Yuval Ararat

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Netgear Nighthawk R7000 Review

I was investigating lately my slow Time Machine backups which were having an ill effect on my life. this drove me to look at NAS solutions as a replacement to old faithful 2008 Macbook. But i was a bit more through to verify my real pain point as the specs on most NAS are around the same if not lower than the Macbook dual core 4GB.

Even with its USB 2 drives it was still relatively speedy compared to the network throughput. when working with internal drive speed test.

So what was the real issue? i was wondering long and deep whilst trying many options in the configuration of the Billion BiPac 7404VNOX.

First i was looking at my current wired speed vs the wireless, it gave me the most grim reality, my router was slow! so slow that i was at best writing to the shared drive at 6MB/s and reading at 7MB/s. I was not sure what drove this slowness and in what areas the real culprit lied. I tried to get it to a proper 802.11n speeds to no avail. Wireless 2.4 Ghz channel was clear from competition, signal was strong, SNR was great. what was it?

Long nights and changes in the properties or the reading of many painful other experiences i came to the conclusion that it must be the router itself and that it probably has reached the end of the road for wireless speeds.

I was looking at the top of the market AC5300 and AC3200 dual bands and decided that i agree, there is no real need for more than AC1750 at this point and the AC1900 is quite good for my needs. this is quite counter intuitive to my nature to not buy the latest and greatest and didnt feel initially right. but once i figured out that all my devices just don’t have the latest and greatest network chips in them i was convinced this would be a good choice.

I have had 2 options to choose from in reality.

Asus RT-AC68U and the NETGEAR R7000 Nighthawk AC1900 and even went through a review comparing both, well many reviews comparing them and got to the point that i believe the Netgear was about to supply me better usability due to its features. This review which was giving the indication the Asus is better i was convinced the Netgear was my best option.

Thus i went out to purchase the Netgear Nighthawk R7000 from the local shop.

Once i got it home and dedicated my time to adapt it to my network i figured out how good the system was.

The first steps in the setup including starting the router up and logging in were quite simple and straight from the initial guide supplied. Type the domain name in and you get into the router setup wizard, but it is not that easy as it might be if you don’t use the internal DHCP and have another DHCP at home. What i had to go through is to neutralise my DHCP and finish the setup wizard as there is no way to go into the admin any other way. so 20 minutes after and i got my Router finished and all the nodes connected.

This was a bit of a surprise that the system was stuck in trying to get me to the URL when using the IP and that the setup locked the admin interface until i got through the last submit of the setup wizard.

Most of the things are quite easy and the UI, though not pretty is straightforward, is quite self-explanatory. only thing i had to dig around the web for was how to set the timezone. The trick was to navigate to the advanced tab -> security accordion -> schedule -> time zone and set your timezone and automatically set the daylight savings. job done.

At the end it was not that painful and i got everything, including the power down on timer of the wireless quite quickly setup. This allowed me to resume with my tests to see how did this affect the internet and wireless connection in the house

The biggest surprise was the speed. it was impressive! my internet speed, wired or wireless is amazingly fast, i use to get 40MB/s and i always wondered how is the 100MB/s cable network i pay for can degrade so dramatically to this. But in this test i was at 103MB/s mark which is way nicer and really is the full strength of the cable modem. This was a very nice warm fuzzy feeling.

The file transfer rate which was already maxed out when wired down showed similar write speed of 43 MB/s but the read speed is a bit better at ~80MB/s which is nice but not overly impressive compared with the 73MB/s prior router delivered. The interesting tidbit came to light whilst i was testing the wireless 5Ghz, Now I get 20+ MB/s write and 40MB/s read which is about 3.5 times better than the Billion 7404VNOX router i had before. and even the 2.4Ghz is almost double the speed of the Billion. this was nice.

I have yet to connect a USB 3.0 drive to the router to use as Time Machine backup yet and have not tested other edge features in the space of time that the router is in my possession and i most likely add to this review more information in later stages.

To conclude my thoughts i have to say i feel i have done the right choice, though the interface is not as slick and nicely looking it is very very intuitive and is very robust. some simple things need getting used to such as the DHCP DNS entries that are actually in the WAN settings, or the location of the time settings under security. but once this is done the VPN, File Sharing including time machine and the application for the mobile phone is quite nice. and with the great performance in both wireless and internet gave me the feeling that i made the right purchase decision.

I Fixed my iPad

About a month ago my son managed to reach the limits of elasticity as far as the digitizer was concerned. it smashed into so many little pieces that i was glad we had the screen protector, it held them in place and left the iPad operational.

So i decided to fix the iPad on my own, as an adventure, so i hopped online to look for the parts i will need. i looked around and everybody is fixing a non broken ipad with a complete digitizer. This was not very useful as i figured out later.

I ordered a new digitizer and waited to get it in the post. it reached quickly after a few days, so i started the gruesome task of opening the iPad. since i never did it before i expected it to be simple as the people explaining the process on iFixit, it isn’t so simple. my recommendations are to start with the LHS near the top or bottom corner with 2 metal openers as the plastic ones wont handle the force of the clips. also be aware that the bottom LHS is a very delicate plastic that will squish when force is applied. my take was shatter the frame just be careful of the LCD.

Another thing i noticed when trying to get the digitizer off the plastic frame was that its not easy to remove shattered glass even when heated out of a plastic frame. so be prepared to get a new frame, its better and so i did. i was ooo so exited getting the new frame out of the box, i had an open iPad with all the parts waiting to be assembled and i even bought a set of clips to put to the frame as the ones that were on the old frame just bent and broke. alas the screws are too small for the holes the frame has, something was missing.

After a short look around the internet i found 2 things that are important for the final assembly, screw nuts that go in the frame and the adhesive that holds the digitizer to it. order that and wait a week to get it.

Yesterday it all came to be, all the parts are ready and i am about to put it together with my son, and i realize the nuts are not fitting they are very hard to press in. i decided the brutal way is just what the doctor ordered and took a hammer and an elan bit to push the nuts in, it was the right way.

From that moment onwards it was just an assembly game screw the LCD then the clips and then put the adhesive in the right order stick it all up and you got the screen assembly done. the next phase is to put it all together and here comes iPad back to life.

After a month of lacking the iPads presence i have it back. it is such a nice feeling.

So what is are my lessons?

The biggest is don’t mess with apple, the way everything is tightly positioned into the packaging and the way it is assembled is to prevent you from dealing with the internals of the thing seems to be well thought out. though it is much better then an iPhone 4 situation it is still not the easiest thing to open and close.

If you are going to fix it yourself either buy all the items in one go, list below, or but a fully assembled digitizer and frame with the clips and all as it is available these days from some places.

List of items to buy:
Digitizer
Frame
Nuts
Clips
Digitizer adhesive strips
T4 screw driver
Metal opening tool (expensive but worth it)

I hope you will have a quicker and easier fixing experience then i did after reading this.

Good luck

The telegraph lesson – will internet be controlled by AT&T?

The way Tim Wu is presenting the internet’s future is quite daunting, an internet that is no longer open and free for all but controlled by commercial entities like Google, AT&T or even Steve Jobs. This a truly grim picture of our future.

His book The Master Switch starts with a description of the “Miracle” of wireless phone, an invention made by AT&T in the 1960 and brought them the market dominance for years to come. it also stands out that the way communication was handled in america those days was in the spirit of UFO and Spaceships, less in the spirit of technology and achievement that we have today.

Fears expressed in his book are partially intimidating, when our recent history shows us how governments just shut the internet down partially or fully as in Egypt and China. This is a fear inspiring book to read which raised a question in my mind, is the future of the internet to be controlled in this way? are we stepping in the verge of the end of information flow and freedom of speech?

I believe not.

I have a feeling that the Author is abusing our innate fear of technology and big companies to instill fear into us. he also abuses the lack of knowledge about the internet structure, making people think it is that easy to just shut it down in places where there is no single point of entry controlled by a single entity. The case of China, Egypt, Libia, Syria and Yemen is the latter one where the backbone connection is through a single junction controlled by the national company of telecommunication.

But the trut is that when you are aware of initiatives like http://buythissatellite.org/ making the access to the internet pat of your basic rights, you get the picture that this Master Switch is nowhere to be found and that information accessibility is becoming that basic human right.

No i am not covering my head in the sand screaming your wrong. i am just opening my mind and looking at the world with the highest resolution i can get. the way it looks in the more modern world it seems that with the rate of adoption of network technology the future is open and may i dare to say free. We will institute the internet as part of the basic human necessities, as education should be, some where in the future.

GoogleMe vs Facebook, let the identity management fight begin.

Rumor or not, google is going to fight the social network market. its not an obvious reason of why they are doing it for the third time. The value of the social networks is only starting to emerge in Facebook and that is also debatable over what is the next phase there. it seems the fight here is not about the social network side of things, nor it is over the direct monetary value though its growing and can become huge.

The way Facebook is distributing its resources in login API, restore identities to the rightful owner and expanding the identity attributes and security settings, makes me ponder what is the value in that?

Looking at the WWW space there is some thing missing, some thing that no government will be happy to expose. its the identity management system, there is no way i can prove online who i am through any government institute. they give me my identity card and that is it. though in some countries you are needed to use your ID when making a transaction with a credit card over the internet it is still not a very robust way to achieve identification.

Facebook is attempting to get to the status of WWW Land identity management company/organisation, something only governments do in the real world. this indicates to me that the real social network value is not short term capitalization like advertisement or social marketplace but in the identity management of the WWW Land.

The firm that will rule the social network of today will rule the WWW identity management market of tomorrow.

But wait!! what is the value in that? well, ask AMEX/VISA or any other identity theft fighting company that will tell you how much they spend a year figuring out who is a legit person. How about making that donation on every transaction to Google or Facebook?

Google probably know this and are making their efforts to create an easy to adopt alternative to Facebook, that said they have not been ultra-successful in doing such and are losing ground, and people, to Facebook’s new buzz words like Social Marketplace (did i hear ebay and amazon?).

What do you think?

Google Android OS is fighting the wrong battle

Reading through the recent posts of the new HTC dream users who left the phone in the drawer and gone back to iPhone i hear a very interesting underline.

Android is not iPhone OS, its Symbian OS or Windows Mobile OS! its not going to be a single phone branded with Google android and its hoping to be spread as the smartphone OS.

It might succeed in that aspiration though i highly doubt it due to the success of the iPhone and the competition that apple are giving.

But i think there is something wrong with the paradigm of Android OS, its inconstant and thus not a reliable branding. People already have problems with it been Google big brother related, and yes Apple are not better but its not part of the brand Apple so they can do things Google cant, its getting some bad reputation from been abused by implementation based issues.

Apple hold the Hardware and OS in their hands and it was a mediocre success in the PC/Laptop arena, but the Smart Phone arena is different, the paradigm is well adapted to the market and supplies great value and better experience then any other Smart Phone. All you need to do is ask some one with BlackBerry what phone do they want.

Google in my oppinion needs to take this into their heart and stop spreading the OS as the basis for abuse by manufacturers like HTC, Motorola and others. Android should be seperate to the OS and should become a brand making Google a worthy adversary to Apple.

But that is not going to happen, Google are in the 1990 thinking of ruling the world like Symbian did, this is going to make the battle a bit skewed and help Apple sell the next version of iPhone like hot potato’s.

So i call the Google bots to think about making the change in paradigm and start tightening the belt on manufactures or even starting to make the phone on their own, i will get one of those if it can hold more then 6 apps, for now i wait for June to get the new iPhone.