Home networks change

Since I had such a bad time with the TrendNet WiFi router, I decided to change to an older LinkSys WRT54G router till there's a suitable (price, features, form factor, etc.) new one. 

First, let's count the devices. 

There are four Gigabit LAN devices (Desktop, 2 HD media players + NAS), three 100MBps LAN devices (VOIP router, TV, and Wii), and 10+ WiFi devices (3 laptops, netbook, printer, iPad, iPhone, another two cell phones, another media player, and an Network Radio).  In addition, both HD media players and Wii has WiFi as well. In the 10 WiFi devices, only 6 of them supports 802.11n while the rest are 802.11g. Since it's rare that I would need high bandwidth on the wireless devices (the 2 HD media player will be using wired LAN), 802.11g would be sufficient for now. 

I would like to have a Gigabit LAN connection to use the extra bandwidth when transferring large amount of data (e.g. playing HD content from NAS). Luckily (up to debate), I have two 8-port Planet Gigabit switches from an auction five years ago.  Although they are not worth as much they were in 2006, they are still useful. After checking with two friends in IT, the plan is to use the Linksys WRT54G router as the WiFi access point as well as the DCHP server. Most of the LAN devices (especially all the Gigabit LAN devices) will connect to the switch.  This will also allow all devices within a single network so files on the NAS can be read and everybody can print to the printer over the network.

After an extra trip to get CAT-6 network cables and a 12-port power strips, I set up the fully system from scratch.  This includes using a new 12-port power bar.  Given so many devices with their own AC/DC power supplies, it doesn't make sense to have power outlets spaced so tightly.  Even for the 12 outlets, commercial grade power bar, at least three of the outlets are now blocked. If I were to design a power bar, I'd at least put most of them sideways and space them out to accommodate most of the AC/DC adapters.

Anyway, after 2 hour, the network is functioning again.  So far, the WRT54G router works fine.  There's little to complain about this set up.  At the same time, I still need an utility to test large data transfer performance. 

WiFi router issue

Spending quite some time in the morning trying to get the internet working in the Condo. The TrendNet TWE652BRP WiFi router has been misbehaving for quite some time. The main symptom is dropping wireless connections quite frequently (as bad as every 5 minutes) while the signal showing on the devices was still strong when it happened and the wired connections are unaffected. Some times, it also crushed, but this was not often. For most of the devices, it will automatically reconnect after 1-2 minutes. However, this is very annoying as my HD media player is wireless. Every time the connection was dropped, it will either just stop playing whatever online content I'm watching or drop the connection to my NAS drive where most of the HD content are saved.

I've tried updated it to the latest firmware, and tried to change various settings. Some times it gets better and most times it's not affected. I'm not even sure whether it's the setting change or just the number of time it's rebooted that helped a little. To just temporarily curtail the problem, I had an old CompUSA OEM 802.11g router connected for most of the devices that do not need access to the NAS drive.

Originally, the CompUSA router was connected to the TrendNet one through one of its LAN ports, while the TrendNet router was connected to the DSL modem. I had suspected that the load of the TrendNET router may be a contributing factor so it was changed to not running the PPPoE but just taking the connection from the modem. However, it crushed last night and I decided to switch the hierarchy of the two routers: the CompUSA connects to the modem while the TrendNET follows. This seemed to be an easy change but somehow the CompUSA router refused to run acquire neither an IP from the modem nor will a fixed IP run (the TrendNet worked fine under either, only to crush).

After an hour of changing back and forth, I gave up. I just need to get a new router. In the mean time, I just hanging there try to score a better deal on Boxing day (the Canadian Black Friday). My ideal choice would be a simultaneous dual band Wireless ABGN router with 5 Gigabit LAN ports (plus a WAN port).

Online journal and cloud

Live Journal is ranked as the No 1 online journal service by topreviews.com. Penzu is a close second.  Nobody mentioned Blogger but I do find out it has the same private journal option as Live Journal.  At the same time, one advantages of Penzu is its "encrypted" entry feature.  However, after searching some time, I still don't know what does that mean. Nonetheless, all three can claim that they are in the Cloud, which is where I started this search. Basically, here is the list that I really's wanted:

1. Web based online service;
2. Basic rich text editor with hyperlink and image functions,
3. Privacy control allowing a single user (i.e. myselfe) and potentially other (not sure why) users.