Recommend me a home network topology

I have quite a number of network devices at home
- Sony PS2 (eth)
- Xbox 360 (eth)
- WII (wifi)
- old PC (wifi/eth)
- new PC (wifi/eth)
- 2 x laptops (wifi)
- internet radio (pure flow, wifi)
- 3 x phones (wifi)
- SPA 3102 voip gateway (2 th - in and out)
- thomson 585v7 adsl router (4 port, wifi, adsl)
- 2 x FON routers (wifi+eth one for outside access, one for inside)
- A NAS storage device (buffalo linkstation) with external USB
- 2 spare fon routers (all fon routers can run ddwrt or openwrt firmware) (unused)
- spare DG834Gt adsl modem running dgteam firmware (unused) 4 ports eth, 1 wifi
- a 4 port 100/10 hub
- an old Prestige zyxel adsl router (unused)
- A speedtouch 780WL adsl/4 port router (unused)

Currently all wired components are in the same room as the router, but this leaves me with slow performance to the main house PC. I need faster access via ethernet (start with 100, may go above later) rather than the 10-25 wifi can manage.

I want to achieve
* faster access via ethernet (start with 100, may go above later) to the NAS rather than the 10-25 wifi can manage.
* All PCs can access NAS
* Voip continues to function
* Ability to add asterisk on linkstation to service voip
* Xbox360 streaming from media center on new pc (it seems this means on same subnet)
* pure flow streaming from twonkymedia on linkstation (as above)
* No hole drilling (although an ethernet cable is best option)
* No purchase of extra kit (am broke)
* WPA2 security used
* PCs are powered off when not in use
* minimize other devices left on.

The key no doubt lies in the correct application of multiple subnets vs bridging using some of the semi-configurable routing kit available.

Thoughts
* I just move linkstation upstairs, and use wireless bridge running on ddwrt to connect back to base adsl router. Unfortunately a) ddwrt does WDS, but this doesn't work with WPA2 b) ddwrt does client bridge, but this doesn't work with multiple devices on ethernet side
* I just setup a regular routed network between adsl router location and desktop PC, but this introduces multiple subnets which will cause complications with upnp streaming to pureflow internet radio and/or xbox

WHy I'm probably not going to use Carbonite any longer

In the past I've blogged about carbonite - an online backup service. At the time, and for a while afterwards I recommended it to friends and family.

However it's come to the point where I feel I can no longer recommend it - to be fair some of this is due to my usage requirements becoming more sophisticated, but then I think this is a general trend in any case

1. Customer Support

When I first used carbonite support was excellent - responding often in a matter of hours, and rarely more than a day. However during the last few months I've encountered some difficulty where the response time to a support email has taken around 10 days - indeed one response took more than double that.

I don't have an issue with getting difficulties from time to time, but it's how support deals with these issues is key.

2. Performance

My actual problem related to high CPU when carbonite was running. Much (50%?) of the time, even though throttled upstream the carbonite process would spin cpu. looking at the logs perhaps suggested the cause might be the file monitoring that was going on. However it effectively rendered my system useless. Note -- I was originally using vista, and then "upgraded" to W7 beta. The problem symptoms didn't change.

3. NAS/External disks

I started off with just local disks on a Windows PC. Easy, fully supported by carbonite. I then purchased an external drive. Carbonite did not support this so data on that drive could not be backed up. I then started using a Buffalo Linkstation NAS device, with both internal & usb attached disk. Again carbonite would not support that - either via a mapped drive or *crucially* by running the application directly on the nas.

4. Multi machine/user

Whilst most of our family data is now on the NAS, including documents, photos, music etc, there are remnants of config files etc spread around 3 or 4 systems. I'd like to backup those too without having to replicate to the NAS. There's also 4 users in the family.

5. Multi operating system support

I run Windows, Linux (fedora, ubuntu, various embedded), Symbian at home. It would be nice to access backups from all these locations

6. Access to files from alternate client - ie picking single file when not at home

Given the culimation of these issues carbonite feels like a lost cause for me. Now whilst many services do offer "nas" support or multi machine support, NONE I've found offered all of the above.

For now I'm using Amazon S3 - signed up to my own package, and using custom+open source scripts (I'm a techie so that's ok) in conjunction with local replication. I've lost multi version support, and the price has risen (0.15 USD/Gb)

So all I would say is consider what you need carefully

Busy twittering

Just a quick post to say I'm busy twittering on twitter as planetf1 -- hence why I've not posted much here lately.

Nokia N96 web: No gateway reply when browsing via WLAN

I've been getting problems for the last week or more with my Nokia N96 refusing to connect to either of 2 wireless accesspoints at home, yet
a) It worked fine at work using WPA2-EAP TLS
b) It worked fine via my FON "public" network

After some reading through many suggests of randomly changing parameters, recreating APs on the device I finally read a post where someone had hardcoded IP address/DNS to get the phone working again.

That got me thinking. Both my home APs use bridged networking to join the subnet managed by my main router. When connecting to FON it's a seperate subnet.

So I went to my router (585v7) and deleted the cached entry for my N96. This would clear up any DHCP leases etc that may be setup.

Having done this I could immediately connect to my home lan just fine and happily browse

Hoorah!

Nokia N96 continues to disappoint

I was fortunate enough to receive a Nokia N96 just over 4 months ago.

In summary -- it's still a disappointment.

I'm using it on 3UK with a 1Gb data plan. I know the S60 environment fairly well and had an N95 8Gb which I was very happy with just prior to the N96. My son now has that phone...

So why disappointed - well despite updates as far as v12.043 :

* The phone is still slow. Compare it side by side with an N95 8Gb and the difference is very clear. The N95 is snappy, the N96 sluggish. This comparison holds true with similar apps installed, after a complete hard reset. WHether it's starting gallary, navigating the menus, opening up mail, it just doesn't cut it. Example - apps menu 5s,

* The battery life is significantly poorer than the N95 8Gb in day to day use. Basically in a poor signal area 9-6 with a couple hours idle wifi *or* a little browsing for 20 mins is enough to get down to say 2 bars. I'd guess the N95 8Gb had at *least* 30% extra capacity. For me at least the promise of better efficiency in fp2 just isn't there. Note monitoring still shows the screen as drawing much more (up to double) juice than on the N95 at similar brightness levels.

* Keys/layout. The promised scroll pad was never implemented, the additional music keys around the navigation area is frankly a waste of space. After all music keys are available by sliding the phone..

* Stability. Numerous times the phone has spontaneously done a warm reset (ie back to nokia screen, but no pin prompt), or hung entirely. I mean virtually every other day. This is worse with more apps loaded, but an OS should protect against this. The N95 is *much* more stable (not perfect)

* VoIP. Proper voip support never arrived. There was discussion on Nokia conversations but nothing ever got delivered. Nokia removed a key piece of functionality only for it to re-appear elsewhere. I guess I still have a fading hope a new fw version may provide the internet telephony client, but it's fading fast!

* Destinations. FP2 promised better connection management by allowing access points to be grouped into "destinations". For example my home wifi, work wifi, and my UMTS provider's APs could all be in the "internet" group. I can point the web browser to "internet" and the right AP will be chosen in priority order. Great! except it doesn't work with old applications and some of the built in ones, or current NOkia apps. PSILOC managed this virtual AP approach with fp1, so why couldn't NOkia. A half-baked implementation.

* Autostart. A common symbian problem -- there's no way to easily find out which apps auto-start or to control them, other than through the app itself. The OS needs to provide this capability to the end user/applications

* Debugging. Many features needed for debugging are not allowed without highly prized certificates. For example looking at files in \private is the only way to see where suddenly all one's space has gone. Certs aren't given out that allow AllFiles. Heck it's my device...

* Memory. After boot there's just over 40Mb free. After running a few apps this can drop to below 10. With the N95 there was far more (75 or so) free, allowing much more headroom. Does relate partly to the autostart and performance comments above -- I suspect much more is started automatically

I'm sure there's more besides.

I guess the issue isn't that it's a really bad phone.. it does a lot, but there many missed opportunities. Things so close yet so far. And in those areas that annoy the heck out of the user.

After being a symbian fan for years I feel myself wanting this to be the last. I've been let down. DOes the N97 interest me? Well nice ideas but I don't think I'd trust that it got delivered properly. Time for pastures new. Not that anything else is perfect.

That sums up the N96 really - a lost soul, and me? probably a lost customer.
Still no money now so I've got time to decide ;-)

Pentax's new digital compact camera

Just read this announcement.. I've been looking for an SLR to allow for creater creativity.... but I have to say this bridge camera does look rather appealing. GPS would of course be nice though!


Pentax’s new digital compact camera

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Thomson / Speedtouch 585v7 rebooting? turn off wireless!

I've had a Thomson 585v7 adsl router for around 9 months. It's generally a pretty solid piece of kit as far as core routing functionality goes, has very solid adsl 2+ on my long noisy line, and good support for QOS (quality of service) which is essential when using VoIP.

HOWEVER it's achilles heal has been constant crashes -- varying from every other day to near-hourly depending on traffic on my local network.

After much experimentation with changing various parameters I finally decided to DISABLE wireless on the box, and instead use a seperate wireless access point. Not a problem since I have a set of FON routers.

And since then -- not a single crash in around 9 days.

Needless to say this *is* a defect. I've contacted my ISP (O2) for comment since they need to be reporting these to Thomson for resolution -- after all a wireless router that doesn't do wiresss reliably isn't exactly doing what it says on the tin.

As a sw engineer I'd be delighted to capture traces etc as required -- it's just a case of asking! I'd be as keen as anyone to get the underlying problem fixed.

Still - at least I know now the area that causes the issue. So if you have a similar issue -- try disabling wireless. This probably affects a variety of thomson / speedtouch routers..