Open-Mesh

I've played with a load of WiFi access points; from my very first Zyxel 802.11b access point, with its dorky associated PCMCIA card, to the latest/greatest Apple base station, most AP's haven't really differentiated themselves. Off hand, I can think of Proxim, Cisco, Orinoco, Xirrus, Colubris, Ruckus, Linksys, Netgear, Billion, D-Link, TP-Link & Belkin to name a few brands I've had the (dis)pleasure of directly configuring.

 Only four stand out, for different reasons.

• Proxim, for having the most awesome WiFi meshing, going back more than 8 years. Although you had to connect to each one to configure them, wired or wireless was irrelevant; they would discover each other and backhaul over 5GHz and serve clients over 2GHz, with a single unified SSID. They were almost perfect, except for the price, which was about R5k at the time
• Linksys, for having the most long-range device, the WAG54G. Solid, dependable, boring as sin but rock solid and worked well in almost any environment
• Billion, for unarguably having the most rubbish radios and range, and being so unreliable that they're as good as useless
• Apple, for having the most expensive and least functional devices on the planet. Other than that you can configure them from an iOS device, there is absolutely nothing redeeming about these AP's. Repeat, there is nothing redeeming about Apple AP's as WiFi devices

So, being a schmuck, I ended up with two Apple Airport Extreme devices, both cabled/wired, with two radios; one broadcasting at 5GHz and the other at 2.4GHz. Nope, they didn't speak to each other if they were cabled. Nope, they didn't form/create one SSID. Yes, iOS devices are particularly stupid and want to associate with the BSSID they last connected, not necessarily the one closest.

 

So, we had what I call the last shining light problem; the last AP the client device connected to, was the one it insisted on connecting to again. Even if there was a closer, faster AP in the same room. With the same SSID. This illustrated to me that you can't leave AP decisions to the client; work on the principle that clients are stupid (gosh, that would be a first!), and leave the intelligence in the network.

 

One evening, this happened once too many times and I got super annoyed. Quick Google search revealed that what I want to do is surprisingly difficult in the consumer space, and pretty rare even in the enterprise space. What I wanted is referred to as wired open or loose mesh; a mixture of wired and wireless AP's, that communicate with each other, and where an associated AP will kick a client off when a "closer" AP sees the client.

 

A quick call to Ruckus indicated they can absolutely do what I want; but at a price point I wasn't willing to pay for home. Meraki (now a Cisco division) seem to be able to do what I want, but again, at a price point that seems to be straying quite far from their original roots. I was about to give up, and then discovered Open-Mesh. 

Seemed ideal; cheap AP's ($60 and $80), cloud-based controller, two SSID's out the box, perfect! Also cheap enough to experiment, so I ordered four. Two were to be wired, two wireless. I expected four would be enough. The first awesome thing was that they told me the MAC addresses of the devices, before they shipped! Excellent, means I could add it to my DHCP-issuing infrastructure, as well as configuring it online, on the Cloudtrax portal. You create a master login, and from there, you can create multiple "child" networks each with their own independent settings.

 

And before you think you're locked into their AP's, essentially any AP running batman can join and be part of the network.

 

So how do you configure ? There are three high level decisions;

 

1. Do you want to allow guests (i.e. an open network), and if so, what do you want to limit their traffic to ?
2. Do you want to allow guests to have a premium service ? If so, what are your Paypal details and what rate limit would you like them to have ?
3. Do you want to run a 2nd "private" SSID and bridge it to your LAN ?

 

There are a bunch of other decisions, like AP isolation (i.e WiFi clients cannot connect to each other), the ability to report outages via e-mail, but functionally, you have to determine the above 3. I configured the devices, by basically adding them to my network on a Google-backed map with their MAC's (which I had because they gave them to me), and waited.

 

They arrived, I plugged them in, and 15 minutes later, I had a meshed WiFi network that had two wired AP's, and two additional AP's hanging off them. As promised, network coverage was excellent and more importantly, I could roam from one AP to another with no dropped packets, a slight increase in latency and the ability to review my network from Android or iOS. I've ordered some additional AP's to ensure 150Mbps in every corner of the house, but basically, you could get away with 4 on a two story house for Internet access.

 

There is no longer a last connected light problem, there is now a shining light network; the closest AP is associated to, network access is full strength and the network is fault-tolerant.

 

I can highly recommend this service!

Edit: you don't need to tell the devices or network which one is cabled or not, which port is LAN/WAN; it figures it out dynamically.

Edit: it creates a virtual BSSID, and then dynamically remaps the closest AP to a client with that BSSID. It also creates its own DHCP range and NAT's on the guest network, and prevents clients on the guest network access to the LAN.

Edit: I've added three more nodes to the network, and it is highly extensible; here is a view of my home network.

Blackberry Z10

Blackberry had lost its way over the last few years. It had frankly average hardware paired to cloud-centric intelligence in the form of BIS or BES. With both, polling of your e-mail, calendar data and the like was done centrally, and then results pushed to the end-device. You couldn't ad hoc add a POP3 account, for example; it had to be added at the centre.

 

So in my opinion, Blackberry has never really had smartphones; they've had smart terminals, but as smartphones, they were pretty poor. I've played previously with a Bold 9000, and a Curve 8520; nice enough build, average performance and downright rubbish app selection.

 

That was the past. When Blackberry announced the Blackberry 10 OS, based on QNX (of single-floppy bootable GUI fame), there was the promise of getting to par with Blackberry's unarguable competition, Android and iOS, at least in features. And while I've only had a Z10 for two days, I thought it good to share some opinions.

 

Gone is the requirement for BIS or BES to do anything useful! The device is actually a smartphone; it has ActiveSync support out of the box, IMAP support and the like. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are integrated into the central messaging environment (called Hub), as are your texts, BBM's and other messaging systems. In addition, your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn contact data sync with your phonebook, so you can look at your contacts holistically rather than across multiple applications.

 

The device itself is very well made; it feels of premium quality, with a relatively minimalistic design. Easy and comfortable to hold, feels like a solid device and packs a 1800maH removable battery and removable microSD card. Yay, removable storage. Hardware is definitely a pass.

 

 

Software, on the other hand, is different. Not good or bad different, just … different. You can see that its got a UNIX or UNIX-like backend, and it feels like a polished skin on Android frankly. You swipe down from the top to access menus or additional features, you swipe up to access the task bar, and then its a swipe to the left to access the central message Hub, or a swipe to the right to access the fairly ubiquitous and Apple-like application menu.

 

So far, so good. In terms of the applications available, its a little miserable at the moment. The core ones (Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) are there, but nice to have applications like Skype and Whatsapp, and core applications to me like Google Drive, Google+ and in fact anything Google-related are simply not available. While I can live with these omissions for a short time, no matter how slick the experience is, I will ultimately be forced away from the platform due to a lack of "killer app".

 

And then the event (™) occurred. The device was charging, and several notifications for application updates, including one for Blackberry World, appeared. As you would, I chose the install all option, and went to sleep. I woke up and noticed the Blackberry World application's icon had changed, and it was now simply a square with a triangle, a circle and a crescent. And trying to run it would simply bring up the task manager. Hmmmm, this wasn't a good sign. And guess what ? There is no way to delete it, no way to repair, and no way to download another copy.

 

 

Ok, although its painful, lets reset the device. The only on-device option is called a security wipe, which other than taking very long, does what it says. All your user data is gone; and this is important, ONLY user data is removed. The phone rebooted and lo and behold, now I didn't have a broken Blackberry World application; I didn't have ANY Blackberry World application. Shit.

 

So, lets try and reinstall the OS. Oops, you can't. At least, not as a user. You have to give it to Blackberry. Given that this is a test device from Blackberry SA, I'd assume they were quite keen to resolve this problem quickly. Well, now been 24 hours since the problem was reported, and no action. Sigh.

Would I recommend this device ? Right now, no. In 3 months time ? Maybe.

iShieldz

Best. Screen. Protector. Ever.

 

No bubbles, good protection, easy to apply. And the dry auto application (yes, this is tech and no, its not porn) is amazing! Get from Emia Distribution.

iPad Mini

When Apple launched the iPad Mini, I thought back to Steve Jobs saying that 7" was a rubbish form factor. Maybe it was all the other kick-ass 7" tablets that made them build it ?

Whatever the reason, they did. And its pretty. Its literally like they shrunk the original iPad; it feels good in the hands, size is perfect, texture is great. So, on the plus side

• size is excellent
• lightning connector is brilliant
• price point is fair (I said fair, not cheap)

 

There are three caveats though;

• why did it need a nano-SIM, as opposed to the micro-SIM that they made ubiquitous two years ago or a normal SIM for the 20 years before that ?
• why not fit a retina display to it ?
• why does it feel so damn sluggish and often pause when running multiple applications ?

 

As usual, Apple has released a great market and effectively reinvented a segment they already dominated. I suspect that you'll see over time the 10" iPad market stabilise (not shrink) with substantial growth coming from the 7" market. I suspect they'll piss off tons of early adopters by releasing a retina-upgraded version of the display by June 2013, and then a jump/quantum change in September/October (processor bump, better cameras, etc). But for now, its a damn fine piece of kit.

Popbox V8

I have waxed lyrical about the Popcorn Hour range of players before, but they're all too large to carry on extended holiday or business trips. I went to go buy a Popcorn Hour A-400, and spotted the Popbox V8, a small media player which, upon testing, delivers very good video playback performance and relatively good stability in a small, compact package.

 

And the codec support / playback performance is as good / great as its bigger brothers. Small enough to travel with, will be testing it out in the field next week. I suspect it will do quite well.

Popcorn Hour A-400

I've always been a fan of the Popcorn Hour devices, ever since Geoff Rehmet mentioned them to me and said these look awesome. I ordered the Popcorn Hour A-110, and when it was time to replace it, bought the C-200 (original product page) and then the A-200 (original product page). Nice devices, good physical build quality but very ropy software builds, which improved over time.

 

My C-200 died, and the A-400, I had hoped, would get around the rough beginnings of previous devices. I had skipped the A-300, having no need of a media player. While the interface is prettier than the previous generations, the software bugs peek through as soon as you do anything other than playback media. And the new video-wall style interface is notoriously buggy. It has crashed and corrupted itself literally every day I've tried to use it; I've removed my photo collection to see if that makes a difference, which I suspect it will - ok, maybe these things are not built for 120GB photo collections.

 

The device has significantly more horsepower while navigating than its predecessors, and it chews through MKV playback. Also, the picture quality is notably better than the previous units, so I'm quite happy with the raw performance. But the video wall interface needs a lot of work still, in its DB maintenance / generation.

 

I don't regret buying it (my old unit packed up), and it does what its supposed to do. I'm just annoyed that I have to fight with it to enable the "new" features. Overall, a worthy buy which does what it promises, but still with some rough edges.

 

PS. For raw video performance and network speed (even at 100Mbps), it still kicks the Apple TV's butt.

iPhone 5

However much I didn't want to like the iPhone 5, I have to admit that after using it for a few days, I do. Physically, the only thing I really noticed was the fact that its larger/taller. Yes, its thinner. Yes, its lighter. Enough to buy a new phone ? If you have a 4S, nah; or a Galaxy S3, or an HTC One X. For anything else, its a real no-brainer. Get one.

 

The height makes it still usable with one hand, and it feels pretty good in the hand compared to the Samsung S3 or HTC One X. Its very fast, and battery life has improved notably - I used to get to 30% with a 4S, and 10% with a 4. With this 5, I now am sitting at 40% after a business day. So thats improved, which is great. And I'm seeing unbelievable network speeds, which means quite a lot of work went into the radios on this device. This is the device that should have been released instead of the 4S, which was the predecessor to this device.

 

But I don't like one thing, other than that I got it in white because thats all that was available. I love the Lightning connector because its so small, and doesn't matter which direction you stick it in. I don't love the fact that basically nothing that I have (docks, cables, adapters, chargers) work with it. So, I've done the only logical thing you can do; bought tons of micro-USB chargers and data cables, and bought a lightning-micro-USB adapter, and will stick to that. Micro-USB is almost universally available now, and the adapter really is well made and small - it should be, its damn expensive at R200+

 

Overall, a great device.

 

PS. The service I've been getting from Cell-C since I ported has been stellar. They had the phone for me when they said they would, nano-sim and all. And my bills are coming in literally at half Vodacom. No brainer if you're still with anyone else and paying your own bill; port!

 

PPS. WTF did they change the SIM design to a nano-sim ? Stupid.