Blueberry Networks Blog

How were computers different 10years ago, Erik?

2011-11-19T13:14:00.000-05:00

http://obamapacman.com/2010/09/apple-imac-iphone-evolution-2000-vs-2010/

Weather Radar...

2011-01-24T10:24:00.005-05:00

http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html?id=XTI

http://xkcd.com/831/

BlueberryNetworks Capacity and Equipment News

2011-01-21T17:02:00.003-05:00

Belated Happy New Year to all BlueberryNetworks customers (and others who read this blog?) It has been an eventful two months since the end of November till the end of January.

Very late in November, BlueberryNetworks.ca added increased capacity at a new connection point to the internet. Ontera is still the primary carrier, but the connection goes directly down to Toronto, and "internet" is purchased there instead of from Ontera. Since this connection is at different location in Iroquois Falls, new hardware was obtained to connect to the tower sites in Val Gagne and Nellie Lake.

The increased capacity has been great - there have been many evenings when the average bandwidth used is over 30 Mb/s, and peaks of over 40 Mb/s. The new equipment (which has higher speed and greater capacity) has also been great.

Unfortunately, the reliability and robustness of the new system hasn't improved. How come?

There were four major outages of the service from Dec. 31, 2010 to Jan. 16, 2011. All of these were outages of the service that Ontera provides between Iroquois Falls and Toronto. BlueberryNetworks.ca has no control over these outages.

The next step in preventing them is for BlueberryNetworks.ca to have some diversity in who the providers are for the portion of the internet between Iroquois Falls and Toronto. That will be hard because of the limited number of carriers (ie two) that come into Iroquois Falls.

There still have been some BBN equipment failures, especially with the cold weather at the end of January, but these have affected only a portion of BlueberryNetworks.ca customers, not the whole network like the upstream carrier outages do.

What's it like for Wireless Internet Service Providers?

2010-09-20T16:53:00.002-04:00

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/globe-on-technology/high-and-dry-in-the-internet-sticks/article1712585/

Here's an excellent article that describes the state of small internet service providers in Canada. While I don't have to ski into any sites, I have marched up the water tower hill in Iroquois Falls more times than I want to remember, and have put equipment into a sled to pull over the snow to get to a different tower site.

Anti-Virus Software - What's New?

2010-08-08T14:34:00.002-04:00

I used to be a strong recommender of AVG. In their last version they changed the way that DNS (Domain Name System) stuff works (or doesn't work).

What's DNS? What change did they make? What should we use instead?

DNS is the way that your computer changes names to numbers. When you type in google.com, your computer really wants to know that google is at 173.194.32.104. You can type in the number directly, and it might even come up faster, since your computer doesn't have to look up the number, it just goes there directly. It's easier for you to remember google.com instead of 173.194.32.104, isn't it? That's what DNS does. If google changes their addresses, you still only have to remember google.com, since DNS would know if the numbers changed.

AVG changed the way that DNS failures work in it's default settings. When it can't find ggoogle.com (because you typed google.com wrong) AVG now sends you to their server, which says that ggoogle.com can't be found, instead of letting your computer give you the message that it can't be found.

I don't want AVG getting in the way of my error messages. If it doesn't work, I don't want AVG to tell me I'm wrong, I want my computer to tell me I'm wrong. With BlueberryNetworks, I count on specific error messages to tell me what's wrong with the internet connection. AVG has added another level of difficulty to the troubleshooting challenge.

So what am I recommending now? Microsoft Security Essentials. Here's an article about why it's good. In summary, free, easy, works well with all versions (later than win 2000/me ) of Windows.

Pasword Choosing Lessons

2010-03-31T17:21:00.002-04:00

Great Googly Moogly - Two posts in one day!!!!

Here's a great read about how to choose a password. I especially like the part about how your e-mail password (which some people feel is un-important) is really the most important. If I can send your bank an e-mail saying that you forgot your PIN, then the bank sends you an e-mail with your new PIN in the e-mail, and I can log into your e-mail to check that message .....

HDMI cables - the real deal

2010-03-31T09:18:00.001-04:00

http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/the-rip1/

Here's why you should spend your money on something other than expensive HDMI cables.

Tech Support - Really.

2010-01-06T21:58:00.002-05:00

A common web-site that computer types like to go to is xkcd.com. The site has cartoons about technical and computer topics. Here's one of my favourites.

http://xkcd.com/627/

What router should I buy? What is wireless N?

2009-09-03T18:08:00.005-04:00

What Router should I buy?

I follow a web-site called small-net builder.com that answered this very question right here.

Remember, you only get internet as fast as BlueberryNetworks.ca can send it to you, which is much, much, much slower than any of these routers.

Why do i want a faster router if I can't surf the net any faster? Because moving info (like movies) from one computer to another within our homes is getting (or will get more common).

Want to listen to music from your itunes on a different computer in a different room? You could just log in to your itunes library from the second computer. The same thing will happen with movies, or games. Soon DVRs will be able to play back from the DVR to any computer, or your TV, through your network.

The important part to remember is that if you're buying laptops, make sure that they have wireless N built in if your router has wireless N - otherwise they won't run at the new faster speed.

Remember, speed is different than range, which is how far you can go from the router before your signal gets so low that the speed drops off. The range depends on a lot of stuff, including the antennas and how strong the wireless card is in your laptop - which you usually don't change. So positioning the router closest to where you want the wireless access is important.

Also, as a wireless internet provider, I want to ensure that the wireless signal that delivers the internet is as strong and doesn't compete with your wireless router - otherwise both systems will be slow.

Having router problems? Contact Erik for more info/help

How do you get Blueberry Status updates when the internet is down?

2009-07-08T08:25:00.003-04:00

When things inevitably happen to BlueberryNetworks, and your internet isn't working, how can you get updates on what's wrong or what's going on with the network?

Twitter is a "micro-blogging" tool - that allows short updates to be sent to your phone about topics of your choosing. Subscribing to a twitter feed is a good way to get updates or breaking news stuff that interest you.

For example, I subscribe to the Buffalo Bills (do I have to tell you they are a Football Team?) twitter. When ever the team announces something (like the signing of a new player) they send out a tweet. I get that tweet on my phone (using a text message, which you may have to watch depending on your phone package) After receiving the tweet, I go about my day, happy in the fact that the Bills are on the cusp of becoming the next NFL dynasty, and planning my trips to watch them in the next Super Bowls.

In the case of BlueberryNetworks, I TRY to tweet when something is happening that affects groups of customers. Your internet might be down, but if I haven't tweeted within a couple of hours, it's probably just a problem at your place, not an issue that affects a group of people. If that's the case, you can call me at 258-2583 to get in touch with me.

How do I subscribe to BlueberryNet twitter?

go to:

http://www.twitter.com/blueberrynet

If you go to that page, you'll see some blueberrynetworks.ca status tweets at the bottom of the page, and at the top of the page, some tweets that I exchanged with a Rogers representative about the new Iphone.

I'm only going to allow BlueberryNetworks.ca subscribers to follow this feed.

Twitter starts to get very interesting when you use search, to see what "everybody" is tweeting about. When the new iphone came out, I searched for tweets containing "iphone, canada, rogers" and it gave a list of all the tweets that contained those terms. I could then see what people were talking about, reacting to, or going to do about that topic. That's where I found the Rogers guy's twitter, and then I "followed" him to see what else he was saying about iphone stuff.

Twitter makes updating your status on the internet a level of magnitude easier. You don't have to write a web page, learn html, set up hosting, blah blah blah. Much like facebook and myspace, it allows everyone to tell what they're up to on the internet. Twitter adds the element of pushing the updates to phones as SMS messages. It's up to you as a subscriber to decide who you want to follow/listen to.

First Post!!

2009-07-06T07:39:00.000-04:00

Here's a way to get news about developments at BlueberryNetworks. This will provide information that will help you use the BlueberryNetworks.ca service more effectively, efficiently and funnly. (The blog should not be used to learn how to use the english language rightly)

BlueberryNetworks.ca uses gmail as the e-mail provider for our e-mail accounts. If you ever want to check the status of BlueberryNetworks.ca/gmail mail servers, use this link:

http://www.google.com/appstatus