­Boston University's College of Engineering is launching a program, under a National Science Foundation grant, to develop the next generation of wireless communications technology based on visible light instead of radio waves. Researchers expect to piggyback data communications capabilities on low-power light emitting diodes, or LEDs, to create "Smart Lighting" that would be faster and more...

Microsoft has caved in to OEMs again.You probably know that the "Downgrade Rights" policy available to OEMs allows them to supply a Windows XP system image CD along with the computer, if you buy either Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate. Some, such as Dell, will even "pre-downgrade" your system before shipping, saving you the manual labor. This was scheduled to disappear as of...

Pandora's Tim Westergren says he's "more optimistic than ever before" that his webcasting service won't be yanked offstage, as the House passed a bill letting net radio stations extend royalty rate negotiations with labels and artists.The Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008 would give Congressional blessing for SoundExchange, the music industry's collection service, to work directly with the Digital...

Sprint has launched its WiMAX mobile network, called XOHM, in Baltimore. Sprint expects the 4G XOHM network to let wireless consumers experience new forms of interactive communications at average downlink speeds of two to four Mbps. Sprint will not require long-term contracts and XOHM customers can buy access by the day or month. XOHM extends home and office Internet connections and mobile...

September 29, 2008 - China has now overtaken the US as the largest national broadband market in the world, according to new findings from research firm Point Topic, with both markets on around 78mn broadband lines at the end of last August, but with China growing twice as fast. "This is a major milestone for China," says Oliver Johnson, Chief Executive of Point Topic. "Launching people into...

Japanese telecommunications carrier KDDI will start offering from October 1G bps (bits per second) fiber-optic Internet hook-ups for less than the current price of a connection one tenth the speed, it said this week. The Hikari One Home Gigabit service will cost ¥5,460 (US$51.40) per month and provide an upstream and downstream connection at 1G bps. Internet-based telephone service and cable TV...

The D-Link 3G Mobile Router DIR-450 answers mobile users' need for setting up a wireless network on-the-go to share an Internet connection. The 3G Mobile Router DIR-450 enables users to quickly create a secure wireless 802.11g (108G) network and provide access to the Internet using a cellular signal*. By connecting a 1xEV-DO Internet PC card to the 3G Mobile Router, an Internet connection can be...

The N wireless router uses draft 802.11n technology and Intelligent MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) spatial multiplexing techniques to improve speed, coverage, and the reliability of the wireless network.

N MIMO complies with the IEEE draft 802.11n specification. It increases speed, range,
reliability, and spectral efficiency for wireless networking...

The D-Link Xtreme N Duo Media Router (DIR-855) is the latest addition to the Award-winning Xtreme N product family. The Duo technology in the DIR-855 supports dualband (2.4GHz & 5GHz) wireless signals at the same time. This allows you to check e-mail and browse the Internet using the 2.4GHz band while simultaneously streaming High-Definition (HD) movies and other media on the 5GHz band. The...

The Vigor2910G provides a configurable second WAN Ethernet interface. This supports either policy-based load-balancing between two WAN feeds, or WAN backup in the event of a failure in your primary internet...

The Office Router combines Internet sharing, a USB print server, a QoS engine, gigabit LAN ports, and a D-Link 108G wireless access point. ...

The WAP2000 is a Wireless Access Point ideal for small businesses that want to expand their existing wired networks or create new wireless networks for the workforce or guests. It features RangeBooster technology that is compatible to standard 802.11g but with a range up to two times farther and throughput by up to 35% faster. Unlike ordinary wireless technologies that are hampered by wireless...

This article is intended as a primer on some TCP/IP networking concepts and factors that determine an optimal TCP Receive Window.   The TCP Window  The TCP Window is the amount of outstanding data (unacknowledged by the recepient) that can remain in the network. After sending that amount of data, the sender stops and waits for acknowledgement back from the receiver that it has gotten some of it. As such, this value is probably the single most important...

Windows Vista introduces a number of new features to the TCP/IP stack, including CTCP, and TCP Window Auto-Tuning. This new implementation works much better by default than previous Windows versions with broadband internet connections, and is able to adjust the RWIN value on the fly, depending on the BDP (bandwidth-delay product). This, however, introduces some problems with older routers and restricts the user from tweaking some of the TCP/IP parameters. Still, there is always some room for...

This is a reference of IP networking parameters that are configurable as described in our linux tweaking article -here-.   /proc/sys/net/ipv4/* Variables: ip_forward - BOOLEAN 0 - disabled (default) not 0 - enabled  Forward Packets between interfaces.  This variable is special, its change resets all configuration parameters to their default state (RFC1122 for hosts, RFC1812 for routers) ip_default_ttl - INTEGER default 64 ip_no_pmtu_disc -...

Windows 2003 SP1 and SP2/R2 (as well as Vista/2008) introduce some interesting new NDIS 6.0 hardware features to improve network performance. The parameters discussed below intended as an addition to our recommended XP/2003 network settings. Most of those parameters are new, introduced with the "Scalable Networking Pack".   TCP Chimney Offload TCP Chimney Offload is an extesion of NDIS 5 offloading, and makes it possible for network cards to replace the Windows TCP stack with...

Introduction The Travel Mate 292XC is a part of the 290 Series laptops from Acer. There is a large range of models within the 290 series with different specifications, some Centrino based, and others just Pentium M. This particular model being reviewed, the LX-T3505.455, is a Celeron M 330 processor version and it is a very well priced for its specifications. This model was purchased for about $599.99 CAD and has the following specs: Processor: Intel Celeron M 330 Processor...

Introduction D-Link was founded in 1986, and since then has catered to both consumer and SOHO users. D-Link is already a well known name in the home networking market, however in the past D-Link products have been considered inferior to those of their competitors such as Linksys (Cisco) and Netgear (Bay Networks). Recently this stigma has begun to disappear with D-Link taking a large portion of the home and SOHO markets. The D-Link DI-524 is one of the company's new series of Wireless-G routers,...

Introduction Compex is an established, yet forward-thinking company in the networking, wireless and telecommunications industry. The company was founded in 1987 and focuses on designing, development and manufacturing a complete line of networking products for the home, SOHO, broadband, and WLAN market needs. The NetPassage 26G is a notable addition to the wireless wave of broadband routers that is sweeping the current home/SOHO market. It comes with a...

Netgear is well known in the networking market.  Originally a consumer-oriented subsidiary of Bay Networks, they have since been spun off to become their own company.  Some of the first consumer routers came out of Netgear, and they have been a major player in the home networking scene.  Their latest line of products sports a new sleek look, a major change of the square purple boxes for which they were known.  Personally, I was a fan of the old box, but then again, not everybody wants a...