Gigabit Wireless Router from Cisco

Today while I was browsing through the Cisco website, found out that they’ve started taking pre-orders for Gigabit Wireless router based on the 802.11ac draft spec. The model is Linksys EA6500 scheduled to release in August 2012. This means that speeds upto a Gb/s is achievable using off-the-shelf consumer routers already. They are listing “Ultimate Speeds upto 450 + 1300Mbps*”. Seriously wow!! Dual Band, so you get the 450Mbps from the n-spec and 1300Mbps from draft-ac spec.

Now, most of you would wonder why the hell do we need that much speed… I was recently trying to stream my favorite BD-Rip Avataar 3D through the XBox 360 on to my TV. But alas, I had to transcode to lower quality because my wireless-n router at 300Mbps was not good enough . So, we definitely need this soon as more and more content is available in full HD and we want to start streaming and communicating between the different devices in our household.

Another interesting thing, is that router has built-in NFC (Near Field Communication), which can use a phone (which has NFC) for transmitting configuration. But this feature sounds like just using a technology for the heck of it. How hard is it to type a passphrase or open the router page on the browser and configure. Nevertheless, some nice technologies packed into one experimental device. And then there is also an Acer router with similar 5th gen Wifi stuff…

Fixing Wireless in OpenSuSE 11.3 and Dell Studio Laptops

The new and shiny OpenSuSE 11.3 was released on 15th July, 2010 and I was eagerly waiting because it promised to give a preview of the GNOME 3.0 and LXDE desktops on the DVD. As with my forgetful self, I forgot about the release, until now when I had to create an openSuse based appliance (but this one is long story for another day)… Nevertheless, I downloaded the DVD image yesterday and was ready to install it.

After the installation like I always do with the Dell Laptops (which have the Broadcom wifi chipset), go and download the Broadcom proprietary ‘wl’ drivers from packman repo. But this time, the 1-click install button didn’t work and gave some error message. Nevermind, I got the rpm and installed it. Rebooted the machine, but couldn’t find the wireless on… Odd I wondered and went to YAST and checked what was the issue… I discovered that starting from OpenSuSE 11.3, the ssb module is bundled with the kernel to deal with the Broadcom chipsets, but then Broadcom changed the hardware address and hence the driver doesn’t work correctly. Also because there are two options (wl and ssb), I couldn’t get the wireless automatically working after installing the ‘wl’ like it otherwise does.

Thus, I realized that ssb and its dependencies need to be blacklisted and only then wl will be the only one available in the kernel and things will work well… Thus, the following steps need to be followed:

1.) create a file 50-Broadcom-wl-blacklist.conf, if it does not exist with the following content:

blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist ssb
blacklist b43
blacklist ndiswrapper

2.) install the Broadcom-wl, if you haven’t already installed. Download it from the above linked packman repo. If you had already installed it, then do the following:

rmmod bcm43xx
rmmod b43
rmmod ssb
insmod wl

3.) reboot

This should only load wl into the kernel and should show the wireless in the network manager or ifup, whichever you may want to use.

Wimax Missed the Intel Centrino 2 Boat Again

Wimax has been Intel’s big push to wireless broadband for some years now. Intel has promised Wimax as the solution to fast wireless internet time and again, but has constantly failed to deliver real working chips for operation. Today, when Intel launched Centrino 2, it didn’t have much of a mention about the Wimax adapters 5150 and 5350, which was supposedly the main talking point of Centrino 2.

Centrino was probably one of the most talked about technology by Intel when it was first released. It standardized wireless access through Wifi and most people synonymously used Centrino for Wireless-capable laptops. That was back in 2003. After that Intel refreshed the platform with a lot of new processors/platforms, codenamed Yonah, Napa and Santa Rosa. Lots of new motherboards/chipsets came and went and few integrated graphics just changed. Centrino 2 after much delay was launched today and the platform was earlier known by codename Montevina.

The Montevina platform announced today covers new 45nm Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors, the GM45 chipset and the WiFi Link 5300 adapter. You can look at all the information about Centrino 2 platform from the wide press coverage its got from all hardware sites. Look here, here and here for examples. But what most of the sites are not complaining about is the lack of Wimax at the launch. I mean what is special about Centrino 2, if its not got a new fast wireless medium, atleast that’s what the original Centrino was all about.

But like I have heard before, the Wimax adapters for laptops 5150 and 5350 are still not ready for release. The adapters have an issue with power consumption and if Intel would have today launched the adapters with Centrino 2 platform, all the promises about improved battery life would have gone down the drains. Intel says we have to wait till the end of the year to get one of those Wimax adapters, but didn’t mention any specific reason for the delay and also didn’t mention that it was due to these (and Atom’s marketing) that Intel has been delaying Centrino 2 for sometime. Lets hope by fall we do see a battery efficient Wimax adapter for my new laptop. For a change, this time the ISPs are not late!!

 

Few presentation slides from Centrino 2 launch:

 

 

The Car came, but Wimax didn’t want a ride!!

iPhone SDK could open a Pandora's Box

I just received a feed notification about a blog post on Tech-Buzz, about the iPhone SDK when I remembered this post from the wired.

As soon as Steve Jobs, announced the SDK will be released for the iPhone and the iPod Touch in February, I wondered what would happen to AT&T and their exclusivity. Like I mentioned here, the iPhone with its WiFi has a very good scope in the VoIP space. I'm sure this SDK means a lot of help to the developers planning to make VoIP softwares for the iPhone.

But it's not just good news for the good developers. Its also good news for the developers on the evil-side of things... Call them hackers or whatever... these guys have done quite a lot of work on the iPhone already. The Wired article mentions about different vulnerabilities already found on the iPhone and how they can be easily exploited. As more and more softwares are developed and people start installing these, you do open a big Pandora's box. Apple has to take care about these vulnerabilities before giving away the SDK, so that the users are protected from any Virus, Snooping Programs and Trojans that the hackers SDK intends to create.

By releasing the SDK, Apple will make the iPhone/iPod Touch a good platform for apps, but before that, can we have a firmware release that does not just brick the iPhone??

Free Calling On iPhone Without Paying AT&T

iPhone was launched with AT&T and Apple made a promise that iPhone won't work on any other operator's network. But only a week later, people were using the iPhone on any cellular network across the globe. This phenomenon was called iPhone Unlocking!! I'm sure AT&T was tearing its hair off, but now there is more to be angry about.

Apple also didn't allow any other application to be installed on the iPhone. Apple warns that the warranties will be void on the iPhone, if any other 3rd party softwares are installed on the iPhone or if its been unlocked!! So Apple has tried its best to warn the users and keep AT&T happy, but today we have VoIP software maker, Truphone (which advertises itself as a Nokia VoIP app maker) demo'ed their application on an iPhone. You can watch a video of this here.

This means that its even more bad news for AT&T. Atleast they was expecting people who were not unlocking the iPhone to use their network and pay for the airtime charges. But now it seems that people will use the VoIP and just pay for the data services or even better use the office WiFi connections for free!! So, this app is really a pain for AT&T, but is good news for those iPhone owners who are scared of unlocking. Is it only the beginning of the end of the deal with AT&T, or does Apple do a firmware upgrade and change the runtime environment to stop those VoIP apps?? Do we in the near future see Skype for iPhone or YahooVoice Chat on iPhone?? It really isn't very tough to make a 1-1 voice chat software these days and I guided some under-grad students on a low-bandwidth VoIP project!! So may be you can make one for yourself and give people free calling on the iPhone!!