How to Improve Wireless Card, Router and Network performance for better experience

Microsoft has published list of 10 tips for improving wireless network performance:

If Windows ever notifies you about a weak signal, it probably means your connection isn’t as fast or as reliable as it could be. Worse, you might lose your connection entirely in some parts of your home. If you’re looking to improve the signal for your wireless network, try some of these tips for extending your wireless range and improving your wireless network performance.

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Gmail and Yahoo webmail hacked

Robert Graham, the CEO of errata security, surprised attendees by hijacking a Gmail session on camera and reading the victim’s email. He went even further by demonstrating the attack to us in person, taking over another journalist’s Gmail account and then sending us sheep-loving emails.

Now you know why it’s dangerous to check your web emails in public hotspot or through open wi-fi connections. You can try https session and only use secure wifi connection to avoid problems.

From the article:

The attack is actually quite simple. First Graham needs to be able to sniff data packets and in our case the open Wi-Fi network at the convention fulfilled that requirement. He then ran Ferret to copy all the cookies flying through the air. Finally, Graham cloned those cookies into his browser – in easy point-and-click fashion – with a home-grown tool called Hamster.

The attack can hijack sessions in almost any cookie-based web application and Graham has tested it successfully against popular webmail programs like Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. He stressed that since the program just uses cookies, he only needs an IP address and usernames and passwords aren’t required.

Point and click Gmail hacking at Black Hat

40 Gbps world’s fastest broadband in central Sweden

The world’s fastest internet connection is in Sweden at 40 Gigabits per second connection – thousands of times faster than the average ADSL / DSL / Cable home Internet connection.

According to this article:

A 75 year old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden has been thrust into the IT history books – with the world’s fastest internet connection.

Sigbritt Löthberg’s home has been supplied with a blistering 40 Gigabits per second connection, many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user has experienced such a high speed.

But Sigbritt, who had never had a computer until now, is no ordinary 75 year old. She is the mother of Swedish internet legend Peter Löthberg who, along with Karlstad Stadsnät, the local council’s network arm, has arranged the connection.

People in India still struggling to get 256k connection.

Sigbritt, 75, has world’s fastest broadband

Wifi longest link record set to 237 miles i.e. 381 kilometer

Wifi is short for wireless fidelity. WiFi has gained acceptance in many environments as an alternative to a wired LAN. Many airports, hotels, and other services offer public access to WiFi networks so people can log onto the Internet and receive emails on the move. These locations are known as hotspots.

However wifi network puts restrictions – you must be within the range of the WAPs, the wireless end user has a full network connection with the benefit of mobility. One IEEE 802.11 WAP can typically communicate with 30 client systems located within a radius of 100 m.

A Venezuelan techie apparently has set a new record for longest WiFi link. Networking guru Ermanno Pietrosemoli established a wireless connection between a PC in El Aguila, Venezuela, and one in Platillon Mountain, a distance of about 237 miles, mostly using off-the-shelf equipment and a few hacked parts.

Howto setup and configure Windows Server 2003 DHCP server

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a set of rules used by communications devices such as a computer, router or network adapter to allow the device to request and obtain an IP address from a server which has a list of addresses available for assignment. The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a member of the TCP/IP suite and a protocol that is designed to save network administrators a lot of time and effort. A successful DHCP implementation can do just that.

This article explains setting up DHCP on tens, hundreds, and even thousands of computers can be daunting. Here’s how to do it easily with Windows Server 2003:

As you probably already know, every computer that communicates on a network does so via an IP (layer 4) address. The goal of DHCP is to provide a mechanism of automated address delivery, to give every computer its own IP address without an administrator having to type them all in manually. In small networks, this isn’t too big of an issue. However, in networks with tens, hundreds, and even thousands of computers, the task of IP address management is daunting. Luckily, Windows Server 2003 provides a means for us to implement DHCP with its own DHCP server service

Implementing and Understanding DHCP

Who Invented Mobile Phone?

A little history about modern mobile phone and its inventor Dr. Martin Cooper.

We use mobile phone everyday. I own a blackberry and a Nokia phone. In the 90s the cellphone was a luxury item. I thought it would be an interesting idea to dig out a little history about mobile phone.

Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola, made the first US analogue mobile phone call
Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola, made the first US analogue mobile phone call

  1. Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola is considered to be the inventor of the first practical mobile phone. On April 3, 1973, Martin placed a call to rival Joel Engel, head of research at AT&T’s Bell Labs, while walking the streets of New York City talking on the first Motorola DynaTAC prototype.
  2. In 1940s Motorola developed a backpacked two-way radio, the Walkie-Talkie and a large hand-held two-way radio for the US military. The same technology developed further and produced the mobile phone that we know today.
  3. In 1946 USSR (Russia) successfully tested their version of a radio mobile phone mounted inside a car.
  4. The modern handheld cell phone era began in 1973 when Motorola invented the first cellular portable telephone to be commercialised, known as Motorola DynaTAC 8000X.
  5. On October 13, 1983, the pilot commercial cellular system of Illinois Bell begins operating in Chicago. The second pilot system run by ARTS in partnership with Motorola begins operation in Baltimore/Washington on December 16, 1983.
  6. By 1984, Washington, DC has two competing cellular providers,
  7. By 1988, many cellular systems (particularly New York and Los Angeles) are already becoming overloaded as the promise of nearly infinite expansion of capacity from cell splitting turns out to be more costly and difficult than foreseen.
  8. The Motorola StarTac was the first phone in the world with Vibrating alert function. It was unveiled in North America on January 3, 1996. StarTACs remained popular until the early 2000s.
  9. The Sharp J-SH04 was the industry’s first mobile phone to feature an integrated 110,000-pixel CMOS image sensor for taking digital photos (camera mobile phone).
  10. By 2003 or 2004 Blackberry begun to take the market by storm. The phone were optimized for wireless email communication. GPRS could provide data rates from 56 kbit/s up to 114 kbit/s. It can be used for services such as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) access, Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and for Internet communication services such as email and World Wide Web access.
  11. On January 9, 2007 Apple unveiled the iPhone to the public.

WHERE WERE MOBILE PHONES FIRST USED?

=> United States of America (USA)

These days we use second generation (2G) GSM / CDMA / TDMA mobile networks and phones. Many service providers now looking to create a third generation (3G) mobile network. The most significant feature offered by third generation mobile technologies is the capacity to support greater numbers of voice and data customers but as usual it is quite expensive to roll out. Now, a 4G system is expected to provide a comprehensive and secure all-IP based solution where facilities such as IP telephony, ultra-broadband Internet access, gaming services, and streamed multimedia may be provided to users.

References:

How to find and change Nintendo Wii DNS server IP address

Nintendo Wii is fine game console system. You can find out current DNS server IP address or change them using following method:

  1. Make sure your Wii is connected to the Internet.
  2. Select Wii Options.
  3. Select Wii Settings.
  4. Now click the right arrow once to view the Internet option > Click Internet
  5. Select Connection Settings.
  6. Now select the connection profile you are currently using.
  7. Select Change settings
  8. Select Auto-Obtain DNS settings i.e. click the right arrow three times until you see Auto-Obtain DNS settings.
  9. Click No, then Advanced Settings.
  10. Now click on Primary DNS and Secondary DNS fields and type in your ISP DNS server IP addresses.
  11. Select confirm > Click on Save and Finally click on OK to start the connection test.
  12. Next perform a Wii system update.
  13. And you are done!

Howto connect MySQL PostgreSQL server to Microsoft Office Application using ODBC

Learn how to connect Microsoft application such as Excel and other to MySQL and PostgreSQL database server running on Linux. This is an excellent information / howto.

In cases where business applications have been built on open source databases, it may be necessary to connect other Windows applications, such as Microsoft Access or Excel, to these databases for reporting or business intelligence purposes.

One potential application of this process is to use Excel as a front-end for data analysis. Data can be pulled from views or tables and then further analyzed, graphed, and the like. Even pivot tables can be used to create even more powerful reporting solutions.

This how-to walks through this process using Excel as an example application. Although in this example, the MySQL and PostgreSQL servers are running on Linux, the steps are no different if the software is running on Windows. These steps are:
1. Setting up authentication
2. Installing the ODBC Drivers
3. Configuring the data source
4. Importing the data.

=> Connecting Office Applications to MySQL and PostgreSQL via ODBC

Howto monitor your web site freely for availability

There is a nice and free website monitoring service available – Pingdom GIGRIB.

This website shows the uptime information for the thousands of websites that have been added by our users. The information is public and searchable.

All you need to do is :

a] Create a Pingdom GIGRIB user.
b] Download and install the GIGRIB client
c] Add the websites you want checked in the Pingdom GIGRIB control panel.

However your web site uptime information remains public. You can try the commercial service has a separate network of monitoring servers, more features, and the information is not public.

=> Pingdom GIGRIB website.