TP-Link TL-WR1043ND – Part I

 Tech  3 Responses »
Jun 292011
 

TL-WR1043ND FrontPreviously, I have shared about the importance of establishing a home network, and now is the time to explain about the router alone. Actually this is just my way of saying “I have one good router in my home, and so thankful to have it“.

I have been using this router, a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND for more than a year, and I still find it capable and powerful for my demanding everyday use. First impression from the looks is not impressive at all (well, at least not for me). Design-wise is old-fashion, and the use of white color is truly a killjoy. Spec-wise is adequate and promising: an affordable router which is equipped with a Gigabit ethernet switch, Wireless N, and the most useful of them all, one USB port and the ability of using third-party firmwares such as OpenWRT, DD-WRT, and the likes. What can I say, functions first, fashion follows. Worth a try!

TL-WR1043ND BackAfter testing for a couple of weeks using the original firmware and content with its stability, I decided to flash it with a third-party firmware, DD-WRT. The reason why I chose DD-WRT over OpenWRT is because OpenWRT is too geeky (read: I’m a linux newb and DD-WRT has a GUI).

After painstakingly reading numerous forums and embracing a long trial-and-errors period, my perseverance prevailed. Now I have a Samba server, Torrent downloader, a virtual access point, and there is no way for me to go back to the original firmware, although DD-WRT’s firmwares I’m actually using are actually beta builds.

To get you started, first read the DD-WRT’s forum for your corresponding router for how-tos. There are two kind of chipsets supported by DD-WRT: Atheros and Broadcom. Every chipsets are treated differently, and solutions given for specific chipset is not guaranteed to work for other chipsets, sometimes mistreatment can lead to bricked routers. It is imperative for you to read the forum first to get to know the basic things before jumping in.

Once you know your hardware, then it’s time to give it a flash. I’m not going to give you the link to the firmwares, read the forum and find it there. Read this thread because its useful, and read it again and print before flashing, and read it once again before asking in the forum. Although the title clearly states: “THIS IS BROADCOM ONLY!”, I found that the first step (step 1a to 1h) can be implemented to TL-WR1043ND ver. 1.4.

A little word of cautions: Since I’m using TP-Link TL-WR1043ND, all my opinions are based on my experience using this product. This writing is intended to share the knowledge and experience, and motivates other to have a Hands-on experience in digitalife.

After successfully flashing the router, you can read the tutorials for references on setting up and here for Atheros wireless settings. There are a lot you can do with DD-WRT. I myself benefited from DDNS, Virtual AP, and QoS. Note that the firmwares are beta, and other users in the forums may report that certain capabilities are not working, YMMV. The oldest stable firmware based on my experience is 14896 (some users also report that 14929 is better), and the latest “good-enough” is 16214.

After setting up, run a connectivity test for at least a week to check if laptops and handhelds can connect without problems. I also recommend to check if the router have rebooted itself for stability test. If you have problems, refer again to the forums, read first before you ask, since the community are quite active in sharing their knowledge.

Keep on reading…

Home networking

 Tech  2 Responses »
Nov 032010
 

In a brief explanation, a home network is a small private network where devices are interconnected together. Having a network at home will give you the possibility of sharing your internet connection, printer, and other advantages that can make life easier for you and your household members.

For most people, having a home network is just a waste of money. Maybe yes. If you have only one PC and a printer, then the answer is definitely a “Yes”. But what if you have many devices at home with multiple users that need to be connected to the internet? You will definitely want to build a small home network to, at least, share your internet connection.

Why do you need a home network?

Home network

For those of you who doesn’t have a home network, consider this, you have 2 PCs in different rooms, one laptop, a printer, a broadband connection, and let say 3 wifi-capable mobile phones. Without a network you will be having a hard time when you need to print a document from the laptop. Your best choice is to unplug your printer USB cable from one PC where it is connected to, and plug it back to the laptop for printing. What if the document is located in a PC in a different room? My best bet is you will copy the document from that PC to a USB drive and plug it in to the PC where the printer is attached for printing. Although that is a simple task of unplug-here-and-plug-there or copy-here-and-paste-there actions, this can be so annoying when done frequently. Also, when those devices are not interconnected, internet access is most probably only available to a single PC where the modem is directly connected to.

How do you build a home network?

For these devices to be interconnected, you need a home network, and the best solution to build a network is to use a router. That actually answers the question on how do you build a home network. Go buy yourself a router and start building the network.

By adding a router, you can connect your devices to share the internet connection. This is the main reason why people buy a router, to share the single internet connection for multiple devices and multiple people at the same time.

TP-Link TL-WR1043ND

On the side note, when you are looking for a router in your local store, don’t get confused with a hub or a switch. In some particular brands, they manufactured their routers and switches with almost similar appearance but they are different. You may want to visit here for more detailed explanation on their differences. My visual guide on differentiating a router from the other two in a store’s shelf is the antenna, a router should have at least one antenna attached to its body for wifi signal. Also, some routers can be flashed to use 3rd party firmware to enhance its capability, this will give more advantages in the long run.

Start your home network and connect

Router is easy to setup, basically you need to connect your modem to the WAN port of your router using UTP cable, and connect your PC to one of four available LAN ports (I usually use LAN 1). Most of the time, with the correct setting of WAN connection type (Auto for cable, and PPPoE for DSL) and provided that the PC is set on auto DHCP (this is the Windows default) there should be no problem and you should be able to browse the internet.

Next is to configure wifi so other PC and laptop can also connect wirelessly to the router. For the second PC in different room, you might want to get a wifi PCI card rather than to use UTP cable to minimize clutter and maintenance. Once you are finish installing the wifi card, you can start tinkering with wifi setting on your router. I recommend to use WPA2 AES for wifi security. When the other PC and laptop are able to connect to the internet wirelessly, you can start configuring your wifi-capable phones to connect to the router with the same setting. Please consult your router’s manual for optimized setting and result.

Now after you successfully setup the router and all devices (wired and wireless) can connect to the internet simultaneously, you can start sharing folders between computers. With shared folder you can share your files through your network to be used by other users from different computers in your home network. Some people are using this as a method to share media files to be played from different PC. You can also have your printer shared so other people can print directly from their PCs or laptops. Please note that using this basic infrastructure setup, the printer is shared only when the PC where it is connected to is on.

Take a glance at an example of TP-Link’s router web interface to get familiar with the router setup. If you are having a hard time configuring your PCs to share folders and printer, you can read this guide for better guidance.

That’s it, when all of your devices can connect to the internet and share folders and printer are accessible from other computers, you have already build your home network.

iPod Facts You Should Know

 Tech  No Responses »
Oct 112010
 

iPod Facts You Should Know
By: Roberto Sedycias

iPod is one of the most successful consumer electronic products in history. It is the best selling mp3 / mp4 player in the market today. The combination of sound quality, sleek design and unique user interface, made the iPod a hit, causing an entire industry of accessories to emerge almost overnight.

The Apple Corporation first released the iPod on October 23, 2001.

Presently we are now on the 5th generation of iPod.

The first generation – Mp3 player with mechanical scroll wheel and four buttons.
The second generation – It has touch-sensitive wheel, 10 GB and 20 GB hard drives.
The third generation – It has touch-sensitive bottoms and USB connectivity.
The fourth generation – It has click-wheel and only two hard disk version, 20 GB and 40 GB.
The fifth generation – Mp4 player with 60 GB memory storage and video capability.

iPod has won several awards ranging from engineering excellence, to most innovative audio product. Very often it receives favorable reviews on looks, designs and handling.

iPod was designed as an mp3 / mp4 player for people with an active lifestyle. It is compact, sturdy and lightweight enough to take with you wherever you go. It was designed to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand or to be carried into a pocket or purse for easy transportation.

It comes in many storage capacities from 512 MG to 80 GB. The amount of memory it can hold, depends on the model or on the compression rate of your songs.

As an mp3 player it was designed to provide the best quality sound. It has a powerful 60 MW amplifier so it can deliver audio as loud as you want. It also has a 20 MZ to 20 KHZ frequency response, which means you can hear distortion free music at the lowest pitches.

iPod built-in rechargeable battery provides between 8 to 20 hours of music playtime depending on your model. Using the appropriate stereo adapter your iPod will sound great on your home or car stereo system. All iPod`s come as standard with a non removable lithium rechargeable battery. The battery charge will last about 14 to 28 days without use. The lcd display shows the battery level on the upper right corner of the screen. You may charge your iPod by connecting it to an Apple iPod Power Adapter or connecting it to a USB port of a computer. A full charge takes approximately four hours while 80% charge will require at least one hour.

Apple has designed the iPod, as an mp3 player, to work with the iTunes media library software, which allows you to select your music on your computer and on your ipod. iTunes can automatically synchronize this mp3 player with specific playlists or with the entire content of a music library each time you connect your iPod to a host computer.

The first three generations of iPod used two ARM 7TDMI derived CPUs running at 90 MHZ, while later models have variable speed chips which run at a peak of 80 MHZ to save battery life. Another great feature of owning an iPod is the fact that someone can record a discussion and then post the audio file on the internet. This means people can download the file and listen to the file on their iPod. As an mp4 player, with iTunes 4.9, you can now browse and subscribe to podcasts at the iTunes Website. Podcasts are radio shows or other audio/video programs that are downloadable over the internet.

In order for you to be a more satisfied iPod customer, as to the usability and longer battery life spam of this mp3-mp4 player you should consider the following tips:

– Keep it turned off when not using it.
– Update to the latest software.
– Keep it at room temperature whenever possible.
– If you are not using the backlighting, turn it off.
-Turning off the equalizer will save you battery.
– Use compressed songs.

With the availability of compact audio format, we have had mp3 players such as iPod, which provided an unprecedented portability to eager electronic consumers. Now iPod, as mp4 players, is already able to deliver video capability and a whole new set of features and services yet to come.

Author Bio
Roberto Sedycias – IT Consultant
This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.
This article can also be accessed in portuguese language from the News Article section of page PoloMercantilRoberto Sedycias works as IT consultant for PoloMercantil.

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