Wireless Data

Wireless, Wireless, World

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I was busy Tuesday. At work I had issues with our Wifi setup. Gus has complained about it for years, but I never find anything wrong with it. On monday I did notice that it was just not working at all. I took my old 802.11b wifi point from home into work to troubleshoot. The point I had at home is the same type we use at the office. Back in the day it was top of the line. Now, not so much. Turns out both points at work are bad. The Wifi cards are fried. We are running off of my old point for now. I want it back so I can ebay it, but I will keep it at work until we can purchase new ones.

At home I had wifi issues of my own. I wanted a new 802.11g point at my house for a while. Ever since I got my VPN firewall I have been without high speed wireless. So since work got my old B point (that I should have sold long ago) I finally went to Best Buy and got a new Linksys 802.11G point. I set that up in no time. My problems started when I tried to configure the Wireless Bridge (802.11b if you were wondering) I had lying around. After hours of messing with it, I finally got it to work correctly. Right now it is plugged into my VOIP phone so I could put the phone in my bedroom without pulling any cables. it is neat. My eventual goal is to plug the bridge into my Tivo so I don’t have a cable running from my router to my TV wall unit.

I like the bridge so much I may get another one and keep the phone where it is. I have all the components to go totally wireless. I have a 802.11g card for my desktop. The only down side of wireless is if I want to transfer large files, which I do sometimes. For now everything works!!!

Another Week, Another Trip To Boston

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I am back on the Acela Express up to Boston today. Gus and I are on the 8:03 again. Dan couldn’t make it, so he bailed on us. David, and Kai are both driving and meeting us once we get up to the site. Today we are visiting the Cisco Customer Briefing Center. I have never been. I hear it is nice. 2 of our Cisco engineer’s are also on the train. I stopped and said hi to one of them.

I have been trying to (with mixed results) use my T610’s bluetooth connection to download email on my Powerbook. Not very reliable today. At least I have my blackberry with me. I got no movie watching done on the train. I just did work, and followed up on email. I have no life…

More VOIP Updates

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Several things finally came together on my VOIP odyssey this weekend. For one I solved a problem I have been having for some time. I also got off my ass and plugged in my new Linksys VPN Router. I started to setup static VPN tunnels to work. For one thing I proved I can setup a static IPSEC tunnel to a Pix with a cheap ($150 or cheaper) router. At first I still could not connect to one of our offices. I had the same problem with the Pix 501 I had. Or at first I thought it was the same problem. With the 501 I couldn’t connect to that office either. I was beginning to think it was not me but the Pix at that office. Turns out when I had my Pix 501 I had 1 issue. With the new Linksys VPN router the problem was a new one. Turns out the fail-over Pix we have at the office uses the IP address of 10.1.1.1. That is all nice and good, but that was what I used for my router at home. That didn’t work well. I had to give my router a new address and recreate the VPN tunnel. Everything started working then.

Now I have 2 tunnels (if and when I want them) to work. I don’t need VPN software. This is a good test since now I do not need VPN software on a computer in order to establish a VPN connection. What that means is I can plug in a VOIP phone and connect to my office’s call manager. I did just that. Now I have a 7940 phone connecting into our CCM (cisco call manager) system sitting on my desk at home. This is different to what I was trying to do with the 7940 and my BroadVoice connection. Now I can log into the phone at home and get my extension from work. I can prove that we can do this with remote agents if we choose to do so. We probably won’t but it is a nice technological feat to say we can. We want to go with the cheaper soft-phone option for remote agents, but having the ability to put a phone in someone’s house is nice to know you can. Have I mentioned that I have a cool job, or that VOIP is awesome???

In addition to the work phone I now have setup. I finally got my VOIP ATA adapter from the lovely folks at Broadvoice on Monday. I plugged it in after calling them and changing my account back to use that adapter. In minutes the adapter registered and I was off and running. I plugged in my new cordless phone and I had phone service. Did I mention it is only $10 a month? Now I was an early adopter of not having a home phone. I still use my cell as my main phone, but it is nice to not have to worry about the battery dying on a long call. Truth be told I want the VOIP service for the simultaneous ring option that I have. I am able to have calls ring on my home phone, my cell, blackberry, and work phone at the same time. I have a few kinks I am working out but otherwise that has been very cool.

Some problems I have to work out. I am back to using my old 802.11b wireless point. My 802.11g point was built into my old router. Now that I have a VPN router I can’t use that router. I need to buy a stand alone “g” point. I also need to break out a 5 port switch and daisy chain it off of my router. With the Wifi point, both my personal and work phones, plus my desktop and laptop, plus a tivo I have ran out of network ports on my 4 port router. Thankfully I think I have enough components to build 2 computers and extra network gear in my closet. He I don’t throw out very much stuff.

Ok, time for bed…

Still Building My Laptop

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Sunday I got the OS back on my Thinkpad. Today was spent getting all the other applications on it. Throughout the day I had people come and ask for stuff. I would say, dam I need to install that. I would spend the next 20 minutes doing an install to get 5 seconds of information for someone. Hopefully this will be done soon so I can resume my normal work schedule routine.

Most importantly I still need to put on the VPN and Wireless software on the laptop, so I can be remote when I am in Kingston tomorrow. That is on my agenda for first thing Tuesday.

Jury Duty Sucks

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I am on day two of Jury Duty. Yesterday was going ok until I got put on a Jury. I was in the new courthouse. The AC was on, I had cell reception. I figured I can ride this out. No problem. Then I get put in a room for 4 hours and at the last minute I get selected as an alternate on a jury. I did my best to not be wanted, but they selected me anyway.

My dad picked me up from the courthouse yesterday and we went to dinner. THe commute wasn’t so bad. today will not be so nice. I got a car service to the court house again. That went over well, except for its cost. Going home is more difficult. I don’t know when I will be let go, so I cannot arrange for a car. Taking the rail road will take longer than it would from the city since I would have to go from Jamaica to wood-side back to my train station.

Other problems abound today. My GPRS service was not working on my phone so I could not check email. I figured it would start working eventually today. I will never know since the court house confiscated my phone because it has a camera on it. I can get it back later, but I am now without a phone all day. I had to call the office before and I used our 800# to get a hold of kai. If it wasn’t happening to me, I would think it was funny.

I am now waiting for my trial to be called. They say it can happen anytime between 10AM and 5PM. It feels like I am waiting for the cable company.

The only plus side is that the AC is going in the courthouse and it is comfy. Work will probably be hot and nasty this week without AC.

I am sitting here blogging in the central jury room waiting for my case to be called. I cannot find any outlets to power the laptop so I am keeping it powered down as much as possible. I have the screen brightness down all the way to conserve power. I don’t know how long I will be here. I also don’t know if or when I can charge the laptop up again today.

I have been using my Treo for email. That way I am trying to phase out my blackberry. Since I cannot have the camera phone in the courthouse I am having Jayson fedex me my pager for tomorrow morning. Hopefully I will get it before I leave for the courthouse. With my blackberry I can at least get email when I am out of the office. The Treo was fine yesterday, but they confiscated it today:(

This blog entry was written while listening to Black Balloon from the album “Dizzy Up The Girl” by Goo Goo Dolls

Bluetooth, Powerbook, And A T610 = Awesome

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I have had a new Sony Ericsson T610 for a little over a week now. Actually I am on my second one. The first one’s camera stopped working on day 2, so T-Mobile gave me a new one. So far this one seems fine.

This phone is nice, but the best feature is the bluetooth. I can sync with my Powerbook while the phone is in my bag. No more entering contact information into the phone. I know I could have (and have) done this on other phones, but the sync software on the pc and the usb or ir methods sucked. This is a breeze. Setup on the powerbook was easy too. I also got GPRS dial up to work. Now I can use my T610 as a modem anywhere I get good signal while using my Powerbook. I was just checking my mail on the rail road. The phone was still in my bag. Now that is technology that works.

The only kink is that the GPRS is slow, and on the train the signal is sometimes spotty. When I get good signal the connection rocks.

Bluetooth Gear

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I talk allot about the technology gear that I use. To me recently, the holey grail of technology gadgets is wireless interaction between devices. Ussually that means Wifi. Wifi is out there and it works great, when it works. For me the big thing is getting good Bluetooth devices that work well together. I have been trying for this goal for over 2 years.

I had a good setup with my T68i and my motorola bluetooth headset about a year or so ago. The problem was that I broke the headset one day when I dropped my backpack. The T68i, with headset and my Powerbook made an unbeatable combination. Now I have a T610, a different powerbook, and I plan on getting another bluetooth headset. Hopefully everything will work as advertised and I will have a complete portable wireless setup. Is it a pipe dream? Maybe, but I am going to try to get it to work.

As I mentioned earlier today the next step for this solution is to get GPRS to work on my Powerbook via the T610 over bluetooth. If I get it to work, I may even suck it up and buy a new PCMCIA Bluetooth card for my thinkpad. I have a Xircom Realport2 Bluetooth card, but it doesn’t have resident XP drivers, and I am finding it doesn’t work 100% correctly. The cards have come down in price so I will see how much they are.

This blog entry was written while listening to Bent from the album “Beneath These Fireworks” by Matt Nathanson

Sony Ericsson T610

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My new T-Mobile phone is a new Sony Ericsson T610. It is supposed to be the upgrade to the T68i that I had. I actually still have the T68, but I am never happy with the signal strength I get on it. T-Mobile discounted the phone by %50 with a mail in rebate so I took it. I will wait till they offer the Motorola V600 and the price comes down.

So far my reviews of this phone are limited. The screen is nice. It is bright and crisp. The buttons are small and annoying like the T68i, but I can deal with that. I only used it for 2 minutes on the phone so I am not sure about voice quality or volume.

Bluetooth looks good on it. I was able to setup and pair the phone with my Powerbook in 2 minutes. I don’t know how that will work with my Thinkpad. I like that the new bluetooth devices don’t need you to specify that you want to make them discoverable. That is good for setup, but bad for security. Also nice is the fact that I don’t have a big bright blue light that is always on when bluetooth is on. My T68i did that. It was really annoying. All I have is an icon on the top of the phone screen telling me I have bluetooth on. That is all I need.

iSync with bluetooth was easy also. I dumped my entire phone book to the phone in 3 minutes. I didn’t even take out the Sony Ericsson software for the PC since I can do that all on my Mac with no special software. Have I mentioned I love my Powerbook?

Downloading or uploading pictures was a snap also. Just told my Powerbook to browse folders on bluetooth devices and up came my phones memory. I downloaded the two photos I took yesterday.

What I was unable to do was setup my powerbook to use the T610 as a GPRS modem via bluetooth. I found a few sites on the internet that explain how to do it. I downloaded some modem scripts, but have still not been able to get it to work. I only worked on it for like 15 minutes last night before I needed to get to bed. I had an early train to catch today.

I got bluetooth GPRS to work on my old Powerbook and my T68i using AT&T Wireless last year. I should be able to get it working with the T610. I just need to work on it. Kind of pissed that I couldn’t get it working before my trip. I could be using it right now on the train. Instead I get to clear my head and update my blog!

This blog entry was written while listening to Angry from the album “Mad Season” by Matchbox Twenty

Mobile Technology

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I tell everyone I used to hate traveling for work. That is partially true. In the end I dreaded the trips, the waits in the airport, getting lost in po-dunk towns in rental cars, etc. In the beginning I loved traveling. I think I did too much too quick. Also I did this during a period of the worst air traffic delays in the history of US air travel. I also flew out of the most delayed airport in the US. An airport that the FAA said accounted for 25-30% of all delays at the time, Laguardia airport (LGA).

This entry is not about my love or dislike of travel, that I can save for many entries later. What I am thinking about is the cool technology you can use or rely on when traveling.

Studies are coming out now saying more and more people are “cutting the cord” or becoming wireless phone only households. I have been using my cell as my primary (or only) home phone since 1998. Earlier than that I lived at home with my parents and they did have an extra line, even though I never used it.

When traveling you can use the coolest tools that keep you in touch or working. The stuff out now is even better than what I was able to use when I traveled regularly 3 years ago. Wow, it has been 3 years since I did that.

When I was on the road I relied on a laptop (Compaq Presario 1875 or something with an AMD K6-2 180mhz processor, then a number of Micron 15″ TFT laptops, and eventually a Dell latitude CPx). The laptops I have now kick the ass of the ones I had then. My thinkpad T-40 I use for work is literally half the thickness of the micron’s I used and 3-4 times more powerful. The battery lasts like 4 hours. If I got 90 minutes on the micron or 60+ on the Compaq I was happy. Even my tiny Powerbook gets better battery life than the old desktop replacements.

My cell phone back then was several flavors of the Nokia 6160, Motorola Timeport, or later on a Nokia 8890. The service actually was as good as it is now. T-Mobile’s coverage has gotten better, but I used to go everywhere with my AT&T Tri-mode TDMA Nokia’s. The phone was big but worked all over. From Canada, to Portland Oregon, to Portland Maine. The difference is I am paying about half the price I paid back in 1999 for about the same amount of minutes or even more minutes now.

The other difference with cell phones are that my Treo 600 is a handheld and a phone. I also get wireless internet access on it. For me between 1998 and 2001 that was impossible for me. now I can get email on my phone or use another phone with bluetooth to get mail on my laptop. I didn’t even have a blackberry then. I would have killed for a blackberry when I traveled. I take it for granted now.

The WiFi hotspots would be awesome to have had when I traveled. I used to use Laptop Lane at some airports back then, but they weren’t everywhere.

VPN software and Exchange 2003 with RDP over HTTPS would have been awesome. Either would have been awesome. At Datastream we had to use outlook from outside the firewall using AT&T Global net dial up. It was so slow. Now it would be trivial and fast to use, especially with high speed internet in some hotels now. When I went to vegas last winter I plugged my Powerbook (then a 15″ TiPowerbook) into the network jack in the hotel and I was able to VPN back to work. It came in handy when Keith needed something when I was out. That is the coolness I am talking about. Technology that just works when you are on the road.

If I was still traveling I would probably look at the bluetooth GPS receivers they have out now. Connect it to my iPack 1945 and know where I am. It would be killer.

What is also funny is that more and more people are using gadgets on the road. Besides the pain in the ass people on cell phones everywhere (writing this as someone’s phone goes off on the train). I mean laptops PDA’s, and other neat stuff. Around me right now on the train is 4 ladies with huge laptops doing work. One has to be my mom’s age. 4 years ago that wouldn’t be going on. When I am on the train to kingston I always see several people with blackberry’s or Pocket PC’s & Palms of several varieties. Then there are the iPods. They are everywhere. Note to self need new iPod for train trips like this. must replace sold one ASAP.

I just find these observations amusing. Why, because all this stuff that I see I have been doing for years. That is no big deal, but I always used to get made fun of by some of my friends about doing it. Then like clock work 6 months later they would be doing the same thing. I don’t consider myself a trendsetter but some technology stuff I get right away because I think it will work for me. I was that way with the first bluetooth phones. I got it and used it to connect to my PC and use a bluetooth headset. Turns out that it didn’t work very well, but it worked and I used it for months.

Enough of my observations. I am off to stretch my legs on the train for a while and maybe take some pictures with my Treo and post them to my MoBlog!!!

This blog entry was written while listening to Higher from the album “Human Clay” by Creed And Superman from the album “America Town” by Five for Fighting

Pocket PC WiFi

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I received my Sandisk SD/IO WiFi Card yesterday. I ordered an 802.11b card for my Compaq iPaq 1945 Pocket PC. My goal is to be able to sync wirelessly my iPaq with Avantgo when my laptop is not at home. Also to be able to browse the web via wireless on the iPaq.

The setup was almost painless. The drivers installed fine. Getting the Wifi key to work was another story. Who knew that even if you don’t use a HEX code for your wifi the windows pocket pc needs you to convert it to HEX. once that was done and a reset later I got an IP address. things looked good from there. My problem is when I sync or use IE with the network card, my Pocket PC slows to a crawl. A soft reset fix’s things but then the card doesn’t find the network. I was too busy yesterday to troubleshoot the problem further, but it was frustrating.

I hope to look at the problem more today if I don’t go home and go right to sleep.