One of the issues I have with using more than one computer is getting files transferred back and forth across all of them. I'm not just talking about moving files across my home network, I mean from disconnected networks such as my work and home computers.
Now that so many people have smartphones - even getting files like Microsoft Word documents across your home network to your phone to your work computer is something we all would expect to be able to do. I've been using a product for a while now called Dropbox. It's really a powerful product that makes this whole idea so simple.
Dropbox is a small application you install on all of your computers and smartphone. It makes it look like there is a new folder on your computer/smartphone. All you have to do is move files into that folder and "poof!" the files are immediately available on all of your other Dropbox enabled computers.
Here are some really cool things I was able to do with Dropbox.
I was in a conference call meeting at home and wrote some notes on my home computer in a Microsoft Excel file. I then saved them to my Dropbox folder. When I got back to my office, the file was there on my work computer. Previously I would have had to pop in a thumb drive to copy the file.
I took a photo with my Android smartphone that I wanted to use in a Craigslist ad. So, I moved the photo into the Dropbox folder on my phone. Then I just went to my home computer and created the Craigslist ad using the photo out of the Dropbox folder. Previously I would have had to hook up my phone to the computer to copy the photo.
There are so many useful features - I recommend you take a look at their site. Click here for Dropbox. You can use the software for FREE. With a free account you get 2GB of space which is plenty for most uses. Of course, they offer monthly plans if you need more space. It doesn't matter if you have a PC, or a Mac, iPhone, Android Phone, iPad - even Linux - there is a Dropbox application you can download.
There is even a Public folder you can use to share files with other people. For example, you could take a bunch of photos and share that public folder with your friends and family. But, something in the back of my paranoid mind tells me that I don't want to copy sensitive files onto even the private area of the Dropbox folder. That's just me.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Jedi Skill for the Internet: Force Search
I get a lot of questions from people about computer "things". Some things I know because I remember running into it in the past, but most of the time the answers come from research done online. Way back in the day, I had a huge library of Microsoft books on which I spent way too much money. During the course of operating my business, I would refer to these books often. It was just a part of my investment in the biz.
The Internet had just begun to get into techy people's homes between 1992 and 1993, as it did in mine with my first Netcom dial-up account. I was amazed to find that Microsoft had jumped on board to put all of their Knowledge Base articles there. I began to find answers much more quickly and I didn't have to buy all those books anymore!
Back then, we didn't even have Yahoo! or Google. You just went to a specific company's web site and did searches from there. Then AltaVista and Yahoo! evolved and now we have had Google around for quite a few years.
A little work in the Google search window can really get you a long way. Let's say you bought a little appliance from a store and it stops working. Most likely, if it is a common defect, you will find that other people are complaining about it as well, if you do a Google search on the issue. You would be able to discover so many facts about the issue:
Here are my 3 tips on using Google for your research.
Be specific in your search keywords. In the example above, I used the manufacturer name, series and model number of the washer along with the keywords: "mold" and "buildup". The more specific your keywords, the more specific your results will be, saving you lots of time in results scanning.
Try using multiple combinations of keywords if you don't get good results. For example, if I'm having problems with no sound coming from my BAKA (fake company name) laptop speakers, I could use the following keywords:
BAKA laptop speakers not working
or
BAKA laptop speakers no sound
or
BAKA speakers low volume
Being able to think of good keyword combinations is the key to conducting good research on Google.
Learn to scan the search results quickly. Page scanning can save you valuable time when researching search results. This is something that takes a lot of practice and I don't really have a way to tell you how to better do it except through repetition. Page scanning is where you can quickly look through search results and have your eyes pick out the one or two relevant hits out of the many other not-so-relevant hits. By a relevant hit, I mean a result that actually covers the subject matter for which you are doing the search. A bad hit is where there is no relationship to what you are looking for at all. Many of you probably know your "go to" person for answers to various types of questions. Chances are, they have good page scanning skills. I have to confess something. Sometimes I find it frustrating watching someone carry out a search who hasn't practiced page scanning. As I look over their shoulder while they do a Google search, I see the results come up and see them painstakingly reading each and every word, and clicking on every link. It's no wonder why they would rather pick up the phone and call someone! The only advice I have on this is to do it often and you'll start to "feel" which links are going to be relevant and which are not. Truly, it's kind of like learning a new Jedi skill: Force Search.
May the search be with you!
The Internet had just begun to get into techy people's homes between 1992 and 1993, as it did in mine with my first Netcom dial-up account. I was amazed to find that Microsoft had jumped on board to put all of their Knowledge Base articles there. I began to find answers much more quickly and I didn't have to buy all those books anymore!
Back then, we didn't even have Yahoo! or Google. You just went to a specific company's web site and did searches from there. Then AltaVista and Yahoo! evolved and now we have had Google around for quite a few years.
A little work in the Google search window can really get you a long way. Let's say you bought a little appliance from a store and it stops working. Most likely, if it is a common defect, you will find that other people are complaining about it as well, if you do a Google search on the issue. You would be able to discover so many facts about the issue:
- What causes the problem?
- Is the manufacturer offering an improvement to the item or replacing defective ones?
- Where to send for the new item.
- Etc..
Here are my 3 tips on using Google for your research.
Be specific in your search keywords. In the example above, I used the manufacturer name, series and model number of the washer along with the keywords: "mold" and "buildup". The more specific your keywords, the more specific your results will be, saving you lots of time in results scanning.
Try using multiple combinations of keywords if you don't get good results. For example, if I'm having problems with no sound coming from my BAKA (fake company name) laptop speakers, I could use the following keywords:
BAKA laptop speakers not working
or
BAKA laptop speakers no sound
or
BAKA speakers low volume
Being able to think of good keyword combinations is the key to conducting good research on Google.
Learn to scan the search results quickly. Page scanning can save you valuable time when researching search results. This is something that takes a lot of practice and I don't really have a way to tell you how to better do it except through repetition. Page scanning is where you can quickly look through search results and have your eyes pick out the one or two relevant hits out of the many other not-so-relevant hits. By a relevant hit, I mean a result that actually covers the subject matter for which you are doing the search. A bad hit is where there is no relationship to what you are looking for at all. Many of you probably know your "go to" person for answers to various types of questions. Chances are, they have good page scanning skills. I have to confess something. Sometimes I find it frustrating watching someone carry out a search who hasn't practiced page scanning. As I look over their shoulder while they do a Google search, I see the results come up and see them painstakingly reading each and every word, and clicking on every link. It's no wonder why they would rather pick up the phone and call someone! The only advice I have on this is to do it often and you'll start to "feel" which links are going to be relevant and which are not. Truly, it's kind of like learning a new Jedi skill: Force Search.
May the search be with you!
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Saying Goodbye To Your PC
There comes a time when everyone has to say goodbye to their old PC. Personally, I don't get all attached to my PC's because I know in about 2 years, out they go. Whether you are taking the PC down to the recycler, giving it away to a charity or selling it, you might not know this, but it is very risky to just hand over your PC to someone else. "Why," you ask?
Well, in this day and age, you've probably heard of identity theft. After a couple years of usage, our PC's gather up a lot of information about us - and that can be dangerous if the information falls into the wrong hands. "But I've deleted all of my files," you say. There are plenty of software tools out there that can help someone "undelete" files - even if you formatted the drive! Also, you might not remember where you saved all of your files. So I'm hoping you can see the reason for wanting to clean your PC before getting rid of it.
What you really want to do is "wipe" your drive. This is done by software that writes 1's and 0's repeatedly on your disc - effectively wiping the drive clean of all files by overwriting them with the random patterns of 1's and 0's. Even the government and military have certain requirements for wiping a drive clean, as you can imagine.
I personally use PGP software to wipe my drives before I get rid of them, but there is far less expensive software available for this. In fact, you can find a tool called Secure Erase here for free. You just download the zip file and read the text file included for instructions.
If you are giving away your PC to charity or to someone else, you might want to restore the PC (see my blog post on this) after you wipe it so the person or organization to whom you are giving it will have a nice clean PC ready to use.
Well, in this day and age, you've probably heard of identity theft. After a couple years of usage, our PC's gather up a lot of information about us - and that can be dangerous if the information falls into the wrong hands. "But I've deleted all of my files," you say. There are plenty of software tools out there that can help someone "undelete" files - even if you formatted the drive! Also, you might not remember where you saved all of your files. So I'm hoping you can see the reason for wanting to clean your PC before getting rid of it.
What you really want to do is "wipe" your drive. This is done by software that writes 1's and 0's repeatedly on your disc - effectively wiping the drive clean of all files by overwriting them with the random patterns of 1's and 0's. Even the government and military have certain requirements for wiping a drive clean, as you can imagine.
I personally use PGP software to wipe my drives before I get rid of them, but there is far less expensive software available for this. In fact, you can find a tool called Secure Erase here for free. You just download the zip file and read the text file included for instructions.
If you are giving away your PC to charity or to someone else, you might want to restore the PC (see my blog post on this) after you wipe it so the person or organization to whom you are giving it will have a nice clean PC ready to use.
It's 10 O'Clock! Do You Know Where Your OS Disc Is?
When people buy a new PC, they usually take for granted that there is an operating system (or OS) on it. You know.. Mac, Windows, Linux, Ubuntu, whatever. And, I'm not so sure that it's a BAD thing that they take it for granted. However, the operating system isn't "built-in" to the system. It's just like another "part" of the system just like the the monitor or the DVD drive.
Most Mac's and Windows PC's come with a disc or discs. Windows PC's also usually come with a Proof of License Certificate of Authenticity sticker on the PC or on the disc cover - if the discs are provided. If someone builds your PC for you, hopefully they are on the up and up and will provide you with the proper discs. I have a big issue with people who build custom PC's and they try to cut costs by loading operating systems multiple times from the same disc. It's still possible to do, but not as easy anymore. It was a rampant problem back when Windows XP and earlier were being sold.
Whenever I want to help people with their PC problems, I always ask if they have the original OS disc because if the problem comes down to doing a reinstall, I'm going to need it. The reason I'm writing this blog post is because typically my friends will say they don't have it. Shockingly, they don't know where it is! So here I am, making this digital statement for perpetuity - DON'T LOSE YOUR OS DISCS!
Sometimes the disc you get from the PC manufacturer isn't a Microsoft Windows disc. Instead it's a "recovery" or "restore" disc which is used to bring the computer back to factory state, as it was when you first turned it on. This is just as good.
To be fair, some manufacturers like DELL don't actually provide a physical disc anymore. Instead, they provide a special partition (or section) on the computer's hard drive which is used to restore the computer to it's factory state.
So the point I'm trying to make here is that you should know whether your PC manufacturer provides you with discs or with a recovery partition. In addition, you should be aware of how to do the restore. This information will usually be in your PC's documentation.
Here's a scenario I see far too often. A person calls me and says, "I got a virus, can you help me with my computer?" First thing I ask is if they have Antivirus software - and usually the answer is that it's expired or worse, they don't have it at all. (See my Anti-Whatever post) Next, I try to make some kind of determination as to whether the virus has infected the PC so badly that it cannot be fixed in a short amount of time.
I must clarify what I mean by "a short amount of time". One time I worked on a relative's computer for 8 hours, thinking I had the virus removed. All along the skeptical PC technician in the back of my head was telling me just to wipe it clean and restore it. The next day, the computer was turned back on and started to exhibit the same symptoms. Ugh! So what I mean by a short amount of time is less than a half hour.
Anyway - back to the PC incident. I should have just restored the computer and saved 8 hours of time. I asked my relative if the discs were handy - and what do you think I'm going to say? No.. they weren't available. So I was up the creek, or my relative was up the creek. So what did they do to fix their PC? They took the PC to a person who had no problem with installing an illegal copy of Windows. How sad.
In conclusion - this is what I say when I have to help someone who has no way to restore their PC.. How sad.
Most Mac's and Windows PC's come with a disc or discs. Windows PC's also usually come with a Proof of License Certificate of Authenticity sticker on the PC or on the disc cover - if the discs are provided. If someone builds your PC for you, hopefully they are on the up and up and will provide you with the proper discs. I have a big issue with people who build custom PC's and they try to cut costs by loading operating systems multiple times from the same disc. It's still possible to do, but not as easy anymore. It was a rampant problem back when Windows XP and earlier were being sold.
Whenever I want to help people with their PC problems, I always ask if they have the original OS disc because if the problem comes down to doing a reinstall, I'm going to need it. The reason I'm writing this blog post is because typically my friends will say they don't have it. Shockingly, they don't know where it is! So here I am, making this digital statement for perpetuity - DON'T LOSE YOUR OS DISCS!
Sometimes the disc you get from the PC manufacturer isn't a Microsoft Windows disc. Instead it's a "recovery" or "restore" disc which is used to bring the computer back to factory state, as it was when you first turned it on. This is just as good.
To be fair, some manufacturers like DELL don't actually provide a physical disc anymore. Instead, they provide a special partition (or section) on the computer's hard drive which is used to restore the computer to it's factory state.
So the point I'm trying to make here is that you should know whether your PC manufacturer provides you with discs or with a recovery partition. In addition, you should be aware of how to do the restore. This information will usually be in your PC's documentation.
Here's a scenario I see far too often. A person calls me and says, "I got a virus, can you help me with my computer?" First thing I ask is if they have Antivirus software - and usually the answer is that it's expired or worse, they don't have it at all. (See my Anti-Whatever post) Next, I try to make some kind of determination as to whether the virus has infected the PC so badly that it cannot be fixed in a short amount of time.
I must clarify what I mean by "a short amount of time". One time I worked on a relative's computer for 8 hours, thinking I had the virus removed. All along the skeptical PC technician in the back of my head was telling me just to wipe it clean and restore it. The next day, the computer was turned back on and started to exhibit the same symptoms. Ugh! So what I mean by a short amount of time is less than a half hour.
Anyway - back to the PC incident. I should have just restored the computer and saved 8 hours of time. I asked my relative if the discs were handy - and what do you think I'm going to say? No.. they weren't available. So I was up the creek, or my relative was up the creek. So what did they do to fix their PC? They took the PC to a person who had no problem with installing an illegal copy of Windows. How sad.
In conclusion - this is what I say when I have to help someone who has no way to restore their PC.. How sad.
Monday, February 7, 2011
DNS and Content Filtering
If you have ever set up your Internet connection or watched your ISP technician set up your account, I'm sure you've seen or heard of your TCP/IP settings. One of the TCP/IP settings is the DNS. DNS stands for (D)omain (N)ame (S)ystem. It's a neat system that helps a computer know how to get around the Internet.
Places on the Internet, much like places we live, all have addresses. But the addresses on the Internet are not anything like the nice names we have like http://bytesforeveryone.blogspot.com/. They are a set of numbers separated by dots or colons. I'm not going to go into Internet addresses, or IP addresses here. In this blog entry, I'm focusing on DNS.
Whatever the address is, people usually can't remember big numbers as well as unique names such as http://bytesforeveryone.blogspot.com/. So there has to be one big "phone book" which correlates these addresses to the unique names. That, in fact, is exactly what is going on. There are many DNS servers all over the Internet which are designed to "look up" addresses by unique names. The DNS servers you use in your TCP/IP settings most likely pass the lookup request to other more "authoritative" servers at strategic locations around the Internet.
So, here's how it goes. When you type in http://bytesforeveryone.blogspot.com/ in your browser, the computer goes out and makes a "DNS request" to your DNS server to convert the name to an IP address. Then the browser goes out to that IP address to get the web page. One thing that always amazes me is how FAST all that takes place.
Looking at my blog title, you might be asking yourself, what does DNS or address lookups have to do with content filtering? By content filtering, I mean the ability to filter out - or block - certain content from the web to my home.
Well, I wanted to find an inexpensive way to filter Internet content to my home. There are so many software solutions out there for this - and I can hear you all telling me which ones you might be using - if any. Another piece of software to load and which to subscribe didn't make me happy and I wanted a way to do this at my main Internet connection point inexpensively. Things were looking dismal as I was not able to find anything inexpensive. I found all sorts of expensive firewall-type devices and services. All of which didn't seem to suit my needs as I'm always looking for solutions that home users can afford or can set up.
Here's what I did. I found that there is a company called OpenDNS who has their own DNS servers which you can use for free. If you sign up for a free account with them, you can actually use their servers to filter content! In order to get the content filtering, you must sign up for the free account. They have a pay version as well, but that's not necessary for home networks. Here's the link for home users: http://www.opendns.com/solutions/household/
At the time of this writing OpenDNS has 2 DNS servers: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. Once you set up your OpenDNS account, you simply put these 2 DNS servers in your network router. When you do this, the router will feed these DNS server addresses to all of your home PC's, unless you have a smarty pants who knows how to bypass the settings distributed by the router.
Once you set up your OpenDNS account, you can configure what types of content you want to filter. I have found it to be very good at what it does and it's pretty good for the price.
Until next time.
Places on the Internet, much like places we live, all have addresses. But the addresses on the Internet are not anything like the nice names we have like http://bytesforeveryone.blogspot.com/. They are a set of numbers separated by dots or colons. I'm not going to go into Internet addresses, or IP addresses here. In this blog entry, I'm focusing on DNS.
Whatever the address is, people usually can't remember big numbers as well as unique names such as http://bytesforeveryone.blogspot.com/. So there has to be one big "phone book" which correlates these addresses to the unique names. That, in fact, is exactly what is going on. There are many DNS servers all over the Internet which are designed to "look up" addresses by unique names. The DNS servers you use in your TCP/IP settings most likely pass the lookup request to other more "authoritative" servers at strategic locations around the Internet.
So, here's how it goes. When you type in http://bytesforeveryone.blogspot.com/ in your browser, the computer goes out and makes a "DNS request" to your DNS server to convert the name to an IP address. Then the browser goes out to that IP address to get the web page. One thing that always amazes me is how FAST all that takes place.
Looking at my blog title, you might be asking yourself, what does DNS or address lookups have to do with content filtering? By content filtering, I mean the ability to filter out - or block - certain content from the web to my home.
Well, I wanted to find an inexpensive way to filter Internet content to my home. There are so many software solutions out there for this - and I can hear you all telling me which ones you might be using - if any. Another piece of software to load and which to subscribe didn't make me happy and I wanted a way to do this at my main Internet connection point inexpensively. Things were looking dismal as I was not able to find anything inexpensive. I found all sorts of expensive firewall-type devices and services. All of which didn't seem to suit my needs as I'm always looking for solutions that home users can afford or can set up.
Here's what I did. I found that there is a company called OpenDNS who has their own DNS servers which you can use for free. If you sign up for a free account with them, you can actually use their servers to filter content! In order to get the content filtering, you must sign up for the free account. They have a pay version as well, but that's not necessary for home networks. Here's the link for home users: http://www.opendns.com/solutions/household/
At the time of this writing OpenDNS has 2 DNS servers: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. Once you set up your OpenDNS account, you simply put these 2 DNS servers in your network router. When you do this, the router will feed these DNS server addresses to all of your home PC's, unless you have a smarty pants who knows how to bypass the settings distributed by the router.
Once you set up your OpenDNS account, you can configure what types of content you want to filter. I have found it to be very good at what it does and it's pretty good for the price.
Until next time.
Friday, February 4, 2011
External Drive Talk
External hard drives are a very useful tool in your arsenal of PC peripherals. They are useful for hosting your backup files (See Backup, Backup, BACKUP!) and when your main PC drive is starting to run out of space. Certain types of external drives can be used for central storage of your music and/or family photos.
There are two types of external drive connections. One type is via USB, SATA or Firewire, where basically the drive is connected directly to your PC, while the other type is via ethernet or wireless connection to your internal home network.
If you connect a USB drive to your computer, you can expect theoretical speeds at 12Mbps with USB 1.1 and 480Mbps with USB 2.0. Firewire is rated 786 Mbps (Firewire 800) theoretical. SATA can get you much higher data speeds, which can go higher than 1.5Gbps. Again, all these are theoretical rates, actual rates are affected by many factors - even temperature! But again, these types of connections are just direct to your computer alone.
If you read my previous blog Kilo, Mega or Giga Speed, you'll get an idea about Internet connection speed. Internet connection speed is typically slower than local network speed. Most of today's PC's have Gigabit speed ethernet cards built-in, and therefore you can assume connection speeds at 1Gbps theoretical. What you get actually is affected by the same factors affecting Internet connection speed.
Connecting an external drive to your local network is very useful because you can share music files, photos, and other files with all the other computers on your network. Contrasting that with a directly connected external drive you get sole use of the drive. Each type of drive connection has it's place.
At the request of a relative, I want to focus a little on a network connected external drive. No matter which type you get, you want to remember the old addage, "A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link". Or, by changing the words a little bit, "Your network speed is only as fast as the slowest device." Lets say you have a Gigabit speed network card built in to your PC, and you went out and bought a discounted network external drive that has only a 100Mbps network connection. You've effectively slowed down your network by connecting a slower device. Many consumer grade wireless routers do not have Gigabit ethernet connectors simply because at the time of this writing, you can't get wireless speeds to go that fast, nor can you get (home) Internet speeds that fast. So there isn't a need to put Gigabit speed ethernet ports on the wireless router. So if you use your wireless router as the main point of connection between your PC and the external drive, and the wireless router has 100Mbps ethernet ports, then you are limiting the speed which you can write and read your data from the drive.
Here's what I do. I use what is called a Gigabit network switch. You can purchase multiple port Gigabit switches which you can use to connect all your internal network devices. Forgive the cheesy illustration, but this is basically how I have my network.
Connect the Gigabit switch to all of your internal devices and then to the router/firewall. Be aware, that if you are going to try to access files from the network attached external drive over a wireless connection, you have to think about the old addage I wrote about above. At the time of this writing, gigabit speeds over (home) wireless devices has not yet been attained, so your wireless connection will be the "weakest link" when you are trying to copy files to or from the external drive. Just to give you an idea, wireless connections can range from 11Mbps to above 54Mbps depending on what type of wireless protocol is being used by your wireless router and wireless network card in your PC.
With this information, I hope you are able to build your own little digital home empire!
There are two types of external drive connections. One type is via USB, SATA or Firewire, where basically the drive is connected directly to your PC, while the other type is via ethernet or wireless connection to your internal home network.
If you connect a USB drive to your computer, you can expect theoretical speeds at 12Mbps with USB 1.1 and 480Mbps with USB 2.0. Firewire is rated 786 Mbps (Firewire 800) theoretical. SATA can get you much higher data speeds, which can go higher than 1.5Gbps. Again, all these are theoretical rates, actual rates are affected by many factors - even temperature! But again, these types of connections are just direct to your computer alone.
If you read my previous blog Kilo, Mega or Giga Speed, you'll get an idea about Internet connection speed. Internet connection speed is typically slower than local network speed. Most of today's PC's have Gigabit speed ethernet cards built-in, and therefore you can assume connection speeds at 1Gbps theoretical. What you get actually is affected by the same factors affecting Internet connection speed.
Connecting an external drive to your local network is very useful because you can share music files, photos, and other files with all the other computers on your network. Contrasting that with a directly connected external drive you get sole use of the drive. Each type of drive connection has it's place.
At the request of a relative, I want to focus a little on a network connected external drive. No matter which type you get, you want to remember the old addage, "A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link". Or, by changing the words a little bit, "Your network speed is only as fast as the slowest device." Lets say you have a Gigabit speed network card built in to your PC, and you went out and bought a discounted network external drive that has only a 100Mbps network connection. You've effectively slowed down your network by connecting a slower device. Many consumer grade wireless routers do not have Gigabit ethernet connectors simply because at the time of this writing, you can't get wireless speeds to go that fast, nor can you get (home) Internet speeds that fast. So there isn't a need to put Gigabit speed ethernet ports on the wireless router. So if you use your wireless router as the main point of connection between your PC and the external drive, and the wireless router has 100Mbps ethernet ports, then you are limiting the speed which you can write and read your data from the drive.
Here's what I do. I use what is called a Gigabit network switch. You can purchase multiple port Gigabit switches which you can use to connect all your internal network devices. Forgive the cheesy illustration, but this is basically how I have my network.
Connect the Gigabit switch to all of your internal devices and then to the router/firewall. Be aware, that if you are going to try to access files from the network attached external drive over a wireless connection, you have to think about the old addage I wrote about above. At the time of this writing, gigabit speeds over (home) wireless devices has not yet been attained, so your wireless connection will be the "weakest link" when you are trying to copy files to or from the external drive. Just to give you an idea, wireless connections can range from 11Mbps to above 54Mbps depending on what type of wireless protocol is being used by your wireless router and wireless network card in your PC.
With this information, I hope you are able to build your own little digital home empire!
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Kilo, Mega or Giga Speed
If there is one thing that seems to baffle people about their connection to the Internet, it's the mysterious concept of connection speed. Your ISP sold you a connection to the Internet at a certain speed. Maybe you didn't really care what the speed was when you bought your Internet connection, or maybe you did. I live in a city that has a technically advanced ISP who sells a whopping 60Mbps option. Unfortunately, they also limit or "cap" the amount of Internet data I use. Whether you still have a modem with your screeching 56Kbps connection or you have cable at great speeds like my provider sells, at some time or another the question of actual speed seems to come to the surface.
Connection speed is generally measured in bps or (b)its (p)er (s)econd. So when you see Kbps, that means Kilobits per second or thousand bits per second. And if you see Mpbs, that means Megabits per second or million bits per second. Gbps means Gigabits per second or billion bits per second. At the time of this writing, I have not yet seen Tbps or Terabits per second which is trillion bits per second.
Lets create a hypothetical ISP customer named - eh.. Ken Shnayal. Mr. Shnayal calls up his ISP and gets a blazing 10Mbps connection. They come out and install the service by connecting directly to his primary computer and verifying that it meets standards. Yay! Mr. Shnayal is so happy. He starts to try out his new found connection by going to Netflix and watching his favorite old movies. All is going well.
Mr. Shnayal decides that he wants to join the wireless world and buys a fancy-dancy wireless router. Wow! Wireless freedom! He finds out that he can hardwire connections to the back of the wireless router as well as enjoy wireless connections. Suddenly Mr. Shnayal sees all sorts of opportunities to connect all kinds of devices wirelessly as well as via ethernet (using a wire). During all of his excitement, he starts to notice that things aren't going as fast as they used to. The Netflix movies are pausing and buffering and some sites seem to be really slow when loading. So, Ken decides to go on a fact-finding mission. He finds a 10 MB Adobe PDF online from his community college web site and clicks on it to see how long it takes to download. It should take a second right? But the file takes almost 12 seconds! WHAT??? Mr. Shnayal calls his ISP demanding some kind of fix. So, the Internet cable guy comes out and moves the Internet connection directly back to the original computer on which it was installed and retries the same test with the 10MB PDF with Ken watching over his shoulder. The file downloads in 9 seconds and the repair guy says, "Ok! We are done here." Mr. Shnayal is confused, so the Internet cable guy explains. "There is a difference between 10 Megabits and 10 Megabytes. A bit is the most basic piece of information used by a computer. A bit can either be 0 or 1. Whereas a byte is made up of eight bits." (The reason for this will be the subject of a future blog entry). So the connection that Mr. Shnayal bought is rated as 10 megabits per second, but it can also be considered a 1.2 mega bytes per second connection. So when you divide the 10MB file by 1.2, you come up with 8.33 seconds. So the file should have transfered in 8.33 seconds in an ideal world. 9 seconds would actually be a reasonable rate of transfer. So what happened when he saw it go up to 12 seconds? Most likely the problem came from having the data go through his fancy-dancy wireless router.
So we come to the whole point I'm trying to make. The Internet is made up of all kinds of devices all over the world from manufacturers all over China - er - the world. In my experience, you will see degradation in your Internet connection originating from consumer grade networking components. Once I bought a wireless router from a popular manufacturer as it was claiming all sorts of features that I wanted. I brought it home and noticed an instant performance decrease. I called my ISP and wanted to blame them because I had just spent all this money on this new fancy-dancy wireless router and how could that be at fault? Well, it turned out that it wasn't the wireless router, but the compatibility of the wireless network card in my laptop and the wireless router. Sure enough, the purchase of a new wireless card proved to be the answer. In reality 12 seconds difference from the theoretical 8.33 seconds it should have taken is not that bad.
There are many other external factors to Internet connection speed as well. Things like the load on a site or load on a certain network "path" can cause a slowdown situation as well, sometimes only momentary.
Here's what I do. I use the site http://www.speedtest.net/ This is a really cool graphical site that can identify where you are on a map and provides you with nearby testing locations from which you can obtain speed statistics. Sometimes your ISP has their own speed test site about which you will only discover if you call them about it.
Bottom line - if you are a stickler for the speed, you need to do some research and pick good networking components. Be ready to pay a little more now and again for higher performance, and coming up with good compatibility combinations.
Happy speed testing!
Connection speed is generally measured in bps or (b)its (p)er (s)econd. So when you see Kbps, that means Kilobits per second or thousand bits per second. And if you see Mpbs, that means Megabits per second or million bits per second. Gbps means Gigabits per second or billion bits per second. At the time of this writing, I have not yet seen Tbps or Terabits per second which is trillion bits per second.
Lets create a hypothetical ISP customer named - eh.. Ken Shnayal. Mr. Shnayal calls up his ISP and gets a blazing 10Mbps connection. They come out and install the service by connecting directly to his primary computer and verifying that it meets standards. Yay! Mr. Shnayal is so happy. He starts to try out his new found connection by going to Netflix and watching his favorite old movies. All is going well.
Mr. Shnayal decides that he wants to join the wireless world and buys a fancy-dancy wireless router. Wow! Wireless freedom! He finds out that he can hardwire connections to the back of the wireless router as well as enjoy wireless connections. Suddenly Mr. Shnayal sees all sorts of opportunities to connect all kinds of devices wirelessly as well as via ethernet (using a wire). During all of his excitement, he starts to notice that things aren't going as fast as they used to. The Netflix movies are pausing and buffering and some sites seem to be really slow when loading. So, Ken decides to go on a fact-finding mission. He finds a 10 MB Adobe PDF online from his community college web site and clicks on it to see how long it takes to download. It should take a second right? But the file takes almost 12 seconds! WHAT??? Mr. Shnayal calls his ISP demanding some kind of fix. So, the Internet cable guy comes out and moves the Internet connection directly back to the original computer on which it was installed and retries the same test with the 10MB PDF with Ken watching over his shoulder. The file downloads in 9 seconds and the repair guy says, "Ok! We are done here." Mr. Shnayal is confused, so the Internet cable guy explains. "There is a difference between 10 Megabits and 10 Megabytes. A bit is the most basic piece of information used by a computer. A bit can either be 0 or 1. Whereas a byte is made up of eight bits." (The reason for this will be the subject of a future blog entry). So the connection that Mr. Shnayal bought is rated as 10 megabits per second, but it can also be considered a 1.2 mega bytes per second connection. So when you divide the 10MB file by 1.2, you come up with 8.33 seconds. So the file should have transfered in 8.33 seconds in an ideal world. 9 seconds would actually be a reasonable rate of transfer. So what happened when he saw it go up to 12 seconds? Most likely the problem came from having the data go through his fancy-dancy wireless router.
So we come to the whole point I'm trying to make. The Internet is made up of all kinds of devices all over the world from manufacturers all over China - er - the world. In my experience, you will see degradation in your Internet connection originating from consumer grade networking components. Once I bought a wireless router from a popular manufacturer as it was claiming all sorts of features that I wanted. I brought it home and noticed an instant performance decrease. I called my ISP and wanted to blame them because I had just spent all this money on this new fancy-dancy wireless router and how could that be at fault? Well, it turned out that it wasn't the wireless router, but the compatibility of the wireless network card in my laptop and the wireless router. Sure enough, the purchase of a new wireless card proved to be the answer. In reality 12 seconds difference from the theoretical 8.33 seconds it should have taken is not that bad.
There are many other external factors to Internet connection speed as well. Things like the load on a site or load on a certain network "path" can cause a slowdown situation as well, sometimes only momentary.
Here's what I do. I use the site http://www.speedtest.net/ This is a really cool graphical site that can identify where you are on a map and provides you with nearby testing locations from which you can obtain speed statistics. Sometimes your ISP has their own speed test site about which you will only discover if you call them about it.
Bottom line - if you are a stickler for the speed, you need to do some research and pick good networking components. Be ready to pay a little more now and again for higher performance, and coming up with good compatibility combinations.
Happy speed testing!
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