Chris Pirillo » home-network

How to Connect Devices to Your Network with Power Outlets

Chris — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:42:23 +0000

How to Connect Devices to Your Network with Power Outlets is a post from Chris Pirillo

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The PowerNet 200 from the folks at Monster is geared towards those of you who have a house that may not have existing cabling for networking. It’s also perfect if you need a network port in a place where there isn’t one. This is a starter kit for Ethernet anywhere! The PowerNet 200 brings a high speed Ethernet connection to any room in your home. It instantly turns your home’s existing electrical wiring into a high speed whole-home network.

You plug one of the units into the wall near where your hub is. Plug the other unit in anywhere else in your house. Then you can network whatever you plug into it. Each adapter has two grounded outlets in it, and the Ethernet port connections. This is a great solution for streaming HD movies, or playing multiplayer games that demand a high speec connection – without the lag time. Sure, you could use WiFi, but it can keep you waiting when you want to quickly download a movie. It’s also too slow to play the online action games, or to stream a movie to another room in your house.

The PowerNet 200 maintains high speeds to even the room in your house that’s the farthest away from your office. It uses PLC Clean Power filtering, so that it reduces noise and interference on your electrical lines that is caused by appliances and electronics. This improves network speed, and lets the PowerNet work where other power line products usually won’t.

The Monster PowerNet 200 is the easy, fast solution for high speed networking and internet access virtually anywhere in your home.

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What is the Best Network Management Tool?

Chris — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:49:49 +0000

What is the Best Network Management Tool? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I know many of you out there have to manage a network. The folks over at PacketTrap have been instrumental in helping our community grow. They’ve now come out with Perspective – an excellent tool to help manage your network! Brian and AK from PacketTrap came to visit via Skype, in order to help me explain to all of you what PacketTrap Perspective can do for you!

Monitor performance for routers, hubs, switches, servers, and applications in real-time – no matter the platform. Yeah, you can use this Windows tool to watch your Macs or Linux boxes!
Plus, it’ll watch the health of your VMware servers (and guest Virtual Machines running on ‘em). And just in case you hate being tied to one machine, or if you have more than one person who might need to access this data, an unlimited amount of users can connect to Perspective via a thin client or Web browser (which means, you can access statistics FROM your Mac or Linux). There’s advanced email and SMS alerts for devices, too. Capture traffic data for any device on the network to boot.

You can see all of the web sites that are being served at your home or company. You can see who is loading what site! You can even see what impact this surfing is having on your bandwidth. Perspective will show you who is clogging up your network, as well as how they’re doing it. There’s a list of different tools and reports you can make use of.

You can view and manage every aspect of what’s going on within the network.

I have tried so many network scan tools in the past, and haven’t had much luck. Perspective is very intuitive, and easy to set up (even for geeks like me). I’m not used to seeing a lot of these enterprise-class tools work so quickly, right out of the box. It’s definitely worth a look for network admins who haven’t found what they’ve been looking for as of yet.

Perspective auto-discovers system resources and their metrics, including: hardware, operating systems, virtualization, databases, middleware, applications, and services. Give it a shot – and that’s the link to use.

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What do you Need for a Wired Home Network?

Chris — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:35:05 +0000

What do you Need for a Wired Home Network? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Mattstech writes: “Thought I’d share a basic top 6 list on how to hardwire a home network. For power users like me, wireless just doesn’t provide the speed and reliability that I need. I ran some CAT5e over to my room about a month ago, and wanted to share some tips with the community on how to get started.”

Get the cable and accessories. You can usually buy network cable by the foot at home improvement stores, such as Lowe’s and Home Depot. The big decision here is: how much and what type. As far as quantity goes, you could measure exactly where the cable will be run, but an educated guess can be just as effective. However, it might help to overshoot your estimate by about 10%, so that you don’t end up missing some cable. As for type, there are two major categories of network cable: CAT5e and CAT6. The main difference between the two is related to data transmission capabilities. CAT5e is usually capable of approximately 100 MHz of bandwidth, while CAT6 comes in around the 200 MHz mark. Yes, CAT6 is better, but it is also more expensive. If CAT6 is in your price range (check with your local home improvement stores), by all means go for it. If not, CAT5e will still produce excellent speeds, especially when compared to wireless. There are also some accessories you will need to purchase. Pick up some low-voltage wall boxes (one for each wall plate), RJ-45 jacks, and faceplates to cover it all up with. You also might want to think about getting some fish tape or glow sticks to make it easier to run the cable down the wall.
Cut the hole(s) for the wall jack(s). Before you cut anything, be sure to check where the studs are in the wall. You can do this by either using a stud finder, or just by knocking on the wall. If it sounds hollow, there is no stud in that location. If it sounds (and feels) solid, don’t cut there – you’ve got a stud! Once you’ve found an appropriate location to cut, hold up the low voltage plate to the wall, trace the outline, and score it lightly. Next, cut along the lines you’ve scored until the piece of sheetrock falls out. It helps to have a keyhole saw to do this, but a serrated kitchen knife will also do the job. It helps to pick a location close to other wall plates, such as cable and/or power. That way you won’t have to worry about drilling a hole in the attic to get the cable out from inside the wall.
Insert the low-voltage box(es). If you scored and cut correctly, then the low-voltage wall box should fit snug inside the hole. Once it is in, fold up the pieces of metal hanging down to secure the box.
Run the cable. Take the roll of cable you purchased and use a fish tape/glow stick to fish one end of the cable through the hole, and up into the wall. Again, if the wall plate is not close to others, you may need to drill a hole to get the cable up out of the wall. Otherwise, you should be able to run it through the existing hole. Once the cable is in the attic, continue to pull, and trail the cable over to where the other hole is located. Remember to run in wide swoops – don’t make abrupt turns and/or create kinks in the cable, as this will result in decreased performance. Once you reach the location of the other hole, run the cable down the (hopefully) pre-drilled hole and into the wall. Fish it out, and….your cable is run!
Wire the jacks. In a standard ethernet cable, there are usually eight wires, as described below:
- White/Orange
- Orange
- White/Green
- Blue
- White/Blue
- Green
- White/Brown
- Brown
For RJ-45, there are two major wiring schemes that specify where the wires should be placed in the jack : (T568)A and (T568)B. If you’re wiring from computer to computer, use A. If you’re going from computer to hub, use B. The B scheme is demonstrated above in the list above, but most jacks have a label on the side with both schemes listed. The jack should have come with a punch down tool to use when seating the wires inside the appropriate slots. Once you’ve decided on a scheme, simply sit the wire on top of the corresponding slot, push down with the tool, and repeat for each wire.
Finish it up. Pop the jack inside the faceplate’s hole, and then screw the faceplate into the low-voltage box. Finally, go get some patch cables and connect your components!

While this is still a very rudimentary guide, I think I’ve covered most of the basics. Of course, every application is different, but if you’re looking to boost the speed and security of your home network – hardwiring can be just what you were looking for!

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Windows Vista Network Tip

Chris — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 08:54:26 +0000

Windows Vista Network Tip is a post from Chris Pirillo

The user known as “alpha” emailed me the following excerpt from Tim Anderson’s ITWriting:

The Microsoft Windows Vista OS enables the TCP Window Scaling option by default (previous Windows OSes had this option disabled). The TCP Window Scaling option is described in RFC 1323 (TCP Extensions for High Performance), and allows for the device to advertise a receive window larger than 65 K than TCP originally specified. This is useful in the higher speed networks of today, where more data can be outstanding on the wire before it is acknowledged. This slow performance, or dropped TCP connections is caused by some versions of Cisco IOS® Firewall software not supporting the TCP Window Scaling option. This causes it to have a much smaller TCP window than the endpoints actually have. This causes the Cisco IOS router that runs the IOS Firewall feature set to drop packets that it believes are outside the TCP window, but which really are not.

So, through many firewalls, many protocals fall apart. And here is a solution, that worked perfectly for me, and several of my clients clients. Drop to a command prompt and run:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

If the command returns this response, “Set global command failed on IPv4 The requested operation requires elevation”, then you need to do this: Click start (windows symbol), Accessories, right click on “Command Prompt”, then choose “Run as Administrator”, then try the netsh command (above) again.

And appended the following:

Which could be why a number of people have experienced poor net connections since moving to vista. While this isn’t directly vistas problem (tho the enabling of non-standard things by default is a boneheaded manuvour) it does show how the tech world has steadfastly refused to take note of the changes that came with the new flavour of MS’s operating system, as well as highlighting the failure to implement any kind of feature check within the OS itself too… wouldn’t it be cool if windows reported these problems to you “windows has detected a problem with your networking, click here to load standard protocal settings, click here to do nothing and not bother you again with this message”. And that last part “click here to no bother you with this message” is something I am dieing to have because I’m fed up of having my computing interrupted by crap that I already know about because I just clicked on the button to do it!!

Oh how I wish the “pro” versions of their software was actually designed with the pro in mind!

Apple Airport Extreme Base Station Review

Chris — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:56:27 +0000

Apple Airport Extreme Base Station Review is a post from Chris Pirillo

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – Since my Linksys router fried itself last week (with no clear explanation as to why), I decided to take this opportunity to see what all the fuss over Apple’s Airport Extreme Base Station was all about.

I took my $100 iPhone Rebate down to the Apple Store and purchased a unit – stopping short of also getting an Airport Express, since it currently doesn’t support the broadcast or extension of wireless N networks.

Setup was, indeed, exceedingly simple – although different from what I was expecting. I plugged one of my MacBook Pros into an open Ethernet port and jogged through Apple’s Airport Utility (after downloading the latest version). It told me that there was already new firmware available for the Airport base station – then proceeded to download and install it after prompting. That’s the way it should be with every router, IMHO – whether its config tool is browser-based or a binary.

I walked through the options and found just about everything I was looking for – including a nice (live) wireless signal meter for all connected clients. If I had attached an external drive via USB, it would have been quickly and easily discovered. Given the sour performance some people have reported with that configuration, I’m likely to stick with either NAS or networked drives on any one of my computers.

I like how you can assign a permanent DHCP address to any given client, too. Across the house, wireless N performance seems rather good.

What I couldn’t find, however, was a way to spoof the base station’s MAC address – which may be a requirement for me if Comcast Business forces me to go through a single MAC address. That’s a tremendous deal killer for some of us.

I was also a little baffled as to why there’s no easy way to download the latest version of the Airport Utility for Windows from the Web (instead, Windows users must install the tool directly from the CD first – which is rather asinine). Then again, since when has Apple been known to give a rip for Windows users (and vice versa).

No doubt about it: this is (by far) the most user friendly home networking router I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. If Comcast does what I expect it to do, I’ll likely have to relegate it to a bridge or a wireless extension device. If Verizon serviced my area with FIOS, life would be so much better…

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File Sharing from Windows Vista to OS X

Chris — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 07:53:42 +0000

File Sharing from Windows Vista to OS X is a post from Chris Pirillo

If you’re in Windows Vista, trying to share files with an Apple PC running OS X, the process is not as simple to orchestrate as it used to be in Windows XP. Don’t ask me why, but here are the flaming hoops to get Vista to connect with your OS X machine(s):

In OS X’s System Preferences, select the “Sharing” icon and enable “Windows Sharing” (place a checkmark in the box). Click the “Accounts” button and enable your designated user account.
Make sure you have File and Printer Sharing enabled in Vista, and that an icon for your Mac is showing up in your Network Explorer alongside every other device connected to your network. By the way, if you can’t even see an icon for your Mac in the Windows Network Explorer (same icon as the other machines on your network), you might check to see if they’re on the same network altogether.
When you’re prompted for a username and password from the Windows Vista authentication dialog, use: MacIPAddress\YourMacUsername (with the password for your user account on OS X). For example, 192.168.1.27\chris might be used – if your Mac’s internal network IP address was 192.168.1.27 and the user “chris” was configured for Windows sharing. The TCP/IP tab in OS X’s System Preferences Network applet for your designated network adapter should show you the proper IP address to use.

One more Vista “bug” fixed.

It freakin’ took me forever to figure this one out. Don’t ask me why it used to be easier to do in Windows XP (where you only had to supply a username and password – without the IP address).

Moreover, network performance between OS X and Windows Vista seems lousy compared to the way it was between XP and the same OS X machine (and connection). Then again, the knowledge base article 932134 (An outdated network router may not function correctly when you use it together with new networking features in Windows Vista) is already pointing the finger of blame. Progress?

How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

Using GoToAssist is the easiest way to view and control another person's computer online. Use it to provide instant technical support to family, friends and customers. Start a session with just one click, and instantly connect with the other party.

Network Tools for Windows

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

You need these network tools, no matter which operating systems and networks you have to support. SolarWinds ipMonitor: Affordable Network Monitoring for SMBs. Get turnkey network, server and application availability monitoring with SolarWinds ipMonitor v9.0. This easy-to-use, reliable solution for SMBs delivers out-of-the-box availability monitoring so you always know exactly what's up with Active Directory, DNS, Exchange, FTP, Web, IMAP, MS SQL Server, and SMTP. Download your free trial today. Or, try their totally free tools! And, through 2/29, save 20% when you purchase ipMonitor 9.0.

Get Your Own Web Site

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

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VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

Coupons for Online Shopping

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

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