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Information
Upgraded Routers
11 years
by Gregory McKinnell
in Information
A friend of mine sent me an ad that he had seen for upgrading your home or small business router. The company was selling routers for around $150-$200 with promises of increasing internet speeds for your connection, increased wireless connection range, less crashes, less disconnects and software upgrades improving hardware. My friend wanted to know if this is just marketing hyperbole to get people to buy routers or is there some truth to it?
My response: A little bit of both. It is marketing to get people to buy more routers. But there is some truth to it.
Here’s the overview:
The standard router you get from your Internet Service Provider (often for free) will do the job for most people. You can connect as many devices as you like and they all will be able to connect to the internet. No bells or whistles, just connect to the internet. In theory, you’d be limited to about 256 devices (you run out of IP addresses and a basic router wouldn’t do vlans) but the network would start to slow down too much if you got more than about 12 simultaneous users on a regular router. Having said that I’ve had 2 of these standard routers fail on me in my time so they don’t last forever and are not as stable/reliable as they could be.
There is a higher class of consumer router. They will do everything the standard routers will do but add a lot more features. For example:
- Quality of Service or QOS. Deciding which type of internet traffic gets priority. So you can prioritise say gaming traffic over video traffic. Or video streams over torrents.
- Better Security Firewalls and rules to say what gets in and what gets out. Want to Block outlook from sending emails or block some websites?
- Better logging and alerts – e.g. Send me an email when I get to 75% of my data usage.
- VPN connections to connect to your home network from other places
However:
Some of the stuff like Dual Band 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz leaning in the direction of marketing fluff unless you specifically have some devices that only connect on those frequency ranges or you live in really packed wifi area like an apartment complex.
Cars are a pretty good analogy. A standard Toyota Corolla, for example, will get 4 people from A to B in a reasonable time. A BMW 5 series will still get 4 people from A to B but they have better controlled air conditioning, lighting and comfortable seats. They can watch a dvd on the way and let the car park itself when they arrive. They both do the same job and the first will be fine for most people but the later is worth it for anyone who wants to spend the money for those features.
Of course like the routers, these cars usually come with some options that are superfluous as well.
Conclusion:
If you want better control over your network and don’t mind spending a little bit of time to set up a router, then the upgrade is probably worth it. If you want 4 devices connected to the internet and don’t really care about things like security or traffic shaping, then stick with your standard router.
Extra for Experts:
If you’re a little more technically minded, the firmware (software) on some routers can also be upgraded with 3rd party software such as DD-WRT or Tomato Firmware. These in turn add extra features to routers beyond that which manufacturers generally include in their firmware.
Transfer files from Android to Computer
12 years
Contacts:
The main instructions to get contacts from your phone to a sim card, memory card or usb device are here:
https://support.google.com/android/answer/168477?hl=en
If you want to backup the contacts database they should be in this folder on your phone or something similar to it depending on customisations made by the device manufacturer:
/data/data/android.providers.contacts/databases
You could just copy these files to your computer to backup the contacts database.
The easiest way going forward would be to add your contacts as Google contacts and these would sync between your phone and Google account automatically as long as you have your account sync turned on (settings -> Accounts and sync -> Your Google account).
Files:
For most files, the easiest way I’ve found is to sign up for Dropbox account and load the app on your phone. Photos you take can be automatically uploaded to your Dropbox and then the’re accessible on your computer like a regular folder.
If you do sign up for DropBox, do me a favour and use this link – http://db.tt/lpDpafmj I get 250mb extra storage for the referral and it costs you nothing.
You can copy files off your phone by simply plugging the phone into the computer using the usb cable for your phone and copy the files off as an Android Phone will show up in Windows as an extra drive. Mac users will need to download Android File Transfer – http://www.android.com/filetransfer/.
Or if you want to do it over wifi and not need to plug your phone in, check out Airdroid or ES File Explorer from the app store. Both of these apps make it easy to transfer files off your phone to your computer over Wifi. Although ES File Explorer is more complex and aimed more at users who would know how to set up shared folders on their computer.
Paid Apps:
There are plenty of other apps in the Android Play store that will back up your data for you. 2 paid apps that I highly recommend are Lookup Pro which adds antivirus and security features as well as photo and contacts backup and Titanium backup for a more comprehensive backup of your entire phone although it requires your android phone to have root access.
RAM – What is it and how much do I need.
12 years
I’ve recently had to service and/or repair a few computers whose largest issue was that they had far too little RAM. One in particular was running Windows 7 Pro and had only 512mb of RAM – this half the required memory for this operating system. So either the person who installed Windows 7 on this computer wasn’t aware how much RAM it had or wasn’t aware that that it would take a severe performance hit for not having enough of it.
What is RAM?
Example of RAM memory chips
RAM stands for Random Access Memory. Don’t worry too much about the name. It refers to the way in which RAM stores information and isn’t technically accurate for modern types of RAM anyway but the name has stuck.
What you DO need to know is that RAM is temporary memory where your computer can store information that it’s thinking about or working on while it is turned on. It is volatile memory – meaning that it will not be retained when the power source is disconnected. RAM is also pretty fast memory for the computer to read and write to. Information stored in RAM can be worked on and accessed very quickly.
Computers generally use RAM for storing the current applications you have open for quick access and the documents or files you have open. What sits in the RAM is controlled by the operating system.
You can think of RAM like having a large open desk with lots of clear space when you begin work. If your desk is large enough, you can layout all the resources and equipment you need to perform your work. If your desk is too small you end up shuffling things around, moving them on and off you desk and stacking things up.
In much the same way, if a computer has plenty of ram it has space to work. Space to hold all the resources it needs at the given moment and quick access to the information it is working on. It doesn’t need to shuffle things off onto your hard drive or constantly re-arrange things in ram to have access to the information it needs.
What’s with all these numbers and acronyms like DDR and GB?
(You can skip this part if you want to avoid technical explanations but I’ll try to make it as painless as possible).
This is where it can get confusing…
Firstly, your ram will come in a certain size or amount of Ram – eg. 2Gb, 4Gb, 16Gb etc. Gb is short for Gigabyte and is a measure of now much information your RAM can store.
SDRAM, DDR1, DDR2, and DDR3 are different types of ram. Think of this like models of cars. Actually it’s more like the engine model in your car. Not all engines will work in all cars. In a similar way your computer will only be able to take certain types and speeds of ram and if you’re not sure – it’s best to check with a computer technician before buying new ram.
Along with the type, ram runs at a certain speed and with certain timings (hold onto your brains for this part). Ram that is labelled “DRR3-400” means it is type DDR3 and runs at a maximum frequency of 400Mhz. This is sort of a ‘how many things a second’ can you manage rating.
Sometimes there is also information given about data transfer rates of the ram and timings. Most often these are given as a series of numbers E.G. CL7-7-7-18. These numbers indicate the number of clock cycles the ram will take to perform certain tasks. Generally speaking the lower the numbers, the tighter the timings are and the more expensive the ram will be.
Data transfer rates are usually noted with a ‘PC’ suffix. PC3200 ram for example runs at 3200 megabytes per second.
Why do I need ram?
Computers use ram to store information on a temporary basis. Usually for calculations or holding documents that you are working on and programs that you have open so you can work on them and switch between them quickly.
If your computer runs out of ram it uses a portion of your hard drive space as ram – this is called a SWAP file or partition. Hard drives are slower than ram so you can see a performance drop if you run out of Ram and the computer starts using hard drive memory – especially if it has to do this on a consistent basis.
As I mentioned in the introduction, if you have plenty of sufficiently fast ram, your computer has the space it needs to work and can access the information it needs more quickly. Overall, the appearance it gives is that of an overall faster computer.
How much RAM do I need?
There are 2 equally true and equally cliche answers to that question.
1. It depends
2. The more the better (to a point)
Let me start with a baseline. Your operating system requires a certain amount of RAM and Microsoft publish recommendations on the amount of RAM you should have for each of their operating systems. Although Microsoft calls this the recommended amount, I would suggest thinking of it more as a minimum for acceptable performance.
| Operating System | Recommended Amount |
| Windows XP Home Edition and Proffessional | 128MB |
| Windows Vista Home Basic | 512MB |
| Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate | 1GB |
| Windows 7 32bit | 1GB |
| Windows 7 64bit | 2GB |
Once you get past the requirements for your operating system, you need to have some for your programs. The more memory hungry your programs are (3d games, video processing etc) the more you will need. Also the more you have open at any one time, the more you will need.
Note: Unless you are running 64bit operating system, you will not see any benefit for anything above 3Gb of ram as your system cannot recognise more than 3Gb.
At the time of writing this, computers currently come with 2-4GB ram. If you don’t have this much in your computer currently, you should consider upgrading. Especially if it seems slow or takes a long time to respond.
If you have a 64bit operating system and you run memory intensive applications or have a lot of applications open you may see a benefit of increasing your ram up to 8Gb or more.
References and further reading:
Windows XP System Requirements – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865
Windows Vista System Requirements – http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/products/system-requirements
Windows 7 Systems Requirements – http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/system-requirements
eHow – How to read memory chips – http://www.ehow.com/how_7289009_read-memory-chips.html
Toms Hardware – PC Memory http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pc-memory,1698.html
Basic facts about the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011.
13 years
First a disclaimer:
While I’ve made every effort to make sure that this information is correct at the time of writing, I am not a lawyer, and this post should not replace solid legal advice. It is meant for educational purposes only.
This information is dependent on several sites that I’ve gleaned some of this information from and to changes in legislation over time.
What is it?
This is new legislation that makes it easier for Copyright holders to penalise people for copyright infringements via peer-to-peer file sharing. It is also referred to sarcastically as the 3-strikes law and the Skynet Law.
It came into force in New Zealand on 1st September 2011 (although data was allowed to be collected 21 days prior, no letters could be issued until this date) .
How do they detect infringements:
The most likely method will be by companies paid by the copyright holders participating in the pool or swarm of users that download the copyrighted material. When you use peer-to-peer networks certain information about your connection is shared with the other peers. This is primarily, your IP address. This can be linked to your Internet Service Provider and they can track which account was using a specific IP address at a specific time.
So Copyright holders will most likely pay other companies to join in on these downloads (legally, because they will own the copyright), record the ip addresses of others downloading the files and send notices to the ISP from there.
What’s covered?
- Copyrighted material downloaded using Peer to Peer applications such as bittorrent and Limewire.
- Specifically:
- material uploaded or downloaded from the Internet (and)
- using an application or network that enables the simultaneous sharing of material between multiple users.
What’s not covered?
- Downloading files straight from the internet – i.e. using file hosting services such as MegaUpload or Rapidshare. Technically, these sites are covered already under section 92c of the legislation – not part of this amendment.
- Streaming content from sites such as Youtube or Netflix.
- Content that is not copyrighted. In other words, peer to peer network applications are not illegal per se, it’s just downloading copyrighted material using these applications that is illegal.
- Mobile phones are excluded until 30 September 2013
- Content that was downloaded more than 21 days prior to 1st September 2011.
Who’s at risk
The account owner of the internet connection is liable.
An ISP can only trace an IP address to an account owner. Not a specific person using that particular connection. So if you have a family of 5 people, the account holder gets the letter, not necessarily the person who actually did the download. The same applies to companies offering free wifi, businesses with multiple users, schools, universities etc. Only the named account holder is liable for any fines regardless of whether or not that person actually downloaded any copyrighted material.
What is the process:
The basic process is that the copyright holder will detect that a particular ip address is downloading copyrighted material. They will send a notice to the ISP that the IP address belongs to. The ISP then looks up their records and forwards the notice on to the account holder.
You will receive 3 notices, each a minimum of 21 days apart. If you receive letters in 21 days between notices, they do not count as additional letters but can be used to calculate your fine after the 3rd letter. You can argue these letters but exactly how to do that is not clear as yet.
Show me the money:
It costs the copyright holder $25 to send a letter to an ISP. This is the fee agreed upon by ISP’s to cover the admin charge of looking up the account holder’s details at the time and for the ip address involved and sending them a letter. This charge is to be revised in March 2012 (6 months after the initial law came into affect). You receive 3 warning letters which must be at least 28 days apart. Any additional letters you receive during this time do not count towards your total of 3 warnings but can be used decide on your penalty after the 3rd letter is received. You can contest these letters after they arrive.
After you receive 3 warnings, you can be charged up to $15,000 for copyright infringement.
Criticisms:
This law has been heavily criticised especially in the tech industry for the following flaws.
– Assumption of guilt. Letters are sent to the copyright holder and it is assumed that that person downloaded the copyrighted material. Even if there a number of users using that connection.
Has it worked?
To date: Not really.
Very few (if any) letters have been received by ISPs and passed on to users. Many believe that this is because of the fee that ISPs are charging the copyright holders and because there is no centralised procedure for paying these fees and distributing the letters.
Currently most ISPs are insisting that if a copyright holder wants to send them a letter, they must register an account with the ISP, pay the fee and send them the letter before they will process it.
It is said that various copyright holders are working on a centralised system to make this process more streamlined and to reduce the fee by making it easier for the ISPs to recieve the fees and letters. There is a built in review of these fees in the law 6 months after it comes into affect.
However, many ISPs saw a drop of around 10% in internet usage around the 1st September – some argue that this 10% drop was not necessarily all illegal file sharing but it does seem to be a co-incidence.
Recommended Further Reading:
www.legislation.govt.nz – The legislation in full
www.techliberty.org.nz – What you need to know about the new copyright law
www.3-strikes.net – The basics
www.3-strikes.net – FAQ
13 Reasons why the Infringing File Sharing Act is bad for you
PDF Flowchart of the new law process
Updates:
01/11/2011 – The first wave of copyright infringement notices arrives – http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/5887377/First-copyright-infringement-notices-issued