Home Networks: Part 1

rather than trying to crack games, I’m beginning to realize a far more useful way to spend a Saturday afternoon is meddling around with electronics. 

For a long time, I was frustrated with the very poor networking setup at home. 

Imagine the flat like a triangle, each corner being a place where I need connectivity – but the router’s being used more as a switch than a wifi signal broadcaster, which means it needs to be in one corner (where my TV and PS3 need to be connected onto the net) with one long cable going into another corner (which had my computer). The router couldn’t be in the center without a mess of ethernet cables draped across the hall, and putting all other devices in proximity would turn my living room into Lamington Road and still not solve the issue of connectivity in other parts.

Back when you’re a penniless sales exec who just needs a single dedicated connection to a computer (and maybe a cheap wifi that easily reaches every corner of a pigeonhole apartment), the single-router method would work – and besides, wires and cables just added to the ambience at that time, the rest coming from discarded pizza boxes, beer cans, ashtrays and laundry. 

Now unfortunately there are other considerations – there are already 5 mobile devices that like wifi, 3 more that want an ethernet cable with this number likely to expand… and cables draped across the room being out of the question, I have to get creative. 

First off, I leave the better router (a Linksys E1000) at the core of the network in one corner. 

The dedicated ethernet line to the computer is taken to a point midway in the middle of the flat, maybe a bit further towards the non-wifi side, and my old Dlink DIR300 gets hooked up here. 

You can’t use 2 routers on a single modem / line, unless you want to end up with 2 networks (which would be fun but not very user-friendly for the other residents) so it’s better to repurpose this as an access point. Setting up an access point is fairly easy - 

• Get the network name, IP address, SSID, subnet mask, and network mode from your primary router. You can get this by logging onto the router’s admin panel from your browser – usually 192.16.1.1, but google ‘default ip address for (your router model) to confirm what it’s going to be for you. Write this down. 
• Plug a cable into any ethernet port of your second router (not into the internet-in port) and get into the admin there as well. You may need to factory-reset (just stick a pin into the reset hole at the back) the modem to factory, I had to – and set the same details exactly the same as your primary router. 
• Switch off / disable DHCP server on the secondary router, save settings. 
• If you don’t have a wifi password set, then set them – especially if you’re not on an unlimited plan and moderate to low speeds. Free wifi will be very easily picked up by any number of devices, your bandwidth will get used up, and you’ll never realize it until the bill comes – and it’s not just other computers and laptops, but also smartphones, PSPs, ipods, the works. 
• On my PC, now disconnected from the cable, I put a USB wifi receiver dongle. You can get relatively cheap ones easily. 
• The ethernet cable coming from the primary router needs to be plugged into an ethernet port on the secondary (NOT the internet-in port).
• For a more detailed step-by-step, see here and here. I found these to be the best advisories, and they have pictures. 

And that’s it. I now have wifi connectivity all over the house, fewer cables trailing into the PC room (and they’re damn painful to manage if it needs to go through a door – either the door will never close again or the cable will keep getting damaged), and the original core system in the living room is unchanged – and I didn’t even lose an ethernet port!

Talking of which, I’m thinking about adding a network storage drive – any suggestions? I need it to store my movies and stream them to either the TV directly, or the PS3. Tried setting up a mediaserver on the PC, but it slows the system down dramatically and doesn’t always refresh – and besides, I don’t want 2 TB of media clogging up my drives. 

That’s going to take my last available port, so I guess that means I need a switch as well. But that’s for the next post, once I pick up and install the network drive.  

Hardware

This one is slightly off-topic compared to the rest, but felt it’s a better fit here than any other blogs.

Last month, my fairly ancient Nvidia 9400 burnt out, unable to bear the pressure of several hundred hours over the last year of high-end games, days-on-end downloads, and varied voltage fluctuations. Having had some pretty pathetic customer service from my regular dealer, I decided to skip the middleman this time and go straight to the source. So, I present -

How to research and upgrade your GPU. 

1. Step 1: You need to know your system in exquisite detail. Assuming you’ve lost the original packaging, open up the cabinet and start googling all the product codes you can find. The make should be fairly prominent, but the exact version number will be printed somewhere around the PCI slot. You’ll also need to know exactly what slot you were using – is it an older AGP or a PCI / PCI-e, and which version. Google these as well, sometimes newer cards will have problem with older slots. www.hardwaresecrets.com, www.tomshardware.com will be useful.
2. Step 2: Once you know the slot used, start looking up the options for a GPU. Don’t worry about GPU RAM – it’s independent from your system RAM, so you can use DDR3 even your motherboard has DDR2.
3. Step 3: Check your power supply. Older systems had 300W, so some of the newer cards – especially the high-performance ones – will have issues. 400W is ok, 450W is good, but allow for a decent margin, especially if you’ve got a lot of stuff running off a single power supply – multiple internal HDDs, DVD drives, and multiple peripherals running off the USBs.
4. Step 4: Software compatibility. While most systems have a Windows OS, which will work, you need to check for known issues among your shortlist if you have any other OS – for example, I had a Ubuntu 10.4 which has issues with the ATI/AMD Radeon 6xxx series (and I mention that explicitly is because that’s what I discovered after purchase and installation)
5. Step 5: Purchase. First of all, look up the current prices to have an approximate idea. You already know your budget, and you have a shortlist of the models you want – Flipkart and eBay both are good sources for current prices, and knowing the base price here will stop you from getting ripped off. If you’re buying on your own – and I recommend you do – head down to Lamington Road in Mumbai. Google for the good stores before you go, or you’ll be lost – there’s hundred of them everywhere. You won’t find much difference in the prices shop to shop, they’re all networked and don’t undercut each other, but the better ones will be able to help you decide and replace if there’s any issues with the product. This is also where you’ll get the lowest prices. There are other distributors across the city, but prices will be higher, and range smaller. Around (within a 5-minute bike ride) the distributors there’ll be lots of small retail computer stores – these will have the poorest range, the highest prices, will push old stock on you and are probably the most familiar face of your hardware experience, but it’s time to move on, isn’t it?
6. Step 6: Actual replacement. Again, just google what you’re about to do (and make sure you have the page open on a laptop / second computer / printed out beforehand) and shut down, open up, remove old card, insert new card, do not force or struggle, tighten the screws, and you’re done. GPU replacements are probably the easiest to do, other than RAM – no cables to manage, as most GPUs run direct off the PCI slot. If it needs an external power supply, make sure you’ve identified where that goes. I’m not going to talk about crossfiring, I don’t know enough about that – try it on your own.
7. Restart and let the system detect the new hardware, run the manufacturer disk, and you’re set.
8. Emergencies – in case there’s any issues, you can always get a working (non-gaming) system by simply using the motherboard’s own VGA slot for the monitor instead of the GPU slot. You can also use this when your GPU’s about to fail / has failed, leaving you with a blank monitor.

Next post – since I messed around too much with Linux’ graphic driver settings, I’ll be wiping that and upgrading to Oneiric Ocelot; review coming soon.

On The Turning Away Of The Face(book)

Hi Ashish,

We’re trying out a new feature to reduce the amount of email you receive from Facebook. Starting today, we are turning off most individual email notifications and instead, we’ll send you a summary only if there are popular stories you may have missed.

You can turn individual emails back on and restore all your original settings at any time.

Thanks, The Facebook Team

But with Facebook, is anything ever as easy as it seems?

Think about the implications of this for a moment. If you’re a normal facebooker, you will check in fairly regularly, and what prompts the check-in (usually) is something that gives you a feeling that something’s happened. An alert mail. Somebody commented on your post. Somebody tagged you in a photo, mentioned you in a note. Friended you. etc.

This is usually in your mail. Which can come on your mobile, your POP account…

Also look at that little sidebar that came up a few days back – there are all your alerts! It’s a very… twitter-esque interface, also in the sense of it’s impermanency… an update that gets pushed down is gone.

Psychologically? You feel cut off. You feel you don’t know what’s going on in your social world when you’re off FB, and are flooded with information, real-time, when you’re on it. Interactivity and presence is encouraged. Absenteeism is literally punished with silence – FB’s shunning you.

Result? FB is always-on, increased timespends, interactions, pageviews…

Good call, Zuck!

To or not to… work from home

The whole concept of ‘working from home’ is fraught with pitfalls, not the least of which is a highly negative connotation it’s come to acquire, at least in the Indian concept, standing as shorthand for ‘on leave without using up leaves’. However, there are positive aspects as well, and then some surprises.

Working from home becomes possible in some specific scenarios – your work doesn’t involve frequent interaction with colleagues in the same office and is independent. Writing, creative work, design, coding, accounts, or anything involve own, small business, etc – this basically needs your brain and a task at hand that doesn’t depend on anyone else. An alternative is if your interactions are limited to phone / mail only. Check.

No distractions in the home – which means no kids / aged parents / frequent visitors / nearby construction. If you can also set aside a part of the house – say, a spare room / study, or your bedroom if nobody else is using it, that works too – but both you and everyone else needs to be disciplined enough not to break that sanctity. Check.

Discipline. It’s very tempting to catch an episode you’re following, finish off a ‘few’ pages in a book you’re reading, finish a chapter in a game you’re playing, or even just surf. It’s a black hole, a bottomless pit, that. It never ends – a few minutes becomes an hour, half a day, and then you’re basically screwed.

Laziness. The biggest advantage working from home gives you is the ability to save on travel time – in my case, close to 3 hours a day – but that can also lull you into a false sense of security, where you imagine you have a lot more time to complete a task than is actually there. Trust me, you don’t want to be sitting at home and working once the family is back and the day turns into night; even if you live alone, it’s psychologically very exhausting. Just make a deadline, a schedule, and stick to it.

Independence. This is a pitfall. When your power goes out, your internet goes down, or your computer crashes, you’re on your own. Make sure you have your backups and redundant solutions available – buy a external HD, save every few minutes, get a USB internet stick, the works. Nobody listens if you don’t deliver due to things beyond your control.

If you can greenlight all of the above, go ahead; you’ll save your office some decent rental and maintenance space, and you an extra few hours a day of leisure.

The Ubuntu Story: Prologue

This is a very, very brief prologue to what promises to be coming up soon – a comprehensive review of the Ubuntu OS from a first-timer’s point of view. But let me make a start anyway, since that’s going to take a while evaluating.

A brief background – I’ve run Windows for almost two decades, right from the prehistoric Windows 3.11. I’m not a techie or a programmer. My exposure to Unix has been, aside from a few hours in school as part of a standard systems course, more according to Scott Adams than anyone else. So why did I do this? One late night, I was bored. And a random link came along – not for an OS, but for USB drive tweaks. And one thing led to another…

Considering it takes the better part of a few hours to install a basic WinXP system from a formatted C:, creating a bootable, non-install trial cd which can actually run an entire OS was a very pleasant surprise. I was playing around with it for a while, and it felt… interesting. Different, but fun.

Looks like some interesting times ahead.

RPGs, interconnectiveness, psych-profiling and Big Brother

I’ve recently (better late than never) have gotten majorly into RPGs as a game genre, after years of RTS and FPS… mostly because the stories in RPGs are far more complex, detailed, insightful, and entertaining, unlike the linearity of FPSs and an equally linear set of ‘rules’ that inevitably evolve in any RTS you play too long.

But never mind that; the really interesting thing is, because of the realism, and the reasonably open-ended nature of gameplay, RPGs can offer a very interesting set of moral choices to be made as you progress. The ultimate objective is still the same; but how you reach it can vary.

And most games now are coming with a social component – sharing achievements, online communities, virtual personas. It’s not just sitting in your HDD anymore; new games can import the choices made in previous versions, keep the story going. With FB Connect, they know exactly who you are; the real you, not a virtual identity, an anonymous game character.

Ever though of the implications in psychoanalysis, law enforcement?

It can be a healing tool – teaching socially dysfunctional patients how to interact with normal society, monitoring the progress of their reintegration by their in-game behavior, the choices they make.

It can be, on a darker note, a profiler as well. What would you say about the mind of a person who, even in a fantasy world, always makes the choice between good and evil in a particular direction? One who chooses to sacrifice team-mates for personal advancement? One who has an extensive collection of sniper-weapon games, and has ranked up the highest scores? One who, in a open, sandbox-style scenario, chooses to be even more vicious and psychopathic than even the escapist game intended? I’m not talking about stealing cars in GTA; I’m talking of running the driver over after, then going on a full-on vehicular manslaughter rampage. Would you, as a law enforcer, like a list of the people in your neighborhood who have been tagged with certain game-behavior red flags as potential problems?

Games are getting more and more realistic every day. They began as an escape from reality, but that escape is coming full circle right back into the reality it offered a relief from. And there are no psychological checks and balances.

Book your domain RIGHT NOW

How soon should you book your domain name?

It’s 7 AM, and sitting on the pot, you have a brilliant idea for a marketing campaign (this being the most creatively productive activity of the day) that will wow the nation. You rush to office, get the idea on paper, take your boss’ approval, detail it, and announce it to the team.
It’s already too late.

What you should have done was book the URL the minute the boss okayed it. Maybe even before, if you really believed in it. It’s not a job for the interactive agency, nor for the IT department, nor your net-savvy exec or intern, nor any department assigned this responsibility, if it exists.

You need to log onto net4.in or it’s contempories, find availability and reserve the name. It’s free for 15 days, too, while you can make the payment (if via check / draft / etc).

Why am I saying this? You have heard of Walk When You Talk, right?
Go to www.walkwhenyoutalk.com
Whoops! That seems to have been hijacked by the Jai Ho Cricket Club. What an idea, sirji!

The real Walk When You Talk campaign microsite is on a .co.in id… a classic case of somebody realizing that the domain needs to be booked after too many people had got to know and the news leaked.And somebody smart leapt in to take advantage.

Better luck next time!

Safeguarding privacy –

Facebook has agreed to let a 3rd party advertiser use your posted pictures without your permission. Click on SETTINGS up where you see the log out link. Select PRIVACY SETTINGS. Select NEWS FEEDS AND WALL. Select the tab that reads FACE BOOK ADS. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Save your changes. Pass it on.

Thanks to Surya.

Hi.

It’s the first post in a blog that I’m going to be using for my favorite object of interest – the internet, and more specifically, social media.

That’s all I have to say at this point – if you want to know more about me, explore the links to your right…

and watch this space.