Article

Wi-Fi Alliance Begins Certification For Automatic Hotspot Connection – SmallNetBuilder

My Comments

The Wi-Fi Alliance are taking proper steps to make the user experience for wireless-hotspot services more user friendly and secure. This is based on the “Passpoint” standard which covers logging in and a secure usage session.

It has been driven by wireless-broadband providers who want to use these hotspots and their wired-broadband backhauls as a data offload in busy areas. One key improvement is to implement WPA-Enterprise security with session-unique security parameters rather than the common WPA-PSK security which uses a common password.

The login experience has also been tackled through the provision of a consistent experience that isn’t depending on a Web-based form. Here, the credentials could be a username/password combination that is presented by the device’s native user interface, or credentials held on the device or in a SIM card.

This may open up hotspot access to headless or limited-display devices like digital cameras, car infotainment systems or handheld games consoles. But a question that could be raised is whether it could be feasible to have a group of devices seen as a logical network that can exist through the hotspot’s space. This issue may play in to setups like multiplayer multi-machine gaming amongst a group of teenagers or young adults in the same cafe or bar.

Another question worth raising about Passpoint is whether a venue is able to have control over its Wi-Fi access? This would be of concern with anyone in the food-beverage-hospitality industry who would rather that patrons who use the venue’s Wi-Fi are the ones who are buying food and drink or renting a room.

This function has also been extended beyond just logging in to the network and Internet service. A Passpoint setup has also had the ability to factor in application-level authentication needs like content access. An example of this application is the in-room movies service offered by nearly every hotel. Here they could allow a person to stream a movie to a tablet or laptop and view this anywhere around the premises such as the lobby lounge.

One risk that I see for Passpoint or any other “easy-setup” standard promoted by the Wi-Fi Alliance is that the same old situation will repeat itself. This is where Apple won’t implement the standard in their products or platforms even though they consider themselves the “super-cool” IT brand. I have seen this for myself with WPS where just about everything except a MacBook Pro or an iPhone will enroll with a Wi-Fi segment using this “push-button” setup routine.

These standards could be implemented not just with an operating system but also in a software form which is based around a program that can be loaded on to a device by its user and that such software is available through device platform’s app store without any need for the device to be jailbroken.

Articles

WD Has New Drives Designed For Your NAS ! SmallNetBuilder

From the horse’s mouth

Press Release

Product Page

My Comments

Now there are some hard disks optimised for NAS units like this ReadyNAS “music server”

Western Digital have released a range of hard disks that are optimised for the common network-attached-storage device. You may think that you need to use a regular desktop hard disk for this application but the WD RED range can suit this space in a more reliable manner.

These 3.5” SATA HDDS are set up for 24/7 operation yet have reduced power needs. Their software even is optimised for this class of device by assuring quick response and high compatibility across most NAS enclosures. But I also would reckon that they would suit those large USB / eSATA hard-disk subsystems that are commonly used with USB file server devices like the Freebox Révolution or one that was part of a home network that I helped someone with.

Compared to a desktop or mobile hard disk that has to deal with reduced duty cycles or a high-end server hard disk that is optimised for intensely-active corporate servers with large power allowances and many-spindle disk arrays, these are optimised for a small NAS that has a small power supply that provides power to up to five spindles.

WD aren’t just selling these 1Tb-3Tb hard disks with their MyBook Live NAS products but making them available as disk units for use with diskless NAS or USB enclosures. This also applies to those of us who buy a multi-bay NAS enclosure like a NETGEAR ReadyNAS with one disk, then add hard disks to this enclosure as needs, funds and time allow.

They also have support for proper AV streaming which would be required of most NAS subsystems used in the home as DLNA Media Servers or “NVR” subsystems used in small-business IP-based video-surveillance setups. This would cater for a glitch-free audio or video recording and playback experiences.

A good question I would ask is whether the competing manufacturers like Fujitsu and Seagate would answer WD when it comes to providing the hard disks optimised for these small network-attached-storage systems.

Introduction

I am reviewing the Western Digital MyNet 8-port Gigabit Ethernet Switch which is an Ethernet switch that is positioned for use as the “central” switch in a wired-for-Ethernet house. This device, which is part of Western Digital’s entry into network infrastructure hardware also has a port-based quality-of-service setup in order to prioritise traffic serving multimedia or IP-telephony devices.

Price: AUD$99.99

LAN Connectivity

The device itself

Setup

Front indicator lights – orange for 10/100 Ethernet connection and green for Gigabit Ethernet connection

The WD MyNet Switch has a setup routine that is typical for any unmanaged Gigabit Ethernet switch that is pitched at small network use. This is where you simply plug the Ethernet devices in to the switch, then connect it to the power.

But this switch implements a port-based quality-of-service setup with dark-green ports for high-priority traffic, light-green for medium-priority traffic and orange for best-effort traffic. This is to assure that VoIP and audio/video streaming is passed through without any glitches.

In the product documentation, Western Digital recommends that a NAS full of multimedia files or PVR acting as a DLNA Media Server be plugged in to a light-green port and a network media device is plugged in to the dark-green port. This would be of best effect if you were viewing content held on the server without glitches caused by email checks or Web-surfing.

Functionality

Rear Gigabit-Ethernet connections – dark-green for highest priority, green for high priority, orange for best-effort and connection to other LAN segments

Compared to a lot of Ethernet switches, the Western Digital MyNet Switch has the status lights located up front rather than the lights being next to the Ethernet sockets. This may be a benefit if you have the unit on a desk or mount it to the wall using the keyhole slots and you have the sockets located on the opposite side. Here, you can still troubleshoot the network connectivity and link speed without having to swivel the unit around.

A test that I do for Gigabit Ethernet switches is to find out whether they do work properly with UPnP and Bonjour. This test has become important for me with network hardware because I once bought a “Chinese special” Gigabit Ethernet switch at a computer market and found that it didn’t pass through any of the broadcast data that was required for essential UPnP functionality. Then I replaced it with a D-Link Gigabit Ethernet switch and found that this one worked properly with these devices.

Here, I connected it between a UPnP-enabled printer and my computer then power-cycle the printer to see whether the printer presents itself as a UPnP device to Windows 7. The printer had presented itself properly to Windows 7 as a UPnP device. Subsequently I had plugged my WD MyBook World Edition network-attached storage device in to this switch and kept an eye on the availability of its DLNA server from behind the switch and it was still available.

There is inherent support for quality-of-service prioritising but this is a port-based affair. Here certain ports are coloured in distinct colours for applications where high QoS is desired with some marked as “Low” preferred for LAN, off-ramp and router uplinks. You may have to do things like plug the smart TV or network media player in to the green ports while you plug the regular computer that does a lot of Web traffic in to the orange ports.

Limitations and Points Of Improvement

There is no quality-of-service pass-through or trunking available with this switch for use with LAN connections. This can be an annoyance if you are trying to prioritise multimedia data across the whole network and is due to the industry not implementing standards for assuring quality-of-service across a logical network.

Conclusion

I would recommend the Western Digital MyNet Gigabit Ethernet Switch as a “central” switch for a small Ethernet network where quality of service for multimedia applications is considered very important such as most home networks. It would also keep the home network “futureproof” for IP-based telephony if the telephony equipment is connected to a “green” socket.

Article

thinkbroadband :: Full fibre on its way to 9,000 premises in and around Chipping Norton

From the horse’s mouth

Cotswolds Broadband – Web site

My Comments

The action is now in the Cotswolds for a full fibre-optic rollout in the UK. The effort is organised by Cotswolds Broadband to provide and manage this kind of broadband infrastructure to Chipping Norton and its neighbourhood.

It will be done on an infrastructure basis where customers will be dealing with retail internet providers like what is happening with ADSL services in the UK. The technology will be a full fibre-to-the-premises service with the cabling carried overhead rather than buried underground. But one of the main efficiencies that is promoted with the infrastructure project is that the infrastructure company is locally owned, this allowing the money to go back in to the community.

A question that needs to be raised is whether the service will be effectively transparent for the retail customers? This includes quality-of-service for multimedia services as well as the ability to provide IP-based telephony at the necessary standard for useability.

What I would see is that the more country areas that become enabled for next-generation broadband, the better. This is to place these areas on the map not just in an agricultural way but to satisfy newer “tree-change” realities.

Hi everyone!

A close friend of mine had drawn attention to me about links to resources in this site not working properly when he viewed them from his email. Some of you may also have come across similar erratic behaviour when you are subscribing to these feeds and want to have a look at the resources.

What I normally do is that I create relative links to posts within this site as what would be expected for proper Web-site design and to assist with portability of this site’s content should I change server or run a different and improved domain. But the problem was that the relative links weren’t being presented as the full absolute links that start with https://homenetworking01.info .

I have now installed and tested a plugin that makes sure that the links presented in your emails, RSS Web-feed views and Facebook Page views are the fully-qualified links and point to the articles. This will work well when I use images of equipment that I have reviewed on this site as illustrations in other articles and I link to the appropriate reviews from the pictures so you can “find out more” about that laptop, printer or other piece of equipment.

Please continue to keep me in the loop if this fails by using the Contact Form. If you haven’t followed this site by Liking it in Facebook, subscribing to the Webfeed or having the emails delivered to your Inbox. please feel free to do so.

With regards,

Simon Mackay

I am reposting this to make sure that the link to the product review is working properly for RSS, email and Facebook subscribers

Article

Gear4 speaker dock supports USB audio for Jelly Bean at Google I/O 2012 (hands-on video) — Engadget

My Comments

An iPod-enabled music system that can also benefit from Android’s new USB Audio interface

Apple iOS users have had the advantage of also having a USB single-wire or docking connection between their iOS device and accessory equipment, with the ability to channel the sound data, the control signals and power to their device using the same connection. This has built up the iPod / iPhone accessory market very strongly with the accessories allowing the user to start and stop the music or move between tracks and folders on their iPod or iPhone using the control surface that the accessory provides.

People who used Google Android devices were limited to an analogue or Bluetooth audio link between an amplification device and their smartphone or tablet with support for transport control if the phone was connected via Bluetooth. They typically had to run a separate USB cable if they wanted to supply power to the Android device from that accessory.

Now the latest iteration of the Android platform, known as “Jelly Bean” and version number 4.1, supports USB Audio. This is similar to how a USB speaker system or external sound card can work with most desktop operating systems. It can then allow a large manufacturer base to develop “Android-friendly” audio playback equipment like speakers, Internet radios and hi-fi amplifiers / receivers in a timeframe that allows the device to be “ready-to-market” quickly.

What could be looked at

Communications audio

There are some questions I have about this kind of setup. One is whether the USB Audio functionality in Android Jelly Bean can allow for communications audio as well as audio content from the media player program. This would be of importance with automotive applications where the USB Audio link could be used as an alternative to Bluetooth for hands-free telephony in the car.

Device control

The other issue to look at is exposing the accessory device’s control surface as a control point for the Android device’s communications and media-playback functions. This situation would be of importance for accessory devices which have other audio or video sources like broadcast tuners, optical-disc players or USB Mass-Storage device connection. In the automotive context, it also extends to nearly all car infotainment setups that allow the user to make or take a call using the controls on the dashboard.

Here, it could be feasible for the accessory to control the media player or phone user interface using either the screen on the Android device or using the controls on the accessory. Here, it could allow for “basic” transport control and metadata display on the accessory device while advanced “search and play” can be performed on the Android device. Similarly, call-progress control can be managed using controls on the dashboard with the ability to, when the car is parked, commence a call on the Android device’s touchscreen.

Similarly, MirrorLink or similar techniques culd allow the accessory device to be configured or controlled in an advanced manner using the touchscreen on the Android device. It could come in handy with A/V equipment which may need specific configuration and setup procedures or Blu-Ray players that may expose “second-screen” interactivity functionality on the handset.

Conclusion

At least, Google have integrated commonly-accepted open standards to add functionality to Android in a manner as to rival the established Apple mobile-device platform and stimulate a healthy competitive design environment.

There has been the desire to see IEEE 802.11-based Wi-Fi wireless networking work as one of the many  way of interlinking computer devices without wires.

The standard and preferred practice with this technology is to implement an access point which all data in the wireless-network segment, which is typically connected to an established wired network or the Internet.

But there is a desire to link these devices in a safe and secure way without using a hardware access point or router as an interlinking device. This would lead to a “wireless personal area network” for devices like cameras, printers, network media players and smartphones.

What is Wi-Fi Direct

The Kingston Wi-Drive in this setting is an example of what Wi-Fi Direct is all about

A Wi-Fi Direct setup requires software in a client device like a computer or smartphone to make it work as an access point using its software. This can be made obvious through a smartphone running a “Wi-Fi tether” mode where it works as a Wi-Fi router using its wireless-broadband service as a WAN.  Similarly, a mobile-NAS device like the Kingston Wi-Drive is effectively supporting this function through the use of its own Wi-Fi access point. Another example is a laptop computer running Inte’s “My Wi-Fi” software to bridge its connection that it has with a public wireless hotspot to an Internet radio in order to allow it to pick up an Internet broadcast stream.

The setup would require that the network be secured using a WPA2-PSK security protocol and is able to be set up using WPS “push-push” or PIN setup methods. They also use UPnP and/or Bonjour to set themselves up for their functionality at higher levels of the protocol stack. This can allow a user to find devices that have particular functions like file transfer, media streaming or printing and is exploited in smartphone applications as a means of rapidly transferring large file clusters.

A Wi-Fi Direct device can host current Wi-Fi-based client devices like most consumer network printers as well as other Wi-Fi Direct devices. As well a cluster of devices hosted by a Wi-Fi Direct device is considered as a Wi-Fi Direct Group. This can represent a one-to-one relationship or a one-to-many relationship with the Wi-Fi Direct.

Some devices like laptops running Intel MyWiFi can be set up to support a concurrent link to a Wi-Fi network such as a home / small-business network or a wireless hotspot while being able to maintain a Wi-Fi Direct cluster.

How to go about using Wi-Fi Direct

Wi-Fi Personal-Area Network concept diagram

If you intend to set up a Wi-Fi Direct group, determine the main computing device that is in the group. This could be a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone that has this functionality. On the other hand, you could use a DLNA-enabled network-attached-storage that supports Wi-Fi Direct as the main device if you are, for example, playing tunes held on the NAS to something like the Sony CMT-MX750Ni music system.

Then enable the Wi-Fi Direct functionality on this device and connect the other devices using WPS or a pre-determined WPA-PSK password key.

The range of this network will be determined by the radio range that the Wi-Fi Direct “master” device can provide; and this may be small for a lot of battery-powered devices like handheld games. Some devices that use a non-Wi-Fi connection like Ethernet or HomePlug may break off this connection if they are working as a Wi-Fi direct “master” device.

Increasing the relevance of Wi-Fi Direct

Wi-Fi Direct can be used in digital cameras as a way of uploading photos to a Wi-Fi NAS or a laptop or simply using a laptop’s Internet connection for providing photos to a social network. It can also work well as an alternative to Bluetooth for printing or media playout; as well as a wireless link to desktop peripherals like keyboards and mice.

The Wi-Fi Direct technology can then come in to its own with local multiplayer multi-machine gaming whether this involves laptops, smartphones, tablets or handheld gaming consoles. A game publisher could write a game to support a multiplayer mode over a local network as well as an online environment. This then allows one to “verse” an opponent in a game wherever they are without it costing money in data charges or dealing with the login requirements that a hotspot may throw at the potential competitors.

Similarly, if a device does support Wi-Fi Direct as well as a wired connection, it could support an “extended-service-set” function so as to cater for environments where there is a problem with Wi-Fi coverage in certain areas.

Conclusion

Once you know what you are doing, you can make Wi-Fi Direct devices work properly for creating “as-needed” Wi-Fi networks for differing applications.