Continue reading »]]> If you’re a big reader of the news from the rather large tech world, you may well be aware that UK mobile operator 3 (Three) are planning to launch a very cool new level of mobile internet.

They are dubbing it Mi-FI, but it is basically your own battery powered router for your 3 mobile broadband package.

It is [apparently] very simple to use – you just slot some batteries in, together with your 3 mobile broadband SIM, and then switch it on. From what GEEK! understands, it will then find the nearest internet connection from available GPRS, EDGE, 3G, and HSDPA connections in your area. As soon as it can connect to a network mast, it will start firing out a Wi-Fi connection that all of your Wi-Fi enabled devices can connect to.

The device itself will be available over the internet from September 17th and will be in 3 stores across the country from September 18th.

As for pricing, see below (quoted from ISP Review)

•‘Broadband 5GB 1 month’ is a one month contract which includes 5GB of data for just £15 a month. With this deal the wireless modem costs just £69.99.
•For an upfront charge of £99.99, Mobile Wi-Fi will also be available as a ‘Ready to Go’ kit. The deal includes a wireless modem and 3GB worth of data which can be used over a 3 month period. After the data has been used up, the modem can be used on a Pay As You Go basis.

So there you have it – looks exciting in my opinion. I wouldn’t say it was brilliant value, but if you’re a frequent user of mobile internet it is probably well worth the cost. I’m looking forward to seeing it in 3 stores.

Continue reading »]]> There are too many people around who have their wifi routers unsecured. Why? Well there are horrible people out there who think it’s right to connect to your wifi. Believe it or not, it’s stealing and if you are caught you will get in trouble.

It’s a really good idea to set up a security key for your wifi. It is simple to do and will save you a lot of hassle. OK, if you live in the middle of a field in a rural area, chances are that there won’t be any wifi-jackers (that’s what I call them) anywhere near you, but you never know.

I get questions from quite a few people about making a good, secure wifi key that’ll keep those unwanted wifi-jackers away. Most routers automatically set up a WEP key when you set them up, but they can be hard to remember and annoying when you need them regularly.

I say the same thing to everyone – there is an easy way to create a simple easy to set a key to remember. An important date you you (such as a birthday) and and another important 2 digit number (such as your house number). I suggest you have it like this:

DDMMYYYYHH

KEY: D – Day, M – Month, Y – Year, H – House number.

So, if my birthday was on the 12th of June 1978 (it isn’t, seriously!) and my house number was 9, I’d set it like this: 1206197809.

You won’t forget it, I promise. As long as you remember the structure you’ll be fine. I find it a really simple way to make a good, secure WEP key. As long as you don’t tell anyone else that it’s the structure of your security key, you won’t get any unwanted intruders chewing up all your bandwidth and getting you into trouble with the law.

Continue reading »]]> I managed to dig out some money lately to buy a few gadgets and bits of kit, so you’ll probably see a few reviews on various items in the next few days. But first of all, I’ve got this 9DBi wireless router antenna.

I bought it simply because the little antenna that came with my D-Link DSL-2640B doesn’t quite cut it in my house. For some reason, the signal it emits just isn’t powerful enough to cover the whole of my small house, so I decided it was time for an upgrade.

After a quick search around on eBay, I found this. It is really a pretty good deal at just £6.99 so if you are having signal problems, I suggest you get one.

Most routers generally come with either built in antennas or removable ones. You are lucky if you have a removable one, because you can upgrade it. Sadly, built in antennas aren’t replaceable so you’ll just have to live with the poor signal range or just buy a new router.

If you do have a removable antenna on your router, you’ll be glad to know that you can use a wide range of different antennas. The most common type of antenna that is fitted to most routers by default is omnidirectional. This means that they broadcast in all directions – great if your router is in the center of your house but not so great if its in the corner of the house since a good 30-40% of your wireless power will be wasted going through the wall out of your house. You can get antennas that point in one direction, but these are less common and more expensive. Unless you’re really desperate, I’d suggest you stick to omnidirectional.

Another thing you’ll need to understand is the rating of the antenna. Most routers come with an antenna of about 3-5DBi which is fine for a small modern house. However you can get antennas up to about 9DBi which are much more powerful. Bare in mind they are much bigger than 3DBi antennas and you won’t be impressed if you want don’t like the look of your gadgets. F0r example, the one I now have (see eBay link above) is 37.5cm high so it will be quite hard to hide.

They are definitely worth the upgrade though. I am very impressed with mine, as the signal range is much better and I get much fewer disconnections which is good. The only thing I’m a little puzzled about is that my router says to lower the transmit power of the router if I install a high gain antenna – but why should I, doesn’t that just defeat the point of buying a more powerful antenna? Little odd.

Anyway, so yes, if you do experience wireless signal issues try getting a new antenna. Check that you can replace your antenna before you buy one for obvious reasons. If you can, you might find this makes a big difference.

Continue reading »]]> I hate the supplied Tiscali router. It sucks. Port forwarding is stupid, there’s no DynDNS support, and overall it’s just a cheap piece of crud.

So, I decided to go and buy a new one. I needed to ideally stick to a budget of around £50, so I had a search around.

It wasn’t easy to find a router for under £50. I found out that routers are much more expensive than you think. I was rather surprised to be honest. If I’d have upped my budget  to £60 I would have probably found the task much easier – and I was thinking of doing so, until I found this.

Its a D-Link DSL-2640B ADSL2+ Wireless B/G Router. It was £45.84, but Base (the Amazon reseller) was offering free shipping. I took the offer and ordered it right away.

It arrived bright and early this morning (delivery took 6 days – which isn’t too bad as delivery was free), so I unboxed it and got the install CD going. I followed the instructions on the disc, and it was going fine within a couple of minutes.

The router comes with an install CD, an ethernet cable, 2 ADSL filters, and the power adapter.

When it was working, I then did 2 firmware updates which supposedly improved stability and added a couple of new features. Haven’t noticed much difference, but it was working fine anyway so that was no issue to me.

I’ve tested port forwarding, using other DNS servers, and using DynDNS and they all work a treat. Wireless range isn’t the best but it is fast and reliable and I’m not getting any connection drops which is great.

I have noticed that it does get quite hot, but it hasn’t overheated or anything like that so I’m guessing it isn’t going to be a problem.

Overall, I’m really impressed. I got it for £50 with change to spare, so it proves you can get a decent router for under £50. I would recommend this to anyone who needs a good router but who needs to watch the pennies a little. It totally thrashes the Tiscali router, and I’m really happy I bought it.

Nice work D-Link, and thanks to Base for the free delivery which meant I got it for under £50!

Continue reading »]]> I use Tiscali Broadband very regularly, and generally the service they provide is fantastic. The broadband is very cheap for what you get, and most of the time I have no problems. Except…

The Tiscali router firmware is quite strange. Especially in the port forwarding settings. In my scenario, I need to be able to port forward my Network Drive up to the internet so I can access it when I’m not at home (or so that downloads on http://download02.geekonthepc.com work). Ok, that’s fine, I just put the port forwarding info into the config settings…

Look OK to you (you might want to see a full size image but clicking on the image)? Looks OK to me.

So I go to test it – open up Filezilla, and go to my IP, and wait a sec – connection rejected by server? What?

So I go back and check the settings again. No, they are fine. What’s going on?

Well, after several hours of endless confusion, I’ve finally worked out how (oddly) it works.

It does actually port forward, however if you try and access it on the same Tiscali router you are trying to port forward from, for some reason the connection is rejected. But if you go to another wi-fi connection, it will allow it and you’ll get in.

It’s very odd, but at least it’s working. You can be sure that its working if you go to http://status.geekonthepc.com/networkdrive and it’ll ping it from the Tiscali router (update: the server has since been taken off the internet).

So there you go, Tiscali port forwarding does work – it’s just a firmware bug that Tiscali/Siemens should just sort out.