Author: jamesclay

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Changing my Network Topology

Over the last week or so, I have been messing about experimenting with my network topology.

Previously I had a relatively simple network, a sole Airport Express with a lot of wireless clients. After having quite a few connectivity issues with the Airport Express, I knew I had to replace it with my newer Airport Extreme.

Once I did this, I left it in place for a few days to iron out any wrinkles or problems. I am running it in 802.11n b/g mode so that all my wireless clients can connect to it.

Yesterday I started to rearrange things, so that I could have wired clients, a pure 802.11n network and a separate 802.11g network.

My Airport Extreme now sits under my television, connected to it is my EyeHome, this should mean it can communicate to my iMac (which I use to record television via an Elgato EyeTV device) and stream video, audio and pictures without stuttering. I also intend to hardware a Mac mini as well and this will be my media centre for the moment – longer term I will replace this either with an Apple TV or another Intel based Mac mini. This Mac mini will have an Elgato USB EyeTV device attached.

I will also connect to the Airport Extreme (the third device to the third LAN port) an older 802.11g Airport Extreme which will be running a pure 802.11g wireless network for the older wireless clients. I will very likely stop using 802.11b devices, but as these are only PDAs I am not too worried and if I do need to test them I can always use the airport Express and plug that into the AirportExtreme as and when necessary.

Both wireless networks will use WPA as this is secure compared to WEP, however I will not be closing my networks, nor will I be using MAC address access control.

I am hoping that this will improve the network and make it much faster for internal file transfers and as I replace older Macs with newer ones which support 802.11n it should also be future proof as well.

The only downside I guess is the location of the 802.11n Airport Extreme does make it difficult to test USB hard drives and printers.

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Duplicate Bookmarks

For some reason when my iMac today synced my bookmarks (via .mac) it added all my bookmarks again to Safari, so I had duplicates of every bookmark both on the menu bar and in the bookmarks themselves.

No idea why .mac decided that I needed to add all my bookmarks again.

This is (I have found) one of the problems with maintaining multiple bookmarks across computers.

I can add a bookmark on the iMac, it will sync, be added to my .mac bookmarks and then be synced to the PowerBook. As it should be.

But there have been times when I have changed as in updated a bookmark on the PowerBook and in theory this should update back, but I have found later that .mac has synced the old book mark back again.

Though what happened today is very weird. I will probably need to do a manual sync to replace all the duplicated bookmarks with a single copy from .mac.

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ADSL Sloowwww’ish

My ADSL seems slow this morning, not sure why, maybe it’s just a preception rather than reality and may be down to specific sites.

Will see how it goes over the day before I mention it to my ISP.

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802.11n EyeHome

I know some reading this may be thinking, yes, Elgato have released an 802.11n version of their (sadly discontinued) EyeHome media streamer.

EyeHome

Sadly no, though like others I hope one day Elgato do release a new EyeHome, though Apple have released the Apple TV, I think there is still a gap in the market for a revised EyeHome.

However onto what this blog post is about… My EyeHome with is non-wireless is connected to my wireless network via a Linksys WET54G which was connected to my 802.11g Airport Express wireless network.

Now I have been having problems with my Airport Express so streaming video has been difficult as it stutters a lot. Particularly I have been having issues with my EyeTV BBC digital (Freeview) recordings which seem to be of higher quality than other Freeview channels.

Today I connected a cat5e cable from my 802.11n Airport Extreme to the EyeHome, as my TV is one side of the room and the telephone point is on the other, I have had to get a long cable.

First tests have been very positive. My content is on my iMac which is in the office in another part of the house, this is linked wirelessly to the 802.11n Airport Extreme, but streaming video, including BBC recordings, has been nearly perfect. Compared to what was happening before this is so much better, much much better.

I am pleased, as up until now I have been forced to burn my EyeTV recordings to DVD before I could watch them on my TV.

Another reason why I am glad I upgraded my wireless network to 802.11n.

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Arrived

Well my package from Amazon arrived today and as well as some other stuff, it contains Leopard and Windows Vista Home Premium.

Should help me write some new guides for my website as I have a fair few to write…

Typical Microsoft, though I have a PC running Windows Vista, it is Vista Business Edition, which is (allegedly) easier to network, so I also need to test Vista Home as well.

Having said that, networking with the Vista Business laptop was very simple and I was quite pleased about how much easier it was than using XP.

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Free Online PDF

Though you can create PDF files on a Mac, it is not always possible on a PC unless you have dedicated software. This is where online PDF creator sites can be very useful.

They are also useful if you for example have been sent a Microsoft Publisher file and you have a Mac, or you don’t have Publisher on your Windows PC. They can take the Publisher .pub file and print it as a PDF.

One such site is PDF Online, which can convert a range of file formats (including Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Office) into a PDF which is then e-mailed to you.

I would suggest that if you do use such a service that you use a disposable e-mail address, or one that can be deleted later.

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Pure CSS Cascading Menu

Steve Gibson, famed security expert, has published a very nice piece of CSS which allows you to create cascading menus without the need for using javascript and has cross-browser compatability.

GRC multi-level script-free pure-CSS menuing system stylesheet. This code is hereby placed into the public domain by its author Steve Gibson. It may be freely used for any purpose whatsoever.

Have a look.

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What is FON?

I have been hearing a lot about FON recently.

Basically you have a router which creates two wireless networks, one for you and one for other FON users.

Then when you are out and about you can access the net through other FON networks.

Personally I think it’s of little use, as how often are you in a residential area and need net access. Generally I need net access when I am in the centre of cities or in transport nodes.

So if you want to share your internet, FON is a good idea, less so if you are going to depend on it for net access.

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Which Airport Extreme 802.11n do I have?

Apple have released two versions of their new 802.11n Airport Extreme base station.

The first version only had 10/100 ethernet LAN ports, the newer version has 10/100/1000 (ie gigabit) ethernet LAN ports.

The problem arises that though they have different part numbers, MA073LL/A for the original version and MB053LL/A for the newer gigabit model, both models share the same model number, A1143.

So how do you tell the difference?

There are only two ways really.

One on the box the base station came in, the model will be identified by the part number. MB053LL/A means it is the newer model. There is nothing else on the box which mentions gigabit ethernet.

I know when I bought mine from the Apple Store in Birmingham (in the UK) I was quite concerned whether I had the newer model or not, particularly as it had only just come out.

The other way is via the Airport Utility, which can identify if it is a gigabit ethernet model or the older version.

Gigabit

It’s not that clear from the raw model which is which, but if you have the box or you can access the base station via the Airport Utility then you can find out if you have gigabit ethernet or not.

For other Airport base stations I have a table on my website which goes through all the differences.