Geek Window Shopping - CAT6 Cables, Anyone?

While doing some reading online for my post on rack servers (that I posted on my other blog here), I chanced upon a site that gave me even more ideas on things to blog about. That always happens when you're a heavy Googler like me. I found  ICC.com and browsed around a bit. As I went through what they had to offer, I was able to appreciate and realize the complexity of the logistics involved in getting servers up and running. Now, being a geek, I like poking around on these sites. While I am not buying, I do appreciate commercial sites that include helpful info in their sites. ICC.com in particular features products that any geek DIY'ers would love to get a hold of. 

ICC's a California-based company that specializes mostly in telecommunications equipment. Owing to their size and the breadth of the kind of supplies they feature on their site, they pretty much offer everything a corporate-type networking guy would need or home network admin would want. Products like cabling for fiber optic systems and traditional copper cabling or cat6 cables and network cable management systems that make life easier. Here's another plus for this site -- it offers equipment that weekend geeks would love to install in their homes. If your building a new home or renovating, going with cat6 cables is the best way to go. Ready-to-connect network cable management systems are also less painful to just hook up than rolling your own cabling system. They've got tools, pre-terminated assemblies, cord and cables... I mean browsing through this site is like geek window shopping online. There are not that many sites that offer this many products in one single site. If your into networking or it's your job to be into networking, you shouldn't miss going to ICC.com.

Use OpenDNS to Protect Yourself

In a recent poll Paypal, the IRS and Facebook have been ranked the most phished sites. Clearly, scammers are out to get us and our valuable personal data and financial information. One way to protect your self is to use a service that screens out phishing sites. OpenDNS is one option and the good news is it is free!

OpenDNS features phishing site filtering, warning you if a site you're going to is a scammer's site trying to get your information. Add to that, OpenDNS can also help speed up your browsing speed or filter out adult sites with parental controls.

Its easy to set-up. Here's how to do it in Windows 7:

1. On your taskbar, right-click network icon (the one that looks like a computer monitor) and click Open Network and Sharing Center:

2. In Network and Sharing Center, click on Change Adapter Settings on the left pane:

3. In the Network Connections window, right-click on the Local Area Connection and click Properties:

4. In the Local Area Network Properties window, choose Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click Properties:

5. In the IPv4 window, check the option Use The Following DNS Server Address and type in 208.67.222.222 as your Preferred DNS Server and 208.67.220.220 as your Alternate DNS Server, then click the OK button to save the changes:

After doing the steps above, you're all set. Your computer will ask OpenDNS where it should go every time you type in a website address on your browser. Be careful out there!

Lemon #3 - Edimax Strikes Out

Last Saturday I returned the 2^nd Edimax BR-6226N, hoping to get it replaced with another brand. It was just my luck that there was a power outage when I did go to the shop where I bought it. I just left it with a technician who promised to test it and he promised to call about the results. After running a few errands, I received a text message and went there. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to mention to the technician that I wanted a different brand-model. So when I got there a replacement Edimax BR-6226N was already waiting for me. Not wanting to mess with them (the papers for the replacement had already been filled out), I decided to give it one more try.

I got home, set it up, and started using it. Since the Edimax setup guide only allowed me the option to nominate a WPA key, I initially set it up with that. It was working for a few hours and I decided to again turn on full DDOS protection in the firewall, a long admin password and WPA2 security with a 63-character password from www.grc.com/password. The same thing happened. It died again. Well, not really died. All the right status lights were on. But I couldn’t login to the admin page. Pinging the default gateway resulted in 100% loss. I attempted to reset the thing at least ten times, each time the symptom didn’t change. I then tried the Edimax BR-6204WLg I borrowed from a friend and used the same power adapter and cable that came with the BR-6226N. I also reset that and used the same settings for password and WPA2 key. It was an older model, and I couldn’t find the DDOS protection module in the settings so I didn’t get to try it on the BR-6204WLg. Well, it worked. Tried pounding on it some more with very large files I tried downloading. It worked flawlessly. I also ran a test with ShieldsUP!. It showed all the ports were stealthed. I officially declared the 3^rd replacement dead.

So off I went yesterday to have BR-6226N replaced. I was glad that it was the service technician who suggested I get some other brand-model. He helped me get to the sales counter, briefly told the person at sales what had happened and then left to go back to his post. The girl at the counter seemed unsure what to do. She asked a technician nearby who was on break about it and he asked me about why I was asking for a replacement. I summarized the troubleshooting I had done and he told the girl to run it by the manager. She then asked another sales person what she should tell the boss. Clearly she was either new or nervous about approaching the manager-on-duty. To be clear, the manager there that day wasn’t the usual guy. I usually go there on weekdays and I usually see a different person sitting at the manager’s desk.

Apprehensive as she was, she approached him, but not before asking me to go with her. I went with her, wanting to get it over with to get on with my life. She briefly told the man that I wanted a replacement (a different brand-model) and politely said to me, “Sir?” Picking off on that, I started to explain in all technical glory the suffering I had endured and punctuated my statement with a note that this was the 3^rd replacement. Manager turned to sales person and asked her, “Anu ba sabi nung technician?” She replied that he had suggested the same, that I get a credit for the broken item and get a different brand-model. To which the manager replied, “O, e bakit tinanong mo pa sa akin. Yun na pala sabi nung technician.” She mumbled her agreement and went back to her counter.

Long story short, I had my replacement in 10 minutes. I dropped an additonal 400 pesos for the Linksys WRT54GH. I went home and tested it, set-up a strong password, WPA2 encryption with the same 63-character password from www.grc.com/password, and had it humming in 5 minutes. I’ll write up my mini-review of the replacement in another post.

HowTo Manually Subscribe to Podcasts on iTunes

One of my pet peeves is country restrictions on subscribing to podcasts in iTunes. I live in the Philippines and even though the publishers of the audio and video podcasts allow people from outside the US to download their stuff, iTunes will not allow you to subscribe through the iTunes App Store. I get a message that says the content isn't available in the Philippine store or something like that. 

While there are other podcast aggregators out there, I find iTunes offers the best syncing of both audio and video podcasts on iPod devices. I tried other aggregators but I've found their best suited for other devices. I would mind using something like  DoubleTwist to manage music on the RCA Lyra my wife has or say the Creative Zen Vision that my friend owns. But for iPods in general, from the older gen ones like my 5th Gen iPod Video to the newer iPod Touch models, I personally prefer to manage my subscriptions through iTunes.

Good news is there is a way to get around this. Use the RSS link to subscribe to the podcast directly from the publisher's feed. Here's how to do that from iTunes.


1. Go to the website and look for the RSS subscribe link (the sample below is the page for This Week in Tech) :

2. Copy the URL of the RSS subcribe page:

3. Click on the Advanced link on iTunes and then click on Subscribe to Podcast:

4. Paste the RSS page's URL in the box and click on OK when finished: 

5. After that, you should see the podcast feed in your subscriptions:

2nd Lemon - Router Trouble

Last week I bought an Edimax BR6226N router for my home setup and it work only for a day. Because of a busy week, I brought it in for a warranty replacement this morning. I brought home the router, set it up not more than a few hours ago and now it's dead... again. This is utterly frustrating. Not only have I been recommending this router to friends and officemates, telling them it's the best bang-for-the-buck router they could get. Now I am having problems with the exact same model I had been exalting not a few weeks ago.

I followed my usual troubleshooting, except for using a different working router (which I don't have, the reason why I bought one). The only common thing I could think of on both routers was that they died after I had ticked the options for the firewall and DDOS protection. Come to think of it, I also set them up with WPA2 using a PSK key from GRC.com's Ultra High Security Password Generator. The first one conked out the next day. This second one just minutes after I had applied the settings. Now that's bothersome and frustrating, expecting the second to work after getting a lemon. After that, I could not get to the admin page, or ping the default gateway. I did multiple resets. I changed cables and tested both cables linked directly to the modem and they worked. I modified the settings on the LAN, hard-setting them to 10 and 100 Mbps on both full-duplex and half-duplex, testing each time with just the DSL modem and then the router. On all occasions, my internet connection worked without the router.


I will have to take this back to the shop I bought it from tomorrow. A week's delay in getting my home network setup is enough. Did I mention this whole situation is frustrating? I'm giving up on this brand and I'll ask for a Linksys even if I have to pay extra. A whole lot extra.

Win 7 RC Expires March 1

I was just barely able to beat the deadline. I had reinstalled Windows 7 last night. If you had Windows 7 Beta or RC just like me your install will expire today and you'll have reduced functionality. Well technically it isn't 'expired' since you'll be able to use it until June, but it will shut down every two hours and it won't save any applications or data when it does. It's going to be a supreme bother that it won't be worth staying with it anyway.

It's best that you reinstall with the retail or OEM version. You can also try this great guide for upgrading to the final retail version on HowToGeek. You may notice the article says RTM instead of final version. Don't worry about that, RTM just means Released to Manufacturing, which in the PC industry means it's the final version that is released to big PC manufacturers just in time for the launch. It is almost similar to the retail version except for the customizations that manufacturers like Lenovo, Dell or HP include into their versions of the installer.

Back to the article on HowToGeek, it details how you can 'upgrade' your existing RC installation into the final version and at the same time preserving your settings and installed software. Note that since all RC and Beta versions were Ultimate, your retail or OEM version should be Windows 7 Ultimate for this to work. Bear in mind though that as with all work-arounds there are some instances it will not work. But that shouldn't discourage you from trying. You're going to do a full OSRI anyway, so why not try it and you may have shot at preserving all the stuff you already have in there.

As for me, I always do a full OSRI. I have my important data always saved or backed up in a separate partition. That way, any time I need to I can just reinstall Windows.