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HP Acquires 3Com in $2.7 Billion Maneuver

Paul Lilly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:06:30 -0600

In a blockbuster deal, Hewlett Packard on Wednesday announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase 3Com at a price of $7.90 per share. That breaks down to about $2.7 billion and puts HP, which is already a strong networking company, in a better position to compete with Cisco.

"“Companies are looking for ways to break free from the business limitations imposed by a networking paradigm that has been dominated by a single vendor," said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, HP. "By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com’s extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center."

The acquisition will help HP build its networking portfolio, particularly in expanding the company's Ethernet switching offerings and routing solutions, HP said the move will also help strengthen its position in the fast growing Chinese market.

Terms of the transaction have already been approved by the HP and 3Com board of directors and is expected to close in the first half of 2010.

D-Link Posts Growth in Third Quarter of 2009

Ryan Whitwam — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:21:47 -0600

The recession may or may not be over for the general public, but as far as D-Link is concerned, the high times are here again. The maker of network solutions has posted solid growth in the third quarter of the year. Net profits were up to $7.98 million in Q3 2009. This is an abrupt turnaround after the first half of the year when the company actually lost several million.

A whopping 54% of D-Link’s profits were from the Asia Pacific and emerging markets. Management expects that to rise over 60% in the next few quarters. D-Link expects growth to continue in the fourth quarter, but not at an increased rate over the third quarter.

How-To: Turn Your Windows 7 PC into a Wireless Access Point

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:00:00 -0600

If you've ever been in a situation when you absolutely, positively, need to share a network connection wirelessly, and you have a PC with a wireless adapter that runs Windows 7, Connectify (from wireless mesh networking company Nomadio, Inc.) is the answer. Connectify (currently in beta) turns almost any Windows 7 PC with a working wireless network adapter into a fast and secure wireless access point.

What You Need

A PC running Windows 7*
A working wireless adapter**
Software from the Connectify Me website
About 15 minutes of your time

*Connectify works with Windows 7 final and Windows 7 RC

**Update - some Intel network adapters might not work with Connectify - see Paul Lilly's comment below

Getting Started

Navigate to the Connectify Me website and click either the Download Beta button or Beta Test Now shield.
Enter registration information and click Submit.
Click the Click Here to Download Connectify link to download it immediately (instead of waiting for the promised email link which you might, or might not, receive on a timely basis).
Run the 1.41MB installer, and provide UAC information if prompted.
After you sign off on the license agreement, the installer does its work.
Click Next to continue, and click Finish. By default, Connectify will start, and a readme will open in your browser.

Setting Up Connectify

If you don't see the Connectify icon in the notification area, click the up arrow pointer to display additional icons. Click the Connectify icon.

The first time you start Connectify, you will see an error message. That's because Connectify needs you to provide a passphrase. Click the passphrase field and enter the text you want to use. You must enter at least eight characters (up to 32) for your passphrase text (you can display or hide the text as desired). Connectify uses WPA2 AES encryption for maximum security.

By default, Connectify uses Connectify as its SSID. To change the SSID, enter the name you prefer in the WiFi Name field.

If you have more than one connection you can share, select the connection to share from the Internet pull-down menu. You can use Connectify to share a wired connection (which is what I used for this article), or a wireless connection. You need only one wireless adapter to make sharing work, even if you're sharing a wireless connection wirelessly.

Click the Hotspot Off button to turn on the Connectify access point.

Connecting to a Connectify Access Point

Whether you use Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, MacOS, or Linux, connecting to the Connectify software access point uses the same procedures you use to connect to any secure wireless access point that broadcasts its SSID:

Select the SSID used by the network
Enter the passphrase when prompted
Make the connection
Make any firewall or other configuration changes requested by your wireless network client

Once other PCs have connected to the Connectify software access point, Connectify lists the computer(s) connected to it by their network names and IP addresses.

When you shut down the connection, Connectify "remembers" who was connected to the network, listing them as "disconnected clients."

Conclusion

Connectify works - and works well - because it relies upon new networking features built into Windows 7. Right now, Connectify costs nothing to try – and it provides a solid, secure, and fast connection. Whether you're looking for a quick way to share a wired connection in a hotel room or conference center, add wireless capability with Internet access to a home or office wired network, or set up a quick, easy LAN party without fiddling around with your normal network configuration settings, Connectify looks like a winner. It's one of the coolest reasons to move up to Windows 7.

D-Link DIR-685 Xtreme N Storage Router

Michael Brown — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:30:30 -0500

Love the features; hate the performance—and the price tag

D-Link’s DIR-685 Wi-Fi router generated a lot of buzz at CES this past January. And when we took a gander at its spec sheet, we thought it a contender for Best of the Best in the router category; something that would finally displace the Linksys WRT600N, which is becoming hard to find. Alas, ’twas not to be.

The problem certainly isn’t with the DIR-685’s feature set: This router is absolutely loaded with goodies. The 3.2-inch color LCD can inform you of the router’s status and configuration; present digital photos from Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook; display RSS feeds, such as sports scores, weather reports, and stock quotes; and a lot more (this is one router your significant other won’t insist be hidden in a closet).

Next up, there’s a 2.5-inch internal SATA hard drive bay, which can turn the router into a NAS box (complemented by a built-in FTP server and BitTorrent software). There are two USB ports featuring D-Link’s SharePort technology, which allows you to plug in both an external hard drive and a printer and share these devices with any computer on the network. The router’s four-port gigabit switch automatically powers down any ports not in use to save a modest amount of energy.

You won't find a prettier wireless router, but you'll encounter plenty that are much, much better.

The rest of the features are just as valuable, if not as unusual. You can set up a password-protected guest zone, for instance, with the option of limiting access to a set schedule. And there’s both a UPnP server and an iTunes server. Lastly, there’s a Quality of Service engine to help eliminate lag for VoIP and media-streaming applications.

But our enthusiasm over all those whiz-bang features is tempered by the DIR-685’s slug-slow wireless throughput and NAS performance. We’ve been using the aforementioned Linksys WRT600N for comparison for more than a year, but we always retest its performance within a few hours of benchmarking a new contender, just to make sure both products are tested under the same environmental conditions.

The DIR-685 lagged far behind the Linksys in our Kitchen test, where the client is 20 feet away from the router and separated by an insulated wall and a set of plywood cabinets: It delivered TCP/IP throughput of just 45.4Mb/s compared to the Linksys WRT600N’s 98.9Mb/s. The D-Link turned in a particularly poor performance in our Media Room test, where the client is located in a double-insulated room-within-a-room 35 feet from the router, managing TCP/IP throughput of just 4.54Mb/s.

The 2.5-inch drive bay limits your choice of hard drives to notebook models, and D-Link provided us with an 80GB Seagate Momentus 5400.5 hard drive for this evaluation. But we find the router’s lethargic NAS performance more troubling than this physical limitation: The DIR-685 took a full 8:53 (min:sec) to copy a single 3GB file from a PC. Compare that to the Qnap TS-209 Pro II—our Best of the Best NAS pick—which copied the same file in just 2:27.

We won’t complain about a high price tag if a product’s features and performance justify it, but the DIR-685’s $300 price tag—which doesn’t include a hard drive—just rubs us the wrong way.

Netgear’s Open Source Router Available Soon for your Tweaking

Jason Barry — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:25:40 -0500

Netgear announced their latest foray into the open source wireless router realm with the Netgear WNR3500L. Cisco based Linksys routers targeted at consumers have been flaunting the Linux OS for quite some time. However, Netgear has plans to become a favorite amongst the open source networking community.

The WNR3500L rocks the latest 802.11n support and is fully customizable with the latest open source firmware out there: DD-WRT, OpenWRT, and Tomato. Som Pal Choudhury, senior product line manager for advanced wireless, also mentioned their “Development Partner Program, with multiple software vendors and developers creating customized, robust, commercial-grade applications on the WNR3500L.”

In addition to the open source community, Netgear has collaborated with software application companies to deliver applications such as hotspot software by Sputnik, and remote access by Leaf Networks, among others, to run additionally on the Linux platform.

In terms of hardware, it sports a 480MHz MIPS 74K CPU, 8MB of flash memory, 64MB of RAM, 5 gigabit Ethernet ports, and USB ports for shared peripherals. Netgear will launch the router this Fall with a starting price of $139.99.

The price is a bit steep; do you think the flexibility of Linux and additional software, not to mention full 802.11n support is worth the price tag?

Ultimate Router Guide: How to Optimize Security and Performance

Justin Kerr — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:00:00 -0500

Home broadband routers are remarkably complex devices that few ever take the time to truly understand. As long as the lights are blinking, and webpages load, most people are inclined to leave them be. The few brave souls who venture into the firmware are often rewarded with a maze of menus that betray the true complexity of these underappreciated appliances. Wireless channels, security modes, and even port forwarding can be frustrating concepts for those without a networking background, but are absolutely critical to understanding how to optimize your home network. In this guide we will teach you the finer points of security, as well as give you surefire ways to boost your router's wireless range and optimize performance.

image credit: pceasycare.com

Why are Routers so Important

When most people think about online security, they often assume virus scanners, spyware detectors, and even firewall software are the most important weapons to level against those who would seek to exploit their machines. In reality, the router is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal, and it rarely gets the credit it deserves. If you actually took the time to look at the raw data coming in through your broadband connection, you would be shocked at just how much background noise is constantly bombarding your machines. Unpatched PCs from around the world form sprawling bot nets designed to spew forth exploits both old and new in hopes of finding vulnerable targets.

Prior to the days of Windows XP SP2, machines plugged directly into the internet would often fall prey to these exploits, and would become infected simply because they were left on, and were connected to the internet. With the introduction of the firewall in SP2 the world literally changed. Windows now comes with this feature on by default, and drops unsolicited traffic coming into your connection. The Windows firewall isn’t perfect, but it was still a huge improvement.

Think of your router as an upgrade on this basic concept, and in reality, it makes for one of the most powerful firewalls money can buy. Forming an invisible barrier between you and the net, routers drop incoming packets that you weren’t expecting, and is much less vulnerable to exploits that would seek to poke holes in your defenses. A good router not only drops incoming packets, but it also refuses to acknowledge that an active connection even exists. This simple, but powerful difference between routers, and many software firewalls, provides that extra bit of security that can mean the difference between a virus poking around on your machine, or moving on. The Windows firewall is still important, but these days it should only be used as a secondary line of defense.

Let's Start with the Basics: Terminology

MAC Address

This string of letters and numbers is a unique identifier applied to all networking components. Think of it like a serial number that can be used to identify machines or devices on a network, even if their physical location or connection point changes.

IP Address

This is essentially your phone number within a network. An IP address doesn’t necessarily only come from the Internet, each and every device that connects to your home network also has a unique IP address within the routers network. This is how a router is able to share a single Internet IP address, but share it with multiple devices across its various connections.

DHCP Server

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol servers are built into every router, and provide each device with IP addresses, default gateways, domain names, DNS servers, etc. The most important thing to know about DHCP is that this is how your router manages IP addresses.

Latency

PC gamers might know this better as ping. It is a measure, usually in milliseconds, of how long it takes your data to get from your machine to its destination and back.

How Do I Access My Router's Settings?

Every router is going to be a little bit different, but most can be accessed from your web browser by entering in 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 into the address bar. Once done, you will be prompted to enter your user name and password, which if you don’t know it, is probably just the default. Many routers come stamped with this information on the bottom but if not, here is a link to your one stop shop for all the login info you’ll need. Generally your user name will always be either “admin” or “administrator” and your password will either be the same, or try leaving it blank.

Know your password? Skip ahead to the next step.

If you’re still locked out of your router and are unable to login, examine the hardware itself, often times you’ll find a manual reset button on the device that will restore it to factory defaults. This is a great way to unlock your device, but beware, more often than not this step will also clear all of the routers settings as well. Here are a few tips to make sure you do the reset properly.

1.) Always hold down the reset key for at least 30 seconds, or until the indicator lights give you the impression that the reset has taken place.

2.) Some routers require you to unplug them prior to trying a hard reset.

3.) Always wait at least 30 seconds after plugging in your router before trying to reconnect.

Security – The Basics

The first thing you should do if your working with a new router is to change the default user name and password. Leaving the defaults in place is like leaving the front door open, and anybody within range of your router can gain access to your network, no matter how strong your wireless encryption password is. Some routers also give you the option to “remotely configure” or “remotely access” your router. You’ll want to make sure that these are disabled. Basically this feature gives you the ability to access your router configuration via the Internet. Sounds innocent enough, but I honestly can’t think of a circumstance where this would be useful, and you simply expose another surface for attack.

It is also a good idea to change your routers SSID (Wireless Network Name). Broadcasting to the world that you are using a Linksys for example might not be a problem if you’ve changed the default passwords, but the trick to security is to always keep your attackers guessing. Many routers give you the ability to make the wireless network invisible, but don’t bother with this feature. Setting your network to invisible might keep people from accidentally latching on to your connection, but anyone using the right tools can find it easily. A very common security mistake with wireless routers is to set them to “invisible” and then run with no security. All of your data is still being transmitted in the clear and don’t kid yourself, the bad guys won’t be fooled. Security through obscurity alone isn’t enough to protect your wireless network.

Security – Wireless Basics & How To Safely Isolate A WEP Network

Plugging devices in using the RJ-45 Ethernet connectors on your router is the safest way to setup your home network, but let’s face it, its rather inconvenient. Wireless networking has made it possible to roam around the house and connect devices no wire could ever reach, but its important to remember that it comes with a slew of security considerations. Everyone has heard the terms WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc tossed around, but what is the best option? When it comes to wireless security, WPA2 is always the way to go, but WEP is still better than nothing at all. Here is a summary of the most popular options.

Pros & Cons of Each Security Method

No Security

Connecting to an unsecured wireless access point is like having a conversation in public. Anybody within range of your signal can see the information passing through the air “in the clear”. This basically means that when you type in your usernames, and passwords, they can be easily recorded by anyone who feels the need to listen in. The same is true outside of your home when you connect to unsecured wireless hotspots, so beware of what services you login to on open networks. Sessions on open networks can still be conducted safely if you notice an “https://” in the address bar (also look for the lock icon in your browser).

Running with no security on your home router doesn’t just allow your neighbors to share your Wi-Fi, but in addition to monitoring and recording your sessions, they can also access shared drives on your machines that are connected to the network. On my last vacation I got a kick out of browsing through peoples iTunes libraries that automatically appeared courtesy of the unknowing souls who were connected to the hotels wireless network. Logging into a VPN will also allow you to safely work on unsecured wireless networks, but if you don’t know what a VPN is, you probably don’t have access to one.

WEP

Wired Equivalent Privacy might sound like a fancy and secure acronym, but sadly it’s a flawed, and painfully inadequate encryption method. WEP is generally good enough to keep out nosy neighbors, but it can be easily cracked within minutes using freely available software tools, so it’s definitely not to be trusted for your everyday use. Some find themselves using this method to ensure backwards compatibility with older devices such as the Nintendo DS, but anyone who wants to get into your network can do so in a matter of minutes. Some routers offer the ability to enable a “guest mode” and run a separate unsecured or lower security network in addition to something stronger, but these generally still aren’t recommended.

If you absolutely must maintain a WEP or No Security enabled router, the only safe way to go about this is to create a “Y” configuration with one router just for your insecure WEP traffic, and a third for trusted WPA capable devices. To do this you need to have a central router to connect you to the Internet, and then have a WPA access point and a WEP access point. Basically you would be running two wireless networks. One is secure, and one is not. With this configuration, even if someone cracks your WEP protected router, the best they can hope for is to mooch off your Internet connection. Fancier solutions to this problem exist, but with consumer grade routers going for around $20 these days, you won’t find anything cheaper.

WPA

Wi-Fi Protected Access was implemented to replace the much weaker WEP encryption mentioned above, but we now know that it too is vulnerable to attack. The underlying encryption method behind WPA is called TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) and it is now known to be vulnerable to a “key stream recovery attack” that will allow hackers to inject packets onto your network.

For the most part this attack isn’t as serious as those found on the WEP side, because it doesn’t actually review your master key, and they still won’t be able to eavesdrop on your session or monitor your traffic. Of course, once they start injecting code into your connection, the possibilities are endless, but most home users can get away with running this if they have devices that don’t support the newest WPA2 encryption method.

WPA Enterprise

This setting typically isn’t for home users, and is designed to work with a RADIUS server which allows for centralized authorization of clients.

WPA2

Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 replaces the beleaguered TKIP encryption from its predecessor with one of the most powerful algorithms available, AES. Advanced Encryption Standard is a robust, lightweight solution, which only has one known weakness, a brute force attack. Somebody wishing to crack into a WPA2 protected network will need to try random combinations in the hopes of guessing your passkey, that’s why its important to avoid using common dictionary words. The headline “WPA has been cracked” has been in the news recently, but rest assured this applies to WPA, which uses TKIP, and not WPA2, which exclusively uses AES. Some routers will offer the ability to run both WPA and WPA2 encryption on the same wireless connection, but keep in mind your security is only as strong as the weakest link. This approach should be taken only if you have hardware that won’t work with WPA2.

The Bottom Line

Pretty much every new client device I’ve tested within the last five years (except the Nintendo DS) supports WPA2. This offers up unbeatable protection that will allow you to fearlessly do even your banking from any room in the house. Of course, any encryption is only as powerful as the Pre-Shared Key (pass-phrase) that you select as your password. WPA2 is still vulnerable to “brute force” style attacks which attempt to guess your pass phrase, and they often try combinations from various common passwords. Simple word combinations might “feel secure”, but these simply aren’t enough these days to keep out a determined brute force attacker. New GPU assisted crackers have significantly improved the efficiency and viability of brute force, so as a rule of thumb, your password shouldn’t be easy to remember.

Want to grab a random and secure password? Surf over to the passwords section on GRC to get a peek at what a really strong password looks like, or grab one that is randomly generated for you. With one of these passwords protecting your router, a brute force attacker is more likely to die of old age (or get evicted from his parents basement) before he ever breaks in.

How To Maximize Your Router Speed & Strength

1. Location, Location, Location

Its true in real estate, and its true for routers, finding the right location is one of the most important steps you can take to boost your routers performance. Most new consumer grade routers ship with Omni-directional antennas. This means it broadcasts your signal uniformly in a 360-degree radius. If you need to locate your access point in the corner of your house, a large percentage of its capability is being wasted. If you find you have dead spots in areas of your home, you can replace the antenna with a hi-gain version that will focus your signal in a 180-degree radius, vastly increasing your range in the chosen direction.

2. Change Your Routers Wireless Channel

Selecting the right wireless channel, particularly in older routers, can have one of the biggest single impacts on your speed and range. If your router is operating on the same channel as your neighbor, or if your operating two separate routers close by, sharing a wireless channel basically cuts your performance in half. Most of the third party connection tools that ship with laptops or wireless adapters, will show you what channel nearby networks are on, all you need to do is pick a spectrum that isn’t in use. If you’re using the built in plain vanilla Windows tool, you’ll want to download Network Stumbler to help you find a vacant channel.

Some newer routers have an “auto” option which is designed to monitor and change the channel as needed, but more often then not I find this setting doesn’t work as advertised. The D-Link DIR-655 I used for testing locked on to channel 3, even though a second router sitting directly beside it was operating a separate network on the same channel. Your best bet is to manually select the best channel by determining those of other access points within range. Generally it is best to use channel 1, 6, or 11, if they are available, otherwise choose any available free channel. If you live in an apartment building or a condo you might have a hard time finding an open channel, but then again, you probably weren’t having coverage problems anyway. Based on the screen shot shown above, I would most likely configure my new access point using channel 11, since it will encounter the least amount of interference.

3. Update the Firmware For Your Network Adapters, as well as the Router

This might sound like cheesy and obvious advice, but you would be surprised how many people ignore the firmware on their networking equipment. Many advances, particularly in the draft n devices, are leading to vastly improved performance and stability. A simple update to the DWA-552 XTREME N Desktop Adapter in my test system lead to a near doubling in transfer speeds over the original drivers that shipped with the unit, and added two extra bars of connection strength. Make sure to update the drivers both on your adapters, and your router.

4. 802.11N Offers Much Better Range Than 802.11G or B

802.11n includes many new features to improve the quality of wireless connections, and increases both data rate, and range. The most significant new feature introduced in 802.11n is MIMO (multiple in, multiple out), which allows data to be sent out upon multiple streams on different antennas using the same frequency. The more data your router can squirt out, the better the odds your intended device will catch it, and yes, the recent resurgence of the Zune’s popularity has made squirting cool again.

Its also worth noting that even if your client device only supports 802.11g, if your access point is 802.11n, you will still see a great deal of benefit from the upgrade. In addition to the extended range, often times you are able to maintain 54 Mbps connections from much greater distances.

Wireless G routers are cheap, cheerful, and still by far the most common type of Wi-Fi available today, but switching to 802.11n is a major upgrade.

5. Try to Reduce Wireless Interference

If you notice that your signal strength is decent one moment, and gone the next, you might have an interference problem from something else in your home. The most common offender is cordless phones. Most of the new cordless phone systems that you buy today operate in the 5.8GHz spectrum, but for several years 2.4 GHz was all the craze. Unfortunately, your Wi-Fi router is transmitting on this same frequency, and the two might be interfering with each other. Often times the interference, particularly from newer and more powerful 802.11n routers is so strong, you can actually hear a buzzing noise on the phone if you’re near a router that’s transmitting data. You will also notice that your signal strength, and transfer speeds will take a significant dive each time the phone rings.

If you do use 2.4GHz cordless phones your options are limited, but still pretty straightforward. You can spring for one of the newer 802.11n dual band Wi-Fi routers that transmit on the higher 5GHz spectrum, or you can buy 900Mhz, or 5.8Ghz cordless phones instead. Personally I stick to the 900MHz phones because they often give you the best range, and they won’t interfere with your Wi-Fi.

Microwave ovens have also been known to mess with Wi-Fi signals, but since they operate so infrequently, and are typically located far away from your wireless devices, this is usually a non-issue. The interference generated is typically limited to a range of no more than ten feet, but in some situations this might cause an issue for a kitchen PC or other nearby client device.

6. Try to Stick With One Brand

Wi-Fi is all about standards right? Sort of. The Wi-Fi logo ensures that all your hardware from different vendors will be compatible with each other, but many vendors add in additional code or components to try and one up the competition. Linksys for example has SpeedBooster technology that does a very respectable job of increasing the range and speed of devices that all contain this feature. Nearly every vendor offers something above and beyond, but don’t expect to see the benefits if you mix and match.

7. Adjust your Transmit Power

Most routers come configured out of the box to run at 100% power, but just in case, its worth checking. Under certain conditions you might actually choose to decrease your transmit power, particularly if your setting this up in a small office or condo. Turning a router up to full power to blanket your 800 square foot condo isn’t just pointless; it’s inconsiderate to your neighbors who will need to deal with the added wireless interference.

Keep Your Expectations In Check

802.11g claims to offer 54Mbit/s, and in theory 802.11n is capable of speeds up to 600 Mbit/s. In reality, expect these values to be lower, much lower. As you have seen from the tips shown above, everything from walls to Microwaves can wreck havoc on your transfer speeds and range, don’t take it personally. Unless your willing to move to an isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere, and run all your wireless devices directly beside you router, be prepared to settle for speeds that are considerably less than what you might have read on the box.

How to Make Your Router Play Nice with Everything from Skype to BitTorrent using Port Forwarding

If you’ve read the previous section you now know routers make excellent hardware firewalls, and do a great job of blocking incoming connections. But what if you want to accept unsolicited incoming connections? This is the case whenever a friend tries to call you on Skype, or you attempt to download the latest World of Warcraft patch or Linux distro on BitTorrent. In the case of Skype, the software will try to work around the fact that you are behind an un-configured router by using “super nodes” to link the two callers together. These “super nodes” are in reality not paid for by Skype, but rather they are simply other Skype users who have configured their routers properly, or aren’t behind any type of Firewall. Think of them as an intermediary that introduces two computers that otherwise would ignore any incoming calls. In the case of BitTorrent, an un-configured router primarily causes low transfer speeds.

Setting up your router properly in both scenarios is not as hard as you might think, but it does involve introducing you to a concept known as port forwarding. Port Forwarding can typically be accessed through your routers advanced preferences pane, and generally looks like the screen shot shown below.

Important Terms

IP Address

This is the network IP address of the computer that requires the forwarded port. In most modern routers, you will be able to select your computers network name rather than specifying an IP address. If it doesn’t allow this, you will need to access your Network Setup preferences pane, and tie the MAC address of your computer to a permanent IP. For those that have never heard of a MAC address before, simply think of it as a unique serial number that identifies your computer. Our goal is to tell the router to bind an IP address to your connections unique MAC, thereby allowing you to use the IP address as a permanent pointer within your network. Make sure the IP address looks something like this 192.168.0.x (where x is anything between 2-255). Going forward, this will be the IP address of your computer on the LAN.

Before you finish and return to the Port Forwarding configuration, it is important that you make sure if your machine has both wired, and wireless networking capabilities, that you connect with each one separately, and assign the IP address for each network connection method. You will need to bind both to fully cover off your machine. The router should tell you what the MAC address of your computer is, but if you can’t find it, click Start then find and launch Command Prompt. Once you see the cursor type ipconfig /all and look for the “physical address”. It is generally a string of six digits (i.e. 48-3F-0A-91-00-BC).

TCP & UDP Ports

Here you will list which port, or which range of ports) you wish to open. In the case of Skype, and most BitTorrent clients one for each is more than enough, but in some cases you might need to open a range of them. An example would be 6159, or 6159-6180. You should always open ports above 6000 to avoid accidentally opening up a port that is assigned to another service. If you accidentally opened port 80 for example (which is used for HTTP traffic), you would be exposing services that are vulnerable to attack.

Inbound Filter

This is generally used to limited access to a group of systems on your network. Its unlikely you will ever need to chance this setting from “Allow All”.

Universal Plug & Play

UPnP was designed for one purpose, to make port forwarding so easy that applications could do it for you, no consent required. If you’re the type of person who is security minded, this explanation should raise a few red flags, if your not, here is why you should be concerned. If any application can request your router to open a port, then malware can do it too.

UPnP offers unparalleled convenience by ensuring you never have to look at your port forwarding options, but is one of the most dangerous settings in the router. If port forwarding isn’t your cup of tea, this might be your only option, but don’t say we didn’t warn you!

1. Go Ahead and Open a Port

Fill in the IP Address or the Computer Name of the machine you will be using the software on, pick a port (preferably one that doesn’t conflict with another service), and click Apply or Save. If your having trouble deciding what port number to use, you can read ahead to see where you enter the values in both Skype and uTorrent. You can simply write down and use the default ports that are shown in each application to make selecting a port easier.

2. Assign Your Newly Opened Port To Skype

Now that you have opened a port on your router, all you need to do is point Skype in the right direction. This can be done by opening up your Options menu, and then selecting the Connection tab. Now simply type in your open port, then click Save to make your changes permanent. You will find it amazing how drastically this will improve the sound quality and performance of your calls. You can also take comfort in the knowledge that because you opened a port that only Skype will access, your network is still secure.

3. Assign Your Newly Opened Port To uTorrent

When it comes to BitTorrent clients, you have literally hundreds of choices available, all of which should allow you to set the port for incoming connections. The screen shot shown above is specific to uTorrent, but simply located the Preferences menu, then look for the Connections tab. Once here, simply fill in the box for “port used for incoming connections”.

Port Forwarding Summary

The two examples shown above are for Skype a VOIP application, and uTorrent for P2P file transfer, but you may need to open ports for all sorts of purposes. The World of Warcraft patch downloader for example requires ports 3724, 6112, & 6881-6999 to be opened for proper operation. As long as you understand the important terms, and how to apply those into opening a port, you should be able to adapt the steps above to open any port you need.

As a rule of thumb, only open up ports you are actually going to use. Don’t simply open up 6000-8000 to make your life easier. When you do this you are opening up a large hole in your network that could become a potential security concern.

How to Improve Transfer Speeds Using QoS and WISH

Quality of Service (QoS)

If you’re a regular follower of tech news, the term net neutrality likely not only rings a bell, but you probably have a very strong opinion on the matter. At issue is the idea that all data on the Internet should be treated equally. ISP’s will argue that traffic shaping is required to maintain the quality of service for everyone, while those on the opposite side of the fence claim it stifles innovation, and can be easily abused to protect the premium services offered by the network providers. No matter which side of the debate you fall on with regards to Internet traffic however, I’m willing to bet you would be in favor of packet shaping on your home LAN. This is done using a service called QoS.

The configuration options that you see when entering the QoS menu will vary drastically depending on the model of your router, but the end goal is to setup a series of rules that will allow latency sensitive data such as VOIP to be prioritized over something less critical such as a file download. QoS requires you to understand all of the terms we have talked about up to this point, but if you find yourself somewhat lost, many routers have pre-sets that you can pick from for popular items such as VOIP, Torrents, and even gaming.

If you’re looking to create your own manual rules, here is a list of information you will need to provide:

Name

You can put anything here; it is simply used to help you remember what this particular rule was created for.

Priority

Here you can tell the router how important the information is. If your creating a rule to prioritize your gaming traffic for example, then you should select 1. You might want to create a separate rule for HTTP traffic, which you could then assign to something higher. People can wait for a webpage to load; your ping in an online game on the other hand can mean the difference between life and death (virtually speaking of course).

Local IP Range

This allows us to set a rule for a single device, or many depending on the range we select. For this to work properly you will need to assign each device to a static IP address if the QoS tool doesn’t support computer names. In the above screen shot, we are only specifying one machine at 192.168.0.1.

Remote IP Range

You probably won’t want to change this unless you specifically know where the traffic you want to prioritize will be coming from. A good example of this would be a Team Fortress dedicated server for example. You could plug in the IP address of your favorite server, and point it to your IP address with a Priority of 1, but giving yourself local priority works just as well.

Local / Remote Port Range

This works just like the IP Ranges, but this time with ports. Remember, many of the tasks you perform on the Internet consistently happen across a single port. HTTP for example comes across on port 80, FTP on port 21, etc. Practicallynetworked.com maintains and excellent list all the common, and even not so common ports you will come across.

QoS Summary

Many newer routers will have presets you can choose from if you don’t want to dive into making your own custom rules. If you do go custom on the other hand, you’ll likely fall into one of two camps.

1.) You use VOIP, and or play online games.

2.) You want your traffic to have the highest priority because you were the only one smart enough to figure out how QoS works.

If the first scenario describes you best, then you will need to map out the IP address or ports that match the game or Skype settings you are using, and assign a high priority to your machine.

If instead the second situation best describes you, the rule is fairly simple. Just create a rule that points to your machine with priority 1. You may get an unfair share of the bandwidth, but knowledge is power is it not?

Wish

Wireless Intelligent Stream Handling is just like QoS, but instead of prioritizing your Internet traffic, it manages the performance of your Wi-Fi connected devices. Certain applications such as streaming video require a fast and stable connection, and WISH allows you to prioritize this type of traffic, allowing for smooth playback, even on a busy LAN. Configuring this works much the same way QoS does, but this time both devices that will be covered by your custom rules will be located inside your LAN.

Many WISH capable routers come with an automatic setting which by default gives priority to VOIP, and streaming video applications. For most people these automatic settings will do, but if you need to prioritize the traffic between two or more devices for something more specialized such as LAN gaming, this is where you do it.

How to Expand the Number of Wired Networking Ports by Stacking Routers

Most modern consumer routers come with 4 wired Ethernet ports to work with, but for the modern geek, that is rarely enough. Adding additional wired ports to your home network is as simple as joining an Ethernet cable between the two routers, but anyone who has tried this in the past might have noticed that it creates a sharing problem. Because each of these routers are setup by default to assign its own IP addresses, computers plugged into the separate routers will have difficulty sharing files across the LAN.

Solving this problem is simple, and should be done on every router except the first. Simply log in to the Administrative Control Panel, click Setup, then disable DHCP on the second, and every subsequent access point. Doing this will allow the first router to manage the assignment of IP address’s, and will allow you to see and share across all your devices.

By daisy chaining together wireless routers, you can also expand the number of Wi-Fi devices you can have attached to your network. Most consumer routers support a total of eight connections, four via Wi-Fi, and four via the wired Ethernet ports.

Additional Terms & Settings

Subnet Mask

A subnet mask doesn’t work like an IP address, nor is it completely independent of it. Instead, subnet masks accompany an IP address. It basically splits your IP into two parts, an extended, and host network address. Generally you can leave this number at 255.255.254.0 for your WAN, and 255.255.255.0 for your LAN.

Default Gateway

A gateway is little more than a node (or router) that serves as an access point between two networks. Your router should automatically default to an ISP supplied gateway that allows you to connect to the Internet. To put it in simple terms, it’s an entry and exit point in a network.

Virtual Server

This option allows users from the Internet to access services on your LAN. This is actually a useful feature if you want to host an FTP, game, or even web server, and allows you to get around the problem of ISP’s blocking ports. It’s important to note however that hosting a server violates the terms of service agreement with the vast majority of home Internet service providers. ISP can, and often do watch for unauthorized dedicated servers being hosted off their IP’s, so make sure you know what your individual provider allows.

Beacon Period

This is the frequency of the synchronization packets router use to keep all your devices communicating properly. Generally a setting of about 100 milliseconds is ideal.

RTS Threshold / Fragmentation Threshold

Tweaking your RTS Threshold can sometimes improve performance on crowded networks that are suffering for heavy packet collision, but if you set this too high or two low, it can have a devastating impact on the routers performance. The same can be said for Fragmentation Threshold which helps to improve performance in the presence of RF interference. Both of these settings should generally be left at 2346 bytes.

WLAN Partition

If you enable this setting, wireless clients will be prevented from communicating with each other. This is a useful setting to enable if you’re hosting a public hotspot.

WMM Enable

Enabling this can help control latency and jitter when sending streaming video over a wireless connection.

Extra Wireless Protection

If all of the devices on your network are 802.11n compatible, then turning this option off will significantly improve the performance of your router.

Conclusion

Hopefully this guide gave you a good overview to both how the router works, and how to increase its performance. Each manufacturer's firmware is going to look slightly different than the screen shots above, but if you understand the principals, you should now feel comfortable taking on everything from a Linksys to a Belkin. Have a router or networking tip to share? Let us know in the comments.

Belkin N+ Wireless Router

Michael Brown — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:00:28 -0500

Be our guest!

With 802.11n Draft 2.0 routers becoming as common as Storm Troopers at Comic-Con, manufacturers need a feature that sets their product apart from the crowd. Like many of its competitors, Belkin added a second radio to its N+ Wireless Router—but this one is used for a very different purpose.

Rather than operating on a separate frequency (to separate audio and video streams from more mundane data), the second 2.4GHz radio on Belkin’s router establishes a guest network that limits clients to Internet access. Belkin’s web interface provides extremely limited access to this second radio’s settings: You can turn this radio on or off, change its SSID and passphrase, and choose between WPA/WPA2 pre-shared key or “Hotel Style” security.

Belkin's engineers limited the N+ to two antennas. Might that explain the router's poor wireless performance?

If the router is operating “Hotel Style,” any guests connecting to the router are greeted by a landing page that informs them they must contact the network administrator to obtain the passphrase in order to gain access to the Internet. In either mode, once they’ve entered the correct phrase, they can surf the web freely while your private network remains off-limits. This feature would be even cooler if you could customize the landing page and upload it to the router’s firmware.

The N+ is equipped with a USB port, but it’s limited to playing host to a FAT, FAT32, or NTFS mass storage device—adding NAS to the router’s repertoire. But we’d be a lot more excited about this feature if it also allowed us to share a USB printer over the network. We’re equally unenthused by the router’s Broadband Download Speedometer, a set of blue LEDs that has appropriated the front-panel real estate typically used to inform you of the status of the ports on the integrated four-port gigabit switch. Where most routers have LEDs that inform you of the speed at which each port is operating—amber for 100Mb/s and green for 1Gb/s, for instance—the N+ provides a graphic representation of your Internet connection’s download speed. Considering that we can obtain our Internet connection speed using any number of websites—in actual numbers—Belkin’s idiot lights just aren’t very useful.

Far more useful is the N+’s support for 802.11e Wi-Fi Multimedia Quality of Service, which assigns VoIP and media traffic higher priority than other types of packets traveling across the network. We also appreciate the fact that we can turn its routing function off and use it solely as a wireless access point and switch. In fact, that’s the role we’ve relegated the N+ to at Maximum PC Lab North, because it’s dead slow as a wireless router.

We tested the N+ with Belkin’s chubby F5D8055 USB Wi-Fi adapter (the 3.13 x 1.13-inch device blocked an adjacent USB port on our notebook) and achieved TCP/IP throughput of a none-too-impressive 54.1Mb/s in our kitchen test (20 feet from the router with an insulated wall and a set of cabinets in between). As you can see from our benchmarks, however, the Belkin performed much better at range than the comparably priced Linksys WRT310N, which has fewer features.

802.11n Standard Finalized After a Mere Seven Years

Justin Kerr — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:20:09 -0500

The IEEE standards group has finally ratified 802.11n, a standard that has been stuck in limbo since 2006 when it first entered draft status. Draft N devices delivered on the promise of higher speeds and better range, but despite assurances, many feared compatibility would be an issue down the road.

The extended delay in approving the standard came from competing “pre-N” technologies from Atheros and Broadcom, which led to a long and drawn out debate over the form of the final spec. The delay led the IEEE to certify Draft 2.0 802.11n devices in March 2007, with the understanding that these would be upgradable through firmware to the final standard. To accomplish this, a promise was made to make no major changes to the spec, or the certification process.

802.11n has seen a high level of adoption within consumer electronics and networking equipment, but companies are typically slow to adopt anything bearing the title “draft”. Keep an eye out for new firmware and drivers for your 802.11n hardware in the days and weeks to come. Officials from the IEEE plan to publish the final standard sometime in mid-October. I guess the time has finally come to look forward to the next big leap in Wi-Fi speeds. I wonder how many letters of the alphabet they plan to skip this time?

Have you been waiting for the Wi-Fi Alliances blessing to buy new hardware?