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One of the “features” of my mobile phone contract with T-Mobile is that I have access to any T-Mobile Wifi Hotspot.
Yesterday at one of the services on the M5 I was taking a break and decided to catch up on e-mail using the T-Mobile Wifi Hotspot.
I was very disappointed with the speed of the connection, which was slow, intermittent and not very good.
If I had to pay as you go for that connection I would be asking for my money back…
Actually I have paid for it, maybe I should complain!
Good article from Bill Thompson on wireless issues.
The BBC’s technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, must be hoping that his neighbours don’t decide to have a larger family.
He recently spent ages setting up a high-speed wireless network (wi-fi) at home, documenting the whole tortuous process on the BBC Technology blog, but all his hard work could apparently be ruined by a single baby listener.
I mentioned back in July that I was having problems with my (quite old now) Sony VAIO A197X. Back then I considered re-installing Windows, but never got round to it.
I don’t really want to abandon it, as it does have a lovely 17″ screen, 1920 x 1080 resolution, which makes it great for watching video.
Sometimes the DVD player does not work as expected sometimes.
Tonight I was watching BBC iPlayer, I watched Doctor Who and that worked fine, but trying to watch Being Human and it decided that was too much…
I think it may have got too hot.
The video froze, despite restarting the browser, I couldn’t get the video working.
In the end I turned it off and watching iPlayer on my Mac.
I think I will now need to reinstall Windows.
If you have an iPhone and want to watch BBC programmes using BBC iPlayer, you need to be using a wifi connection, it’s not possible with a 3G (or EDGE) connection.
Of course the iPod touch only has wifi, so in theory you shouldn’t get that problem.
Oh look!
Hmmm.
So how did I manage to get that with the iPod touch?
Well I was using wifi, but I was using JoikuSpot. What JoikuSpot does is basically turn your 3G wifi mobile phone into a wireless hotspot. So the Nokia N95 connects to the internet via the 3G network and then allows wifi clients connect to it via the 802.11 wifi.
Well the BBC must know that I am accessing their server from a 3G connection and serve me up with that error message.
Well the BBC have fixed the issue with the device detection, so BBC iPlayer now works on the iPod touch with firmware 2.2.
Yay.
Well a couple of interesting bits of information have come my way since I posted yesterday about how firmware 2.2 on the iPod touch stops the BBC iPlayer from working.
Though Apple updated the firmware, and the BBC did not change anything, it is looking like the BBC’s platform/connection detection code is coming to the wrong conclusion.
That code according to FrustratedByiPlayer on the BBC Message Boards, looks like this.
case ‘STATE_CONNECTION_TYPE’:
// hack for demi – in case demi variables mysteriously disappear as they are prone to do.
if(data.response.DEMI_ERROR_FAILOVER === ‘true’ && _failOverCount < 3) {
_failOverCount++;
return device.connectionType();
}
else if(data.response.DEMI_ERROR_FAILOVER === ‘true’) {
_self.setState(“STATE_MEDIA_UNAVAILABLE”);
return;
};
if(data.response.ALLOWED_NETWORK === ‘true’ && data.response.IP_IS_UK_COMBINED === ‘yes’) {
_state = ‘STATE_IS_MEDIA_AVAILABLE’;
_mediaAssetProfile = data.response[_serviceType.toUpperCase() + ‘_MEDIA_ASSET_PROFILE’];
_self.setMediaAssetProfile(_mediaAssetProfile);
return mediaSelector.mtis(_versionPid, _mediaAssetProfile);
}
else if(data.response.ALLOWED_NETWORK === ‘true’) {
_state = ‘STATE_OUTSIDE_UK’;
_self.setState(_state);
return;
}
else {
_state = ‘STATE_NON_WIFI’;
_self.setState(_state);
return;
};
It is the _state = ‘STATE_NON_WIFI’; which is the result of the detection code failing to correctly recognise the iPod touch as a wireless device and thinking it is a 3G iPhone.
Note that the 3G iPhone on wifi works fine!
By adding the correct device to the detection code by the BBC web development team this should solve the issue.
Lakeuk on the BBC boards has been able to recreate the error on Firefox.
User Agent for FW 2.1.1 works:-
Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F138 Safari/525.20
User Agent for FW 2.2 gives the error everyone is getting:-
Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77a Safari/525.20
According to the BBC Message boards this message has been passed onto the BBC team.
BBC iPlayer on the iPod touch is one of the best things that arrived on my iPod touch. However bad news if you upgrade to firmware 2.2, you won’t be able to access BBC iPlayer on your iPod touch!
When you try you get the following error message.
Sorry, programmes can only be accessed over a wifi connection.
Hello!
The iPod touch only does wifi!
It would appear that the fault lies with both Apple and the BBC.
The BBC use a browser detection script which identifies that the user is using an Apple iPhone or an iPod touch. I would assume before firmware 2.2 that the browser identifier used by the iPhone and the iPod touch were different when on wifi compared to when the iPhone was using 3G or Edge.
With firmware 2.2 it would appear that the BBC script incorrectly identifies the wifi iPod touch as a 3G iPhone. Now this could be because of a change by Apple on the mobile version of Safari.
So alas at the moment we have no way of watching BBC iPlayer on an updated iPod touch!
Well it had to happen one day!
According to a report from PCWorld Magazine WPA has been broken.
Security researchers say they’ve developed a way to partially crack the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption standard used to protect data on many wireless networks.
Read more.
I have mentioned wireless security on the blog before and I am talking about real security not “feel good” security; at the very least you should be using WPA and preferably WPA2.
The Register reports on the consequences that have happened to a poor American expatriate living in India who just so happened to run an open unsecured wireless network.
Indian police raided the Mumbai home of an American expatriate after someone used his open wireless network to send an email that took responsibility for a bomb blast that killed at least 42 people.
Kenneth Haywood, whose internet-protocol address was included on an email sent just prior to the blasts, spent much of Thursday answering questions by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad officials. Police seized his three computers, as well as the machines of several neighbors, and are examining them as part of an investigation.
This story demonstrates a rare but real risk of running an open wireless network.
My Canon MP600r is starting to annoy me.
Every time I try to print from my iMac, the printer can not be found on the wireless network.
If I power cycle the printer, it “magically” appears and I can print!
The same more often then not for scanning.
Now I have no real idea what the problem is, whether it is a wireless, printer or some other issue.
I do need to do some further testing. Things I may do including connecting the printer by wire to a wireless WET54G and see if it is a printer issue.
If it is a wireless issue I may connect the printer direct to the iMac by USB and share it across the network.
More soon…