Island in the Net » SOHO

Patriot Media Rocks

Khürt — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 11:40:04 +0000

My broadband internet provider, Patrio Media, provides an excellent service. The connection always appears responsive and never fails. Patriot Media claims 10Mbs download speeds but I have found that on average I obtain about 7-8Mb/s during heavy use times. On occasion the service is even faster than what is listed. Currently they provide two tiers of service: 10 Mb/s for $29.95 and 20Mb/s for $69.95 for customers who also use their cable service. Their is no contract lock in as their is with Verizon DSL, the only other choice in my area. Patriot Media also offers a bundled package called Triple Play that includes broadband, digital cable service, and internet telephone services starting at about $150 monthly. Similar services from Verizon would have cost me more and I would be locked into a 1 year contract.

Airport Extreme

Khürt — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:27:30 +0000

Something that was not announced during the keynote at MacWorld yesterday is that Apple release an update Airport Extreme Base Station. The update wireless route/gateway supports several 802.11 wireless standards (b,g) including the yet to be finalised “n”. Of course being a mac compatible Apple product all of the current WiFi security features are supported as well including the very crackable WEP. Interestingly Apple chose to limit the router to 802.3u (100BASE-T). With more media whizzing around home networks Apple should have provided support for faster networks.

Feature list:

Wireless protocols
- 802.11a/b/g
- Draft 802.11n
Security
- Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2)³
- Wireless security (WEP) configurable for 40-bit and 128-bit encryption
- MAC address filtering
- NAT firewall
- Support for RADIUS authentication
- 802.1X, PEAP, LEAP, TTLS, TLS, FAST
Interfaces
- RJ-45 10/100BASE-T Ethernet WAN port for connecting a DSL or cable modem
- Three RJ-45 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN ports for connecting computers or network devices
- USB port for connecting a USB printer or USB external hard drive
- 802.11 wireless

What distinguishes Apple’s product from similar offerings from Cisco/LinkSys and Netgear is the inclusion of a USB port on the back of the device. You can plug in a USB printer of external hardrive and make this devices network aware. You can even plug in a USB hub thus making any supported USB device available via the network. Apple has not release any details on what USB device are compatible with the AirPort Extreme.

I noticed that the new AirPort Extreme has the same size form factor as the mac mini. I can imagine the AirPort Extreme stacked under a mac mini connected to a Belkin Hub and one of mac mini form factor external hard drives.

Data protection for online apps

Khürt — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 13:37:36 +0000

Chris Gilmer of Web Worker Daily poses an interesting question: “…what happens when disaster strikes?”. I am not sure of the answer. Even at the office when then servers or the network goes down work comes to standstill. Most of the data I manipulate, either via a web or rich client application, is located remotely. I have started thinking about the questions and logistics of working offline and though not perfect I do have a solution at least for data that can move ( e.g. text documents, spreadsheets, presentations etc). At home I have been using a home built network attached storage system (FreeNAS) to synchronize my local data to remote storage. The downside is increased storage requirements and increased network bandwidth but so far it has worked well for me.

Update: I have decided on using the Amazon S3 service for data backup.