Tag: WiFi wireless

Marantz Audio Consolette speaker dock – an example of a device that uses an access point for initial network setup

An increasing number of consumer-electronics and small-business devices that don’t have a large screen are repurposing their integrated Wi-Fi functionality as an access point as part of the setup routine. This is used alongside an integrated Web server and is mainly for when the devices are being integrated with a Wi-Fi network that doesn’t implement WPS one-touch setup.

But a lot of these devices also implement an Ethernet wired-network connection for use when there isn’t reliable Wi-Fi wireless-network connectivity. This function is used primarily as a product differentiator for the consumer printers but is common on a lot of “big-set” consumer AV equipment. This concept can be taken further in one of a few ways in order so that the Wi-Fi wireless network ability in these devices doesn’t go to waste, especially when the device is connected to a wired (Ethernet or HomePlug AV powerline) network segment.

Setups

Separate Wi-Fi logical network

One of these devices, typically a wireless speaker or printer, could implement a logical network that just serves the access point and run its own DHCP server. This could come in to its own where you just want the device to provide its function to portable devices in a walk-up manner but you don’t want the portable devices wandering on to the Ethernet-connected network or Internet service.

This may be a situation with a wireless speaker or a network printer where you want to allow the device to gain access to Internet and network resources or allow other network devices to have access to the device. But you don’t want people who use the device in a “walk-up” manner with unauthorised devices to maraud around the network or use the Internet bandwidth, which is something of concern with business users with larger networks.

Some of the wireless speakers like what Pioneer offers follow this pattern by working as their own networks so as to create an ad-hoc setup to get the tunes going in environments where a small Wi-Fi network segment isn’t in service. Pioneer achieves this through a switch on the back of the speaker which enables this mode specifically rather than for setup and this method could be exploited by other device manufacturers through a “permanent setup mode” where the speaker doesn’t stay in the setup mode if it succeeds in connecting to a wireless network.

Access Point

On the other hand, you could have the Wi-Fi functionality that is normally dormant when the device is connected to the wired network, become a simple access point. Here, this setup could come in to its own if the device is being used in an area where Wi-Fi wireless reception for your network is very difficult.

One classic example could be a smart TV that is installed in a secondary lounge area but this lounge area is out of reach of the main wireless router. Here, the Wi-Fi-capable smart TV can serve as an access point for the secondary lounge area and neighbouring rooms even while it is on standby.

This kind of setup could be simplified with a WPS-based “Wi-Fi Clone” function so you could switch to the access-point mode even if the device worked initially with the Wi-Fi segment. On the other hand, a device like a business-grade network printer could implement WPA2-Enterprise access point functionality in order to work with business-grade wireless networks.

As well, this functionality could be simplified by the device detecting the connection to an Ethernet network and asking the user if they want to operate it as an access point if the device was previously connected to a wireless network.

Wireless Client Bridge

In a similar context, the Wi-Fi and Ethernet network interfaces that these devices have could permit the device to become a wireless client bridge for an Ethernet-based device or segment. This would be of an advantage if the device is picking up a reliable strong signal from your Wi-FI network.

The classic use of this would be to provide network connectivity to a games console or Blu-Ray player from a Wi-Fi-enabled smart TV working with an existing Wi-Fi wireless network. Similarly a desktop computer in a remote room could work with the integrated Wi-Fi ability in a network printer for its network connectivity.

Simplifying the Setup Experience

The setup experience could be set up with the use of WPS-assisted “setup copy” routines and vacant-channel-seek routines for network integration. For “standalone segment” setups, the device could implement setup routines that are similar to carrier-provided wireless routers like SSID / passphrase stickers or cards.

This can be augmented through the use of nVoy technology which is intended to make the configuration and operation of small networks simpler yet giving these networks the ability to be like a big network.

Business-grade setup could involve support for WPA2-Enterprise functionality and multiple-SSID / VLAN functionality that are part of larger networks. This would be more relevant for printers or other devices that small business could take advantage of. It can be assisted with a technology similar to the original Windows Connect Now USB technology where parameters are transferred between devices using a USB flash drive.

Similarly the above technology could work hand in glove with Wi-Fi Passpoint technology in order to support the simple-yet-secure hotspot login technology that the Wi-Fi Alliance have proposed. This can work through the devices linking back to access controllers that implement this technology.

Conclusion

Manufacturers could take the concept of the integrated access point that is part of their network-capable devices and make sure that they don’t go to waste when these devices are connected to a wired network. Similarly, they could make sure that the wired network functionality doesn’t go to waste if a wireless link is exploited for network connectivity.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Wi-Fi Alliance

2.4 GHz networking is five feet under with 802.11ac | Wi-Fi Alliance

My Comments

The comments raised by the Wi-Fi Alliance about the fact that 2.4GHz-based Wi-Fi networking technology being a nearly-dead technology is something that I find a bit “too quick” at the moment.

One key issue is that there is still a significant number of Wi-Fi client-side and access-point-side devices which only work on the 2.4GHz band using 802.11b/g/n protocols in circulation. This is more so with mobile devices and specific-purpose devices like consumer AV where an upgrade to a 5GHz technology would be costly if not impossible.

In some situations, the 2.4 GHz band with the longer wavelength compared to 5GHz may be at an advantage when it comes to the longer-wavelength bands and frequencies offering better coverage. This may allow for fewer 2.4GHz access points to cover a space.

So if I was to create a upgrade a Wi-Fi segement, I would look towards implementing a simultaneous dual-band setup which works to 802.11n or 802.11ac on the 5GHz band and 802.11n on the 2.4GHz band. As well, I would prefer to buy or specify devices, especially laptops, tablets and smartphones that use dual band Wi-Fi technology.

As for configuring the networks, the 2.4GHz band would be working as 802.11g/n compatibility mode while the 5GHz band would be at 802.11n or 802.11n/ac compatibility mode. This is to assure greatest compatibility with most of the existing devices that are to work with the network.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

TP-Link

TL-WPA4220 – Welcome to TP-LINK (Product Page)

My Comments

One main reason most of us would buy a HomePlug-based wireless access point is to extend the coverage of that Wi-Fi wireless network past that radio obstacle like the double-brick interior wall without needing to pull new cabling. Or you don’t want to butcher your garden or dig up your lawn so you can reliably extend your home network with its Wi-Fi wireless segment to that garage or bungalow.

But a setup hurdle that one can easily end up with is copying the SSID (wireless network name) and network security parameters from your existing wireless router to the access point and making sure these are accurately copied so you can have proper roaming operation for your wireless network.

TP-Link have made this simple through the use of a “Wi-Fi Clone” button on the TL-WPA4220 access point. Here, this access point uses the WPS-PBC “push-button” setup routine to learn the parameters associated with your small wireless network segment.

This procedure has to be performed with this HomePlug access point in good Wi-Fi range of a router or access point that implements WPS push-button setup.You push the WPS button on your suitably-equipped wireless router as if to enrol a new device to your home network, then push the “Wi-Fi Clone” button to complete the procedure. This means that the access point has what is needed to be part of the Extended Service Set which is you home network’s Wi-Fi segment.

From that point on, you just simply establish that HomePlug AV powerline segment as the backbone for your wireless network and benefit from the increased coverage. But I would personally have this access point equipped with the WPS client setup mode for enrolling client devices close to it to avoid the need to traipse back to your wireless router to enrol that Android smartphone or Internet radio that is to be used in the remote area.

What I see of this is that steps have been taken in the right path to move away from the so-caled “range extenders” towards a more reliable and proven method of extending a wireless network’s coverage by simplifying the tasks required for achieving this goal.

Article

Los Angeles Contemplates A Plan For Free Citywide Wi-Fi | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

My Comments

There have been previous attempts at US local government establishing citywide Wi-Fi public Internet services but a lot of these efforts have been shut down or curtailed by, usually, state governments working at the behest of established local telephony and cable-TV companies.

The Los Angeles City Council are putting forward an idea to have a citywide public Wi-Fi network but are having to realise the practicalities like the tall buildings and were having to factor in the activity of the local telephony and cable-TV services. This is similar to Google establishing fibre Internet in Kansas City and a few other US cities in competition with the established telephony and cable-TV operators.

The issue that will have to be raised is that action at the federal level has to be taken by a strong government to allow right-of-way access for competitive Internet and telecommunications services. Here, I have seen the effect of the Carterfone hearing and the anti-trust investigation in to AT&T, which led to competitive telephony service, wearing off and the country falling back to uncompetitive Internet access with most areas having the choice between two operators working as a cartel.

What America needs to be educated about is infrastructure-level competition with concepts like local-loop or sub-loop unbundling, the operation of public Wi-Fi networks, implementing different media to provide competitive telecommunications access, virtual-network competition and other concepts. Here, they could observe what France has done to provide a lively telecommunications, cable-TV and Internet market that really is for the consumer.

Introduction

Most of us have one or more private spaces in the home that aren’t really where we sleep in but want to retreat to when we want to spend time alone or with a few chosen people. This may, for men, be the classic “men’s shed” or “office-den” but is becoming the so-called “man-cave”. For women, it may be a private lounge area or study with some people purposing these spaces for personal religious activity amongst other activities.

HP Envy 4 Touchsmart Ultrabook – an example of a touch-enabled Ultrabook that can be moved around very easily

Some of these spaces may also be used as a reception space for one’s own group of friends such as a man’s “mates” or a woman’s own “lady friends”, as well as serving as the own space. This is more so if they want to meet with these people away from the rest of the crowd in the house.

In most of these areas, it may be appropriate to be able to engage in online life using the home network. It encompasses access to the resources available via the home network whether it be music and video content held on the NAS or the ability to print out documents on a network-capable printer. The activities may range from personal entertainment in these areas through researching information from the Internet to creating documents and Web content.

What can you use here?

Sony VAIO Tap 20 – an example of an “Adaptive All-In-One” computer

You may want to use a portable computer device whether it be a laptop / notebook or tablet computer so you can take it between your private space and other spaces. For a fixed setup, you may go for an all-in-one or low-profile desktop computer. Some systems like the Sony VAIO Tap 20 may be able to bridge the gap between a large-screen desktop and a laptop computer and some of the regular all-in-one computers may be light enough to be transported from room to room.

The portable computer or easy-to-transport “all-in-one” computer would be more important if you are dealing with a space that is accessible directly from outside and doesn’t do well for security. This is because you can easily take the computer in to your home so it doesn’t tempt thieves when you have finished in that space.

Sony SA-NS510 Portable Wireless Speaker

If you are thinking of online-capable audio or video equipment that can fit well in this space, there is a lot of the equipment that can suit your particular needs. For example, a small Internet radio could be the answer for a shed or garage like as I have seen with the Kogan Internet radio that I reviewed in this site’s early days. Here, a person who was living with me had this radio in the garage playing some content from BBC Radio 4’s Internet feed while he was doing a few repairs at the workbench. A small Blu-Ray-equipped home-theatre system of the same ilk as a Sony BDV-E2100 or Yamaha MCR-755 or a small hi-fi of the ilk of the Sony CMT-MX750Ni or Denon CEOL Series could play its part as an entertainment system for a den.

You can even use the home-theatre systems with an LCD computer monitor as the display device if the monitor has an HDMI input socket or DVI socket that is compliant with HDCP. This can mean that you don’t need to use a TV set with these devices especially if you use a DLNA-compliant broadcast-LAN tuner or just enjoy media held on optical disc or the home network.

On the other hand, you could use a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi wireless speaker system along with your smartphone, tablet or notebook to play audio content from more than the speaker built in to the computer device. Similarly, you could connect a Bluetooth audio adaptor or AirPlay/DLNA-compliant network media receiver to a pair of computer speakers or a small boombox that has a line input to achieve the same goal.

What needs to be done

Network connectivity

Here, I would make sure that you have reliable access to the home network from this space. If the space is located in another building, I would suggest that you pay attention to my article on multiple-building home networks.

The WD LiveWire HomePlug AV switch that fills in the network gap

In some cases, I would make sure there is an Ethernet connection in that area if your place is being wired for Ethernet and you can afford it. On the other hand, you could use a HomePlug AV powerline connection to that space. This is important for detached buildings or rooms with direct outdoor access where they may not be secure because you can take the HomePlug adaptor in to your home. It is also important if you don’t get good Wi-Fi wireless-network reception from your router in that area and this situation can be remedied using an access point connected to the wired backbone.

Access to live TV content

As for access to TV content, if your space doesn’t have a connection for a TV aerial (antenna) or cable / satellite TV, you could use the home network to gain access to TV content. This is facilitated with a broadcast-LAN tuner like HDHomeRun or Devolo dLAN Sat which is connected to the TV aerial, cable or satellite TV depending on the device and transmits your chosen broadcast signal down the home network. Then you use software on the computer or tablet to “tune in” to the broadcasts. For that matter, the HDHomeRun Prime offers access to antenna or US cable TV you subscribe to via DLNA-capable video devices and software.

On the other hand, if you have pay TV, you could benefit from the provider’s “TV Everywhere” solution which works with regular or mobile computer devices to show live or on-demand pay-TV on these devices using your home network.

Access to your network-hosted content library

For audio, photo and video content, you can use DLNA-capable software media players like Windows Media Player 12, or TwonkyMedia to play the content on your portable computer or mobile device. If you use any of the Apple platforms, you could set your NAS up as an iTunes server for the audio content and have the iTunes music player software on your device pull up this content.

As I have mentioned before, devices with network-media-playback functionality would have to work to DLNA and/or AirPlay standards if you want to use these as your media player for your small space.

Printing from your private space

You may not need to worry about having a printer installed in that “man cave” or similar space if you are using a network-accessible printer. This means that you don’t have to worry about factoring in space for the printer. The only exception to the rule is if you see this space as a home office and you may want to have a heavy-duty machine for turning out work related to your business or similar effort.

Conclusion

Here, you can set up a reliable personal computing and entertainment environment that you can use in your small personal space, with the equipment being more suited to that space.

Website – From the horse’s mouth

nVoy home

My Comments

With nVoy, these devices become easier to set up and integrate in your network

There have been some previous methods available to allow one to manage a network from their desktop. One of these was SMNP which is used primarily to manage equipment in larger networks and is very difficult for anyone to use unless they had good IT skills. Another of these is TR-069 which was developed by the Broadband Forum for use by ISPs and telcos to set up and manage consumer modem routers.

These protocols, like a lot of other network discovery and management protocols relied on an operational network existing between the controller and the controlled device. Similarly, they haven’t work well as a way to allow an average householder or small-business owner to manage a small network effectively and with minimal help.

But a newer specification, known as the iEEE 1905.1 control specification had been set in stone and declared formal. It is now marketed as the nVoy specification and works at a level to manage network segments at the media level.

This is very important with the home-network setups that I prefer and stand for where there is an Ethernet and/or HomePlug AV wired network backbone along with an 802.11n Wi-Fi wireless network segment covering the property where the network is set up at.

This allows logic to be constructed to manage a Wi-Fi, HomePlug AV, MoCA or Cat5 Ethernet segment that is part of the typical home network without having to have a full IP logical network being alive across the whole network.  It also means that media-peculiar network-setup and diagnostics parameters like the ESSIDs and WPA2-Personal passphrases required for wireless networks can be propagated over different network media like Ethernet or HomePlug wired-network segments.

This simplifies setup routines like creating new Wi-Fi wireless or HomePlug AV powerline segments in a secure manner; or adding additional network devices to the existing heterogenous multi-segment small network. It even encompasses the establishment of secondary access points in order to extend the coverage of a Wi-Fi wireless network in a “cellular” fashion.

The user experience would be based on using NFC “touch-and-go” setup or two-button “push-push” setup of new Wi-Fi and HomePlug devices. As well, you would be able to manage the network from devices that use a full management interface, whether local to the network or remotely via something like TR-069 or SMNP.

Even through the life-cycle of the network, the nVoy specification can allow one to use a management interface at one single point of control to bring up diagnostic information about the network or parts thereof so as to identify points of failure or to optimise the network for best performance. The fact that nVoy is determined as a standard could allow computer operating-system developers to bake this function in to subsequent versions of their operating systems and establish one point of control in the operating system user interface.

Beyond the ease of setup and troubleshooting that it offers for small networks, nVoy has the ability to enable easy-to-manage “multiple concurrent pipe” connections in an easy-to-manage form. This allows for two or more connections to be aggregated for higher throughput, as a load-balancing arrangement so that particular traffic can go via one connection while other traffic goes via another connection as well as a fail-over arrangement if things don’t work out on one pipe. This will be more real with the common practice to equip most client devices with two or more network “on-ramps” such as Ethernet and Wi-Fi wireless.

Personally, I would also like to see nVoy work with most client devices in extending their network abilities. For example, a network printer or consumer AV device that has integrated Wi-Fi wireless and a wired connection like Ethernet or HomePlug be able to allow you to set up the Wi-Fi connectivity as an access point if it is connected to the network via the wired connection. Similarly, the same device could be set up as a wireless client bridge for another device like a PS3 or Blu-Ray player that is connected to the Ethernet socket on the device when it is connected via the wireless connection.

Similarly, the nVoy specification could also tackle quality-of-service for IP telephony, AV streaming and real-time gaming so as to guarantee throughput for these network activities. As well, when standards evolve for synchronous “broadcast” network activity on the different media such as for multi-channel wireless speakers or party-streaming modes, nVoy could be used to support network-wide synchronising abilities for these applications.

What I applaud about nVoy being set in stone is that the small network becomes easier to manage whether it is based on one segment or medium or uses many different segments or media.

Article

Test 59H: Kit CPL Powerline 500AV Wireless-N Router Starter kit (France – French language)

From the horse’s mouth

Buffalo Technology

Product Page

My Comments

Buffalo Technology are offering to European customers a HomePlug AV500 / Wi-Fi N300 access point, known as the WPL-05G300, which isn’t just a HomePlug / Wi-Fi access point for that existing small network. Here, this device doesn’t just allow you to also connect to an Ethernet segment but can be set up to become a wireless router while serving the other Ethernet segment. This is due to two Ethernet connections on the same device

The fact that it can become a router may please some users who may use a broadband modem like most cable-modem deployments and some next-generation broadband and ADSL2 deployments. But the router functionality would be considered irrelevant to most European users who typically run a modem-router which has the integrated Wi-Fi functionality.

Personally, I do see this device still relevant as the secondary access point to “fill in” those Wi-Fi reception gaps such as what is created in older European properties that use thick brick, cement or stone walls. This also includes a lot of the UK properties that have remnants of fireplaces that have been blocked off.

What I am pleased about with this device is that there are switches on the unit to select between the router and access-point mode and similarly to select between client-bridge and access-point behaviour. I am not sure if this is true but this could allow for “quick setup” of extension access points through the use of WPS.

This device is available as a pair of two of these access point / router devices which could come in handy as a way to create that HomePlug segment and increase Wi-Fi coverage or create a 802.11g/n “N300” Wi-Fi segment. Similarly, the kit could also answer outbuilding network needs or encompass that old caravan in the home network. Caravan-park owners could also lick their lips at this setup with the ability to provide reliable wireless coverage in their tenants’ vans.

Who knows who else will offer similar devices that can capitalise on HomePlug AV technologies to create capable no-new-wires small networks.