Netgear XE104

Well, now that the Cisco has been working well for 2 weeks – no lost Vonage calls and the wireless router seems to be able to keep up, it’s time to optimize the network infrastructure for HD transmission between the Media Center and Xbox 360.

 Wireless is working great for songs from MCE to Xbox 360, but HD content isn’t getting the required 22MBps from my 802.11a router(Linksys WRT55AG).  I investigated several items – wiring the house is not an option with the current setup – it would be a total nightmare and not worth the expense if I can figure a way out around it. 

 Enter the new Netgear XE104, based on HomePlug Turbo (85MBps spec, probably 25MBps sustained throughput from what I’ve read). http://www.netgear.com/products/details/XE104.php

I have two on the way and they will hopefully help me avoid re-wiring the house.  HomePlug will become relevant, IMHO, to a lot more people when HomePlug AV products come out – 200MBps spec, no wireless style issues of dropouts or deadspots. 

Since I only have one MC Extender, that’s what I’ll test first and post how my experience goes.

Mayo Clinic day

I just got done with Mayo’s Executive Health program visit. Living about an hour and half away from Rochester, MN means I get close access to some of the best doctors in the world. Their Executive health program is amazing – in two days, you can get done what usually take 3-4 weeks of time and multiple appointments – blood screening, tread mill stress tests, you name it.

A little high on the cholesterol and little out of shape – two things I expected after a Microsoft stint that never seemed to leave any free time – and otherwise a clean bill of health. I can’t say enough good things about the staff and doctors at Mayo – they are truly world-class.

Cisco 871

Well, Since the 831 was installed, I did a little extra research on QoS additions – the one gripe I have is the way Cisco licenses their IOS features – the initial unit should be loaded with everything, and I should be able to go to their site and purchase the key for the feature directly from the Cisco website.

Cisco’s reseller model leaves a little to be desired for the small purchaser. In researching their routers it looked initially like the 831 was the small office router for broadband cable users and the 871 was the ‘integrated services’ router that includes everything the 831 has but adds wireless. Well, the reality is that the 871 is the replacement for the 831 series and the base 871 is a wired router only, with 10/100 WAN link and LAN links. The 831 has 10/100 LAN links, but only 10Bt WAN link. This is actually OK for my current situation with a cable modem, but eventually I’ll want that 10/100 port. However, since all the online resellers do not allow for returns, I’m stuck with an older 831 router when the 871 costs about the same amount.

After calling Cisco and my vendor, PC Connection, I essentially hit a dead end where PC Connection actually said that maybe eBay would be a good option. This after only having the router for 5 days.

So – Cisco, if you are listening, help the small guys out – make your router product information sites more clear, to be blunt – your current site is HORRIBLE, confusing and your model numbering scheme is impossible to understand. Second, either use resellers at the small level with return policies or don’t allow anyone to buy a router unless they buy SMARTNet first.

All that said, I will say that the 831 is still chugging along nicely – these are great routers. If you need a professional level router for a small environment, the Cisco 870 series could easily fit the bill.

Cisco 831 addition

It’s been awhile since the last post – I certainly intended to get more postings done, but between a new job and daily happenings, the best laid plans go awry.

Murphy also likes to strike when you least expect him to and last week was no different. During my first week on the job, I had the pleasure/stress of flying to San Diego and driving to Yuma, AZ to kick off some internal projects and meetings with customers. This would have been fine, except that Thursday morning was the time that my WRT55AG Linksys A+G router decided to lock up with no way to recover except for a hard reset. Usually, it takes about 10 minutes and I have the thing up and running again – it’s happenend about 2 other times – but this time, my wife was the only one home. With Vonage being our phone solution this wasn’t an ideal situation.

Since I had some time at night and the frustration of the Linksys dying gave me reason to think about the home network, I realized that it might not be all Linksys’ fault. Why?? Because I realized that our home network probably has more going on than some busy small offices – A Vonage T/A with two lines active, an Xbox 360 on 802.11a often running it’s built-in Media Center Extender, two laptops on 802.11g, a server running email and OWA, an Xbox running Media Center Extender and the Media Center, broadcasting HDTV and music to both Xboxes along with a Power Book sharing iTunes and being used to browse the web. So, I finally realized that it’s not surprising that most of the retail consumer routers I’ve had lately haven’t been able to handle all the activity. So, I had a Cisco 831 shipped for Saturday delivery.

All I can say is that so far it’s been the best $450 spent on a technology purchase I’ve had in a long time. Configuration was far from simple, even with the excellent SDM loaded on the router and with the built-in firewall and SOHO setup instructions. However, once I figured it all out, the thing is rock solid – passing every firewall test I can throw at it and having no unexpected results – you set a NAT translation rule and it gets applied instantly, no rebooting the router and hoping it doesn’t lock up or lose some other configuration setting. It’s also got the standard NVRam built-in to save the boot-up configuration, and IOS access if you like the CLI sort of thing. The only thing it didn’t have out of the box was the QoS capability in it’s included version of IOS. However, this will be rectified when I get the SMARTNet support agreement setup.