managed to recover my router, so a lot of thanks goes to all the users there. I hope this post helps anyone else in the same situation, please post if this is of use to you.

Another 3 phones can be added, allowing you to replace all your cordless phones with the Netgear Dual-Mode phone.

Another advantage to this great phone is that it has a sleek and stylish design, although it will set you back $130, it is really worth it.

]]> http://ghvlabs.wordpress.com/?p=13 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:46:03 +0000 ghvlabs http://ghvlabs.wordpress.com/?p=13

Nome

Wifi on/off Netgear Dg834G

Descrizione

Piccolo programmino per disattivare e attivare il Wifi del modem Netgear Dg834G, e probabilmente tutti quelli della serie Netgear con il wifi, senza usare l'interfaccia web.

Linguaggio

Python

Uso

python wifi on/off (di default il parametro è off)

Errori conosciuti

A volte non funziona al primo tentativo, probabilmente ci sarebbero da implementare alcuni controlli sull'avvenuta attivazione/disattivazione del wifi.

Download

Sorgente

Sorgente

#! /usr/bin/env python
import urllib2
import sys
def on():
sock=urllib2.Request(url="http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi",data="ssid=NETGEAR&WRegion=Europe&w_channel=9&wire_mode=gb&enable_ap=enable_ap&ssid_bc=ssid_bc&security_type=0&save=Applica&h_WRegion=Europe&h_w_channel=9&h_wire_mode=gb&h_enable_ap=enable&h_ssid_bc=enable&h_wire_iso=disable&h_security_type=0&todo=save&this_file=wire_off.htm&next_file=wire_off.htm")
sock.add_header("Authorization","Basic YWRtaW46cGFzc3dvcmQ=")#Basic= nome:password in base64
stream=urllib2.urlopen(sock).read()
def off():
sock=urllib2.Request(url="http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi",data="ssid=NETGEAR&WRegion=Europe&w_channel=9&wire_mode=gb&security_type=0&save=Applica&h_WRegion=Europe&h_w_channel=9&h_wire_mode=gb&h_enable_ap=disable&h_ssid_bc=disable&h_wire_iso=disable&h_security_type=0&todo=save&this_file=wire_off.htm&next_file=wire_off.htm")
sock.add_header("Authorization","Basic YWRtaW46cGFzc3dvcmQ=")#Basic= nome:password in base64
stream=urllib2.urlopen(sock).read()
try:
if sys.argv[1]=="on":
on()
except:
off()

print "Eseguito"

Last week saw the launch of Netgear's Open Source Wireless-G Router, the WGR614L. Based around a 240MHz MIPS-based 32-bit CPU with 16MB RAM and 4MB of flash memory for storage, the router is designed to be as friendly as possible to people hoping to try out Linux-based firmware like Tomato, DD-WRT, and OpenWrt. Far from the usual 'see no evil, hear no evil' approach taken by companies with regards to third-party firmware running on their devices, Netgear is actively encouraging development around their latest router – to the point of endorsing a website containing all the hints and tips you would need to get the firmware of your choice up and running.

The launch of the product hasn't been without its little hiccoughs, however: members on the official website have been complaining that their supposed open source router has been a standard closed source unit. Netgear has admitted that packing errors at a distributor resulted in the wrong routers being shipped out to certain US stores, and has issued a recall for the affected units. With any luck, that problem should be a thing of the past.

The routers, while being underpowered when compared to a fully-fledged PC-based homebrew model, offer a great deal of flexibility compared to traditional closed-source models; further, the ability to choose the firmware that best suits your needs means this could finally be a 'one-size-fits-all' hardware solution.

Whether sales of the open source approved router will exceed – or even come close to – that of its more traditional brethren remains to be seen: it's nice to see a mainstream manufacturer dipping its toes in the hacking market, however.

Would you be tempted by a router that runs DD-WRT with no hacking required, or is stock firmware more than enough for you? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

I'm not a typical user. I'm an early adopter. I don't mind putting in some effort to making something work up to its promised potential. I also like open source, but I just don't see the value in running 3rd party software on a hobbled router platform. It's just not good use of my time.

I'm interested in Vyatta, which Garrett Smith notes is a worthy contender in the open source router world. However, Vyatta targets a larger and more sophisticated installation than I face. I'd suggest that Vyatta, while interesting is beyond the scope of most SOHO applications. It's administration has more in common with Cisco IOS than a consumer Linksys or Netgear router.

Instead, I run m0n0wall on a Soekris platform. I'd also consider pfSense which has greater depth than m0n0wall but requires a more capable host platform.

When I initially implemented m0n0wall the Soekris Net4801 that I selected cost over $200, expensive compared to the Linksys WRT-54GL. But completely worth the cost for the added hardware flexibility.

However, the newer ALIX boards that from PCEngines now cost only $125 with a case. For that price I'd rather have the ALIX board than the Netgear hardware. Much more powerful, configurable, open hardware.

For me, requiring only a few systems, there's just no compelling reason to go ultra-low-bid with Linksys or Netgear hardware when I intend to run open source software.

I generally like Netgear products, but I don't see much value in this new router. There's nothing to make it stand out. If it had some great new hardware capability, like more RAM, support for WMM, a couple of FXS ports and support for Asterisk...that'd be a whole 'nuther matter.

What I've done was to buy a Powerline kit NetGear XETB1001 with two powerline XE103 devices. After some configuration it worked out of the box directly without any issues, after they are connected directly to the wall socket, not through a power cord extension!!!! Between the router and my PC I have a rock stead 35MBps connection (not the 85MBps, but I did know that...) and it works, works, works.

So bye bye wireless!

Note: Wireless is become enven in my work office unstable, and it is a security risk. It doesn't worth the trouble.

Why bother? Networked computers can share not just your Internet connection but also printers and files. You can even backup files from one computer to another.

While you can connect two computers directly together, your network will be much more reliable if you purchase a router, around $50. Linksys, Netgear, and D-Link are popular brands. A router will manage your network for you, by “routing” the signals between your computers and your Internet connection, much like a traffic cop. In addition, most routers have a built-in firewall that will provide basic protection against hackers.

Get your bum down to GoCeBIT.

I have just finished editing a bunch of great new video content featuring the following speakers and more.

Thanks for letting me be part of such a great event.

They are in no particular order.

A great resource for you to take advantage of, yes my eyes are 16X9 wide screen square now!

There are some top international speakers talking about innovation of all types.

Including:

• AGIMO - Ms Ann Steward, Aust. Govt Chief Information Officer
• Australian Government - Hon. Lindsay Tanner MP, Minister for Finance and Deregulation
• Australian Government - Senator the Hon, Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband
• Sage - Charles Pludthuro
• Saasu - Marc Lehmann, Director and Founder
• Siemens - Eric Hampell, General Manager (Aust. & NZ)
• Sony Aust Ltd - Peter Norman, Group Marketing Manager
• Motion Computing - Brett Gross, Regional Manager (Aust. & NZ)
• Netforce - Scott Atkinson, Director - CTO
• Pronto Software - Paul Goepfert, Marketing Manager
• NSW DSRD - Wayne Sonter, Manager, Innovation and Technology
• Advantech - Brad Waters, Account Manager
• Oracle - Shane Owenby, Senior Director
• Deutsche Messe AG - Dr Andreas Gruchow, Board Member
• Abuzz - Morgan Drew, CEO
• Thomson - Tony Lynch, General Manager
• Jabra - Paul M. Nettelbeck, Marketing Manager (Aust. & NZ)
• Grove Communications - Paul Rankin, Owner
• Trixbox - Tanya Thompson, Marketing Manager
• D-Link - Maurice Famularo, Marketing Director (Aust. & NZ)
• Talkswitch - Michael Sellwood, Vice President International Business Development
• Joomla - Andrew Eddie, Lead Developer
• AussieHQ - Michael McGoogan, Managing Director
• AVG - Lloyd Borrett, Marketing Manager
• University of Wollongong - David Fuller, Director, Innovation Campus
• Fujitsu Australia - Liam O'Duibhir, Programme Manager / Biz3 - Zachary Zeus, Principal
• Netcomm - Danny Morrison, General Manager
• Alloy - Karl Baker, Marketing Director
• Rohde & Schwarz - Simon Haynes, Broadcast Account Manager
• Motion Computing - Brett Gross, Regional Manager (Aust. & NZ)
• Altech - Kevin Hartin & Antony Sheen, Managing Director
• Bluefire - Jason Serda, Managing Director
• Hot Goanna - MArk Tull
• SBS - Mark Boyd, EP World News
• SBS - Paula Marcello, Director Radio
• SBS, Nikki Canning, Radio
• NAB - David De Garis, Senior Economist
• Audi
• Engin
• Yahoo! - Willie Pang
  
• Netgear - Kimberley Odewah
• eWay - Matt Bullock
• Panasonic - Barry Armstrong
• CSIRO - Stephen Giugni
• MIT - Prof. Richard Lester
• ZeROIN - Mark Thompson
• Boeing Company - Al Bryant
• Telstra - Lin Marie
• NICTA - Dr David Skellern
• Navteq - Brent Stafford
• Mahalo - Jason Calacanis
• Melbourne IT
• Motorola
• Optus
• and several keynote addresses from the eGov, Aus Innovate, Transact 2.0, ministerial addresses,experts, interviews AND MORE!.

Hope you enjoy it.

JA

I've used this router for years, and it's performed dutifully until recently. With recent firmware updates however, two notable feature have stopped working correctly: listing devices that have opened ports using Universal Plug N Play (UPnP) and having the router detect and fetch firmware updates itself.

Why does the UPnP listing matter to me so much? Because I have two routers: one for WEP and one for WAP. The WAP router exists inside the WEP network. As both are acting as gateways, this allows me to give devices in my home WEP access without compromising the rest of internal network. However, if devices open up ports on the WAP router, those ports are not going to be opened up on the WEP router. Thus, I need to know what ports are being opened.

This worked fine until I went to do the More Ports On XBox Live article. A firmware update was available but didn't solve the problem. A settings reset did, but I should have known something was up when ports remained "stuck" even when the devices were turned off.

My wife recently started playing Phantasy Star Universe with me, which meant for the first time I actually had two XBox 360's running at the same time. For whatever reason, the first one to connect to XBox Live was the only one that could be heard by other people in the party. The second person was SOL, even though we could always hear each other through the headset.

There was yet another firmware update available, but this time the update and settings reset did not work.

For the heck of it, I checked DD-WRT to see the status of Atheros chipset support. Lo and behold, what do you know? It's there BUT Netgear encrypts their firmware files so third party firmware can't be loaded.

Another thing that has bothered me from the very beginning was the unnecessary restriction of not being able to tell the router to hand out IP addresses that were out of range with those you assign statically. In other words, if I tell the router to always give my file server the IP address 192.168.1.2, I can't tell it to start handing out IP addresses via DHCP at 192.168.1.201. Why? Setting DHCP to start handing out dynamic IP addresses this high is a good way to single out new/unknown computers on the network. With Netgear's logic, new/unknown computers now fill in gaps in my IP addressing scheme.

And lastly, I have no clue why vendors fail to understand how URLs work. If you're going to tell your hardware to check a URL for updates, you better make sure that URL is available forever. That's just piss-poor customer service, because only techies like myself are going to know right off the bat where to go to get firmware updates. The others are just going to assume, incorrectly, that you know what you're doing and their firmware is up-to-date.

So long Netgear! You have been replaced by the Asus WL-520GU and the third party DD-WRT.

Users will have the option of downloading the bundled version or not. In practice, an Orb user would get access to BitTorrent content on his PC and then be able to use Orb to stream that content to any of his devices -- from a PS3 to an iPhone. Typically BitTorrent is used to download content -- video or music -- to a personal computer, which is difficult to share within the home.

From that perspective, this alliance with Orb makes a lot of sense, though we're not sure how big an impact it's likely to have: As of February 2008, Orb had about 5 million users, big -- but not big enough.

BitTorrent, long the preserve of techie types, is trying to go mainstream and become a viable way to distribute large media files, including video; the company has been working with chip makers and network device makers to embed BitTorrent protocol into many different devices. With the rise of high-definition video forecast to cause network congestion, BitTorrent and other P2P technologies are viewed as saviors, one of the main reasons why the San Francisco-based company continues to get a lot of investment dollars.

BitTorrent says it has more than 160 clients installed worldwide and has several existing partnership deals ranging from hardware companies such as Netgear and content providers such as MTV Networks.

My new Netgear Dual Band WNDR3300 with 80mm fan and WNDR3100 Adapter with 60mm fan to keep them cool.

This blog is about the New Netgear Dual Band Router WNDR 3300 and Dual band Adapter WNDA3100
I bought the set up after 2 year’s of on going lost of signal and connections from, Netgear Super G Router WGT624v3 used with Adapters WG111T set-up.

My brother set it up with WEP security.
After 20 months of trouble, I learned to log on to the router and change to the (WPA2-PSK)[AES] higher security and went for 63 characters length pass phrase random generated from a web site, copy and pasted saved to word document.
I am not all that computer savvy so it took me a while and slowly figure out how to set this all up.How to Hide SSID , turn plug and play off and use different Mac address & narrow the IP address to allow only 7 computers to log on.

Let me begin with I stepped up and went and bought the RANGEMAX NEXT WIRELESS-N ROUTER GIGABIT EDITION WNR854T that was on sale for $99.99 at Circuit City. It stated a Built-in Ultra Fast 5-port Gigabit Switch (1 LAN + 4 Gigabit Ethernet LAN Ports) Wired Gigabit delivers even faster wired + wireless-to-wired performance Advanced Wireless-N technology delivers exceptional range and speed Up to 15x the speed and 10x the coverage of Wireless-G technology†up to 300mbps
High-performance wireless perfect for multiple users and multimedia streaming
Touch less WiFi Security makes securing your network easy, so I bought it.

It Supports Windows® Vista™, my Dell E520 OS Home premium.
To my surprise signal was weak and worse, than Super-G 1x’s so I returned it and got my money back.

I saw the new Netgear Dual Band 2.4GHz ,B,G,- N-draft,with 5GHz (A) band
On sale for $109.99 at Best Buy, and bought it . Set up was easy, but I was yet to understand how to get the 5GHz signal. The blue lights turn on was cool and crazy so I turned it off.

The N- Draft band using G band was the stronger, channels 3 was best strength signal in -N- draft, but still too many drop offs.

When you first set-up the router dual SSID’s was confusing, you could use two different SSID’s but after software upgrade you can use only 1 SSID’S name for both dual band to configure high WPA2-PSK security.

I was glad the Dual Band Adapter WNDA3100 went on sale the next Sunday, for $79.99. I was the first one in the store that morning, my first ever. I was standing at the exit door and everyone at the entrance door. At 10:00AM the manager opened the exit door and waved to me to come in with a Good morning Wow! This was my lucky day, in and out in less than 5 minutes.

I could not wait to get home to set them up. You will need to download a Windows Hotfix for XP and other software to authenticate Windows Genuine software OS. If you haven't already done so.

Regular price was $99.99 I saved $40 bucks on the 2. They run hot so I hooked up a 60mm fan to the one in my room keep it cool) I do it with all my electronics. Hawaii weather no AC in my room, temps can gets hot 89 to 95 degrees upward in the summer time. For me warm hot weather is good for my disability to my left hand. Not good for electronics.

I really was not determined to blow big bucks to get a better stronger connection. @ $269.97 plus tax a total of $282.69 1 router 2 adapters, plus the 1 WN121T adapter for $40.00 from a guy selling it on Craigslist the week before. So my wireless new connection cost me $309.97 plus $20 for the 20 feet USB extension. So with about $330 spent. Really I could have bought a good fast used computer for that price. Super G GT624v3 Router & Adapter packaged purchased from Costco was only $99.99 plus $54.99 for extra adapter W111T @ Best buy 2 year's ago.

Oh, well cat5 wiring and crawling under the house would have been a great secured connection and savings around $150 . But I don’t know , I guess all this new technology and learning how to set-up a wireless connection & Security, downloading software and tweaks was a chance to loose some good money to gain a learning experience.

After setting up my computer closer to the router, I finally got connected to the 5GHz signal , after learning that, you must be in line with the Router from a blog site I came across searching for answers.

I really was about to give up after a week of trying to get connected to the 5GHz. and for the knowledge of how to setup my own Router and high security I was getting no where.

So far I am the only one using the 5GHz band in my neighborhood. Cool with no drop off or lost of signal connections.

My pay off has been with my $100 Craigslist eMachines T3882 cheap celeron 2.8GHz with 256mb 80GIG HD ,17inch monitor, the mouse & keyboard that was still in the plastic bag, with restore CD software, which was own by a elderly person.

This computer was hardly used I was told by the seller. Thank you very much is really what I said to Chris.

I upgraded the memory to 2GHz max. There is no PCIE upgrade slots. down side, but for a $100 buckaroo's I got a deal.

I was thrown a curve, when I bought a used 512Mb DDR2700 memory stick cheap for $20 bucks from a UH student (University of Hawaii)

When I opened up the computer to install the ram, I found out that it was loaded with 256mb of DDR3200 400MHz type ram. And not what the specification stated on web site. I found out that 2100, 2700, or 3200 can be used. DDR3200 being the faster ram. Sorry this is the best photo I could take. I installed the 512 anyways and now had 768mb. It was running at the slower bus speed with the 512 ram 2700, but still made a big difference in speed, with the now 768mb ram.
Booted up time 10 minute before with 256mb ram, to under 4 minutes. with the 512 slower 2700 ram added to the 256 DDR3200 WOW!

I thought what if I had 2gigs max ram??? You guess it Craigslist again , made a bid for a used pair of 1gig sticks for $90 He was asking a $100 or best offer? and I got the deal and met him at a super market. MY reason to go used? A new regular 1 gig stick ram at Best buy $136.99.

The only problem about buying from craigslist you never know who you're dealing with. So I always ask God to open or shut the door on any deal. If it is his will I will acquire it. I always try to do a fast research and get the specification before I email the person selling. I had a few bad no show when I go to meet the person. The reason I am also including how I purchased my set up to save some money is you may have already done the same or thinking about it.

The Holy Spirit is always my guide, and Angel's protecting us, meaning my Dad who's 84 who I take with me. Never go to a house by your self unless you know it is safe. Most people will ask to meet in a public place or setting. Safety always comes first when you are trying to save money. Money can not buy you your life back.

O'kay back to the ram, I bought the Kingston KHX3200AK2/2Gamming DDR 3200 ram. Now the boot load time 2minutes 20 seconds. Spent $190 made a boo boo on the $20 dollar 512mb 2700 ram so $210 another $10 for a 20 inch Sony flat screen CRT monitor bought the same day just a couple blocks away.

This was my first double same day craigslist purchase.The guy's were really polite people.

I now have spent $220 buckaroos for the computer set up. Oh yeah I was also given a free dusty dirty 17 inch Viewsoinic flat screen monitor from the purchase of the 20 inch Sony monitor. I cleaned it up and gave it to my brother. Worked and looked new. He did not hesitate,so you know it was good.

Now lets add the Netgear wireless setup of $330 plus computer and add on's $220 that's $550 dollars spent for my new web surfing, Email, blogging for 3 computers.The DVD drive added was a spare LG 16x48’s DVD-CD -DL- Lt.Scrib, + - RW drive, it Was $39.99 on sale at Best buy 2 years ago. So I spent more money on the wireless setup then on the extra computer.

I have a Dell E-520 Intel 3GHz Dual core I bought from the Dell Outlet store scratch & dent cost about $570 including shipping and handling 9 months ago. I use for burning movies,videos and other more important work.

Added 2ea. 120mm & 2ea. 80mm fans and it still runs hot. You can see I am fan crazy.

Even my Sony 21 inch CRT G500 gets cooled with two 120mm fans. Bought them brand new at the swap meet, 10 ea. at $3 dollars a piece.

The fan noise does not bother me at all,knowing my electronics will last allot longer this way. They are cleaned weekly when I vaccum the house.

I also installed fans in my Sony 20 & 27 inch tube TV's our 32 inch gets cool with a 9 inch AC fan. I am a fan- addict. Even my 2 Panasonic DVD recorders have 1 on each side a 120mm fan. Dust is the only problem so keep' em clean and you'll have no trouble.

My old work horse Dell 4100 800 GHz that crashes with heavy loads at 512mb max ram. Still good for receiving emails,pictures,letters and minor medium work. Not ready to shut her down just yet.

Okay getting back to the WNDR 3300 & WNDA 3100 so far after two returns to Best Buy my third router seems to be working out just fine, after adding a fan to keep it cool.

I learned that you must be in line, with the router to receive the 5GHz band. Alpha channel.

I am now 52 feet away from the Router, on the eMachines CPU. My 2 Dells are 95 feet away from the Router and 43 feet away from my room that connects at the 5GHz A161 channel at 18 Mbps to 54.0 Mbps with very good signal.

This is the 4100 and the E520 Adapters keeping cool with AC fan. It is high enough not to interfere with the monitor causing flickers or wobbles. not sure thats the electronic term used .

WN121T left used with Dell E520 Vista & WNDA3100 to my 4100 XP sp2.

Below is the picture diagram of it's signal path, I only looked at the numbers not the wave pattern in Blue/Green. Shown 10X's the coverage 15X's speed. WOW!!! this is what sold me.

( WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.) sorry Netgear coverage and speed did not work for me.

If you look at the diagram of Netgears advertisement you can see that the 5GHz signal is more of and upper signal broadcast in blue/green. TRUE

These are the G to N draft diagram signals, (only)

So for ( A ) 5GHz signals any floors above the Routers or inline, should get you connected. As noted in the top diagram with the three samples signals.

The signal from Super-G GT624v3 had a stronger signal strength at 95 feet away, than WNDR3300 or WNR854T Routers with more internal antennas. They do not perform all that well in my home situation.

In fact the crazy Wizard kept connecting me to my neighbors linksys Router which is about 225 feet away, and asked if I would like to download his music player. and was doing so, I had to pull the USB cable out to stop download after I realized I clicked OK!. Weird, Bad Wizard I call that!. hummmm.

With internal Antennas 3 for WNR854T, 8 for WNDR3300. Super G GT624v3 has only 1 external Antenna and it gets a stronger signal. Your guess is good as mines.

I have yet to be convinced about internal Antennas.

I still would recommend GT624 Router for less crowded airwaves using XR boost G and the strongest signal channel your settings can find. They recommend using channel 6 or 11, 6 being the super G channel.

My set-up received well on channels 3, 8, and now the stronger channel 10 is what I am using on 2.4GHz B, G & N draft which should show as 10 & 7 if I got that right. On 5GHz A on channel 161, which switches to G & N 2.4GHz for I guess staying connected, and I have to reapply to 5GHz to reconnect.

It use to show on Wizard when I clicked on Networks , and Router setting on N draft 2.4GHz only. The settings on Dual Band does not show N draft I've noticed when settings set to Dual Band 2.4GHz and 5GHz, only G band is shown. I guess it's a software problem and Netgear is working to hopefully get it working right soon.

I will up date as time willing.

UPDATE # 1 Here's is one example of the software glitches I see happening with Smart Wizard. It broadcast multiple SSID'S one single non broadcast A CH.161GHz and 2 named broadcast 1 on G 2.4GHz ch.10 and the other, A ch.161GHz. So three broadcast signal showing up on Netgear WNDA3100 Smart Wizard (Here's a photo) Only my eMachines CPU is on line @ 5GHz.

Update # 2 More glitches:below is when Router mbps status shows 270mbps connection status, This is false , connection will not be made until it drops to 54mbps or lower. It says connected but it is not. sorry this is the best picture I got.

Update #3 This software glitch shows 5GHz ch.161 (A) with -N-draft added to both, and not on 2.4GHz ch10 (G). Again non broadcast and broadcast of A & G. shown below. Notice channel 10(G) 75% signal,non broadcast ch.161 (A) -N- with 27% and 29% for ch.161 (A) - N-for shown. Remember SSID is set to non broadcast and only one computer is on line.

( MY RECOMMENDATIONS )

I recommend Netgears Dual Band Router WNDR3300 & USB Adapter WNDA 3100 . If you need the 5GHz you got the extra cash, time and a closer inline proximity to make the connection. I can not speak for 2nd story , or higher.

( Check this out this photo below )

I did the unthinkable and had all three Adapter software installed on my Dell 4100 thinking if I could use 1 or all at the same time.

What was I thinking??? TRIPLE play Adapters

A rare one I think??? and with a 2 Router set up, the Super G would always take over. I do not have any pictures of that cause I never thought I would blog on this subject.

The problem was Uninstalling the adapter software, that was tricky and time consuming one. The Vista OS did not install the Dual Band WNDA3100 Adapter Updated software, so it is the one running the WN121T adapter.

I get only 1or 2 dots weak signal but up to 18 Mbps. You should try it. (Maybe not!) I think some one was trying to hack into my computer so I just plugged the Super G GT624v3 into the WNDR3300 just to try to throw them a curve. So I thought??? it does work. But with any drop off in either signal it jumps from one Router to the other searching to make the IP connection. Bad Idea on my part.

The things I did for a connection and a signal, hour's of lost time but some hard lesson learned, with a price $$$ gone into someone else's pocket.

But I am now connected and happy. One thing I have notice is Dual Band means G 2.4GHz or A 5GHz it switches even if I set it at 5GHz only. (WEIRD) With no loss in connection,only when you apply and return to 5GHz than click networks to let wizard connect you to 5GHz again.

Did I leave you confused, Sorry about that. Hey let me know your confusion or successes to your wireless connection. See you later.

I Bib.^U^ Peace and a good strong signal & connection.
AlohaGT

Ruckus says in a legal filing that both patents hold innovative technologies that helped make Ruckus "the success that it is today." If the federal court finds that Netgear and Rayspan infringed on either one, the court could halt sales of a new Netgear wireless router. So the issuance of the second patent could really help Ruckus in court, the same way a second big gun could help a warrior on the battlefield.

Did the issuance of the second patent persuade Ruckus to take Netgear to court? Not according to one of Ruckus' lawyers, Colby Springer. The timing was "pure coincidence," he said. It just "happened to issue at a very convenient time." Springer said he's seen patents issued in as short as nine months and as long as seven years. This one took just under two years.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Ruckus is betting its smart Wi-Fi technology will deliver reliable signal quality over an extended range while automatically adapting to environmental changes in real time. With a more predictable Wi-Fi signal, the technology would support applications like streaming voice and multicast Internet Protocol video. In the suit, Ruckus says its distributors and resellers have shipped over half a million Wi-Fi systems to date.

Pursuant to a license agreement, Netgear has paid Ruckus royalties on sales of its WPN 824 line of RangeMax wireless routers. Ruckus claims it's received royalties on nearly 2 million routers. Late last year, Ruckus discovered in an FCC filing that Netgear was developing a new RangeMax router.

In February, Ruckus' president and CEO Selina Lo met with Netgear's chairman and CEO, Patrick Lo, to discuss the new model. According to the suit, Netgear informed Ruckus it had begun selling the newest model in place of the ones that generated royalties for Ruckus. Netgear also indicated it would discontinue the manufacture and sale of its earlier RangeMax models by end of 2008, and Ruckus would not receive any licensing royalty revenue from sales of latest model.

Ruckus is seeking injunctions barring Netgear and Rayspan from infringing on its patents. It's also seeking a "reasonable royalty" for existing patent infringements and other monetary damages.

I 'fled' the scene when Professor bought Windows Vista over XP on his pc, when you hear what Dell are like (see the link above) - its a lost cause and went back to the chicken sheds and since the experts at Dell 'helped' him to buy a new pc poorly with only 1gb ram on a Vista box and he now wonders why Visa is 's l o w ****'. There good those Dell experts arent they.

So eventually i get called out of the monkey house where professor admits that having to buy a router,new printer, extra usb hubs just do what he did in xp was bad tco*, and a couple of weeks of 'professionals' in it changing things over that Vista isnt the best bargain out there.

So things where apparently happily chugging away, and then aol (think talk talk and a Charles Dunestone) screw up the aol connection, this blows up the naturally working aol client software and gets professor mega pissed off.

Theres some retards on the aol help desk. and Vista support for aol is odd and its not there yet (so much for Microsofts beta of Vista). But when another friend if his insists on putting on extra 4 firewalls on the pc (don't forget the firewall on the router) means Vista runs like treacle syrup on strike or a go slow.

So Bananas 'goes in' and deletes the four firewalls and performance slightly returns but the aol software client is fucked*** (thats because the lady that says 'welcome to aol' and goodbye) wont work.

Fortunately Professor has some brains and knows that things could be better and flees aol.co.uk, he has a usage of Outlook for the ipaq and after an additional cost of exporting aols pfc, and favorites for some software means Aol isnt an easy migration.

Webmail on aol is rubbish compared with gmail and not the rich experience you get from aol's odd software when it did work. Ok so aol is bad, but i ask does Professor know his router password, no is the response.

Some idiot working in 'it' advised him that user admin and the password of password where secure.

No this isn't made up, yes this really happened. Honesty he is ripe for his connection being taken over and the best thing is he got this solution from the help he got (not me).

* tco total cost of ownership. ** nor do some printers and lots of hardware things in Vista. *** probably the best thing about aol **** dell pc's are so good, they make it quite hard to buy memory that does not come from dell (it can be done) but they keep it pretty obsure there memory spec.

The comparison tries to show how Wireless N is better than Wireless G, shown by the ticks. The fact is that this comparison is wrong and even on Netgear's website from their Wireless G routers/access points you're able to see that they have contradicted themselves.

1. According to the comparison, multiple PCs connected wirelessly isn't function on Wireless G routers/access points. So all of you who have more than 1 wireless pc connected to a Wireless G router then unplug it right away! You wouldn't want to use your router to it's potential. (View the picture below of a Wireless G access point that shows more than 1 wireless device connected to the access point)
2. From the picture below of a Wireless G access point, the access point handles video conferencing so VoIP should be fine.
3. Wireless G is 54 Mbps which should equate to at least 1-2+ Mb/s with encryption enabled, so even if you had ADSL2+ heavy internet usage would not be a problem.
4. I'll assume they mean multiplayer gaming on the internet. The Wireless G router/access point would only add about 5-15ms or so which shouldn't be a problem for most games.
5. Any wireless router/access point should be able to support Networked or shared storage / large file sharing, the point that they missed is that the Wireless N routers/access points will be able to transfer these files quicker. See the below picture where for a Wireless G access point they have said that it can download large files.

So there you have it, 5 ticks which could have easily been applied to Wireless G which has been ignored by Netgear so that their Wireless N products would seem better to us, the consumers.

P.S. Pēc šāda ieraksta Netgear principā vajadzētu vai nu uzsprāgt vai vismaz sākt pieprasīt restartēšanu katru otro dienu, tā taču parasti notiek...

So would you like to sign-up to the unknown? What would you receive? How many people would sign up without knowing what they were signing up for? It just doesn't make sense. When you do actually press the "Go" button you are presented with a sign up form to register to the Netgear Community with your email address filled in if you did actually fill it in and press Go ;).

A better sign up section at the bottom of each page should just be a link which could say something like "Sign-up to the Netgear Community". Easy as that, we know what the link does and we can enter in all our details in the form it links to.

I haven't been to the Netgear website for a while and I do remember their old website design which wasn't that spectacular. Now everything looks much cleaner and clearer. You've got the logo at the top, the menu just beneath it, the sitemap of where you are and then the product details. After the site map you have some white space which distinguishes the menu from the item. All the important options are given a orange button look so that you're about to tell that these are things you should look at.

The product details shows you a clean picture of the product with a summary of the product and then to the right hand side you are given some ways you can learn more about the item. Your eyes are draw to the product image, then to the product name which is in bold and then to the model.

The product details and learning more about the product seems to be split just right so that every selectiong in the learning more section is only in one line and as you can see it's not all just crammed in together, there is some whitespace between selections.

Below the summary, you've got the options to see the overview, specification and system requirements.

On the page there are just the right amount of options to select and end result is a page that actually looks good and is highly usable.

In Japan, the company reports sales of about $1.3 billion a year. Yet it generates a mere $100 million of revenue out of the U.S., where it offers four types of products, two of which (Wi-Fi routers and flash memory devices) it currently can't sell because of court injunctions. Another line -- multimedia -- is new, with the first product due to hit the shelves in June. Its best-performing line is storage, which is profitable despite the fact that the company buys the basic drives from its competitors. All in all, it reads like a prime candidate for business failure. But so far, Buffalo is making it work.

Let's start with wireless, since the story there is pretty simple. Four years ago, Buffalo started selling 802.11n routers in the U.S., going up against Linksys, D-Link and Netgear. As the smallest player in the market it was first hit with a patent infringement lawsuit from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Last year, a court sided with the Australian firm and ordered an injunction against Buffalo's routers, despite protest (and amicus briefs) from Netgear, 3Com, Atheros, Dell, Intel and others. The case is being appealed, but in the meantime Buffalo can't sell Wi-Fi devices in the U.S. and the 802.11n IP is still up in the air.

Patent cases have stymied Buffalo in its flash memory business as well. Last month Buffalo stopped selling USB drives and memory cards (its first line of business in the U.S., which it acquired over a decade ago), due to a patent infringement lawsuit filed by SanDisk against it and several other industry players.

Legal fun aside, Buffalo has established itself as a well-regarded provider of storage for the small- to medium-sized business market and, to a lesser extent, consumers. Buffalo has a pretty loyal following for its network-attached storage products, but the company has to purchase the hard drives from rival firms Seagate and Western Digital since, like other smaller storage vendors, Buffalo doesn't manufacture its own. Making hard drives is a competitive business where economies of scale are important.

Buffalo adds applications and other features to its storage products to make them more compelling at what is generally a higher price point than those offered by Seagate and Western Digital, but storage is a commodity product, one in which cost-per-gigabyte is a customer's primary consideration. Regardless, Buffalo makes money on each of its storage devices, so while the fact that its success in storage puts money into the pockets of its competitors pocket is galling, it doesn't signal the end of that business for the firm.

Storage and its single product for multimedia streaming (wired, because it can't sell wireless in the U.S. right now) are the cards Buffalo currently has to play, and the Austin, Texas-based Buffalo USA intends to play them for all it's worth. Patent fights or no.

Why? Because Cisco is waging a price war on the company and its brethren. In a press release, Netgear CEO Patrick Lo said,"We also observed a slowdown in the U.S. retail market, prompting our primary competitor to lower prices below ours for certain consumer products." Who might be that primary competitor? Mark Sue of RBC Capital Markets points to Cisco.

Lo seems confident that Netgear can weather the attack and plans to introduce a whole new slew of products "that we believe will strengthen us further in the SMB market." The company introduced 11 new products in the first quarter and aims to introduce 12 more in the second. For Cisco, SMB has been a good area of growth, and it wants to rev up the revenues, never mind the low margins. Of course, all this will come to naught if the company kills the Linksys brand and shoots itself in the foot, as our poll suggests.

Netgear isn't the first hardware company to get on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Maxtor back in 2006 teamed up with Fabrik and bundled MyFabrik service and software with its drives. Fabrik has since bought Simpletech, a drive and peripherals company. And last year, RCA teamed up with Box.net for its Small Wonder video camera. Of course, the company that has embraced Web 2.0 more than any other is GPS/Internet navigation device maker Dash.

Given that Web 2.0 technologies are well-suited for improving user experience, I hope this trend catches on and makes some of today's digital devices even easier to use. I wonder what gadget gurus David Pogue, Walt Mossberg and my former boss, Josh Quittner, now a columnist for Time Magazine, have to say about it.

PS: If there are any more examples, let me know and I can add them to the list.