By Peter Vogel
Electricity outages in our neighbourhood are fairly infrequent, on the order of one or two a year. Recently a middle-of-the-night outage caused some unexpected damage.
If the electricity does go out we generally pull the plugs of all the numerous computers running at home. Even though they are on power bars, some with surge suppressors, I’m of the opinion that you need to do everything possible to protect valuable data.
This time the outage was a little different than ones we typically encounter. Around 2 a.m. I was awoken by a cyclical beeping of our alarm system, an indication that some trouble other than the break-in variety had occurred. I knew the backup battery was low, if not dead, but since it had been that way for quite some time the explanation had to lie elsewhere.
Just as I was about to enter a code to silence the alarm’s beeping, the house was plunged into darkness. That was my clue that the beeping had likely started with a transient, or short-lived, outage a few minutes earlier.
One of my sons, also awakened by the alarm’s chirping, grabbed a flashlight and immediately pulled the computer power cables. Two outages within minutes can’t be good, and might be indicative of further instability.
Around seven hours later the electricity came back on, cleanly. I had no reason to expect trouble with any of the computer and network devices in the home. Everything seemed to power up just fine. Just one shortcoming: no Internet feed. The cable company’s modem was fully active, its indicator lights all normal.
Hidden from my view, though, was our router and wireless access point. A check showed no indicator lights. I moved its power adapter to another circuit as a secondary check. Still nothing. I didn’t have another router but I did have an alternative power adapter, which did successfully power up the adapter.
Everything was back to normal, or so it seemed. Computers connected via cable to the router were fine, but there was no wireless signal to our laptops and other wireless devices.
It appears that the initial transient power outage had somehow taken out the adapter and damaged a portion of our trusty D-Link 624 router, itself a successor to another D-Link that ran for years before an upgrade from the 802-11b to the “g” protocol. Both routers have distinguished themselves by never requiring a reboot or any intervention.
In this case the failure of the 624 was very unusual. The fact that it continued to operate with an apparent degree of normalcy made for a difficult troubleshooting session.
Once it was clear that a new router was needed it was time for a little research. In my case that means reading product reviews, primarily at Cnet, www.news.com, coupled with user reports at Amazon.com.
Based on our experience with the D-Link brand I was certainly open to continuing that way. However I still have memories of a very poor customer-service experience with the company many years ago. I balance that against a similarly frustrating session concerning Linksys, the other major wireless router manufacturer in this market. I’ve used gear from both companies at my school.
At this point the “n” protocol has become a certified standard for wireless connection. However only one of our computers has an “n” adapter. I decided that in addition to replacing the router with one up to current standards I would also purchase at least one “n” adapter to test on one of the laptops.
After a couple of hours of reading I settled on two units, the D-Link DIR-825 and the Linksys WRT610. Both offer simultaneous dual-band 802.11n coverage, meaning that data can flow in both the 2.4 and at 5.0 GHz radio bands. In fact, the two bands can be used simultaneously for separate actions. For instance, one might be used to download a large media file while the other remains active for, say, a more mundane task such as e-mail or web browsing.
These two units are higher-end routers offering management capabilities that appeal to me but aren’t necessarily of interest to those needing a basic router. I decided to stay with D-Link for the replacement router while choosing a Linksys USB “n” adapter for the laptops.
At this stage the units have been in service for just a week. Performance has been solid, and on the laptops, when both units are using the “n” protocol to communicate, the improvement in data speed borders on the amazing. Data transfer rates have improved by a factor of 10. Signal coverage throughout the house is substantially better, reaching areas that previously had spotty or no signal strength.
Service of the week
Parents with youngsters using Google may wish to check out the newly added “lock” on the company’s SafeSearch feature. Enabled through Google’s Settings option, Lock SafeSearch applies strict filtering to all web searches.
Google results pages display a prominent set of coloured balls, visible from across a room, while the feature is enabled. A Google account (Gmail for instance) is needed to use the feature. If you have more than one browser, or more than one user profile on the computer, each may have to be locked individually.
Site of the Week
For teachers, students, anyone! BigHugeLabs.com has an eclectic collection of applications to turn loose on your photos. As the site proclaims: “Helping you do cool stuff with your digital photos since 2005.”
Suggestions and comments about this column may be sent to peterv@portal.ca. For additional information: http://twitter.com/petervogel.
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