Saturday, November 24, 2012

Monitor the noise margin on your ADSL router

RouterStatsLite

This is a really useful tool to find noise related electrical interference that will reduce your ADSL speed.

REIN kills ADSL - get your own back!

Is you broadband running slow, dropping out, and generally not delivering the service expected?

It could be that the line is suffering from Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise (REIN).

This can originate from almost anything, a low energy light bulb, TV, computer, boiler clock, a Sky box, freeview box, and endless other things.

Often it will be as a result of a poor switch mode PSU that is failing. They produce electrical noise right in the ADSL frequency band!

The noise can be devastating. The exchange equipment will reduce the line sync to compensate for the line dropping, and before you know it you have really slow and unusable broadband.

So what can you do - search for sources of REIN. It could be in your house, or that of a neighbour.

Check out the link above, and also this useful monitoring software.

You may be able to work out a pattern. Try turning off the various mains circuits in your home. Take a radio on 612kHz and check for noise.

Once you find the source of the noise, get your ISP to retrain your line to restore your speed.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Automated Stitching - Avoiding Panoramic Pandora

AutoStitch

Autostitch™ is the world's first fully automatic 2D image stitcher. Capable of stitching full view panoramas without any user input whatsoever. Autostitch is a breakthrough technology for panoramic photography, VR and visualisation applications. This is the first solution to stitch any panorama completely automatically, whether 1D (horizontal) or 2D (horizontal and vertical).

This is incredibly simple to use! Just select a set of photos and Autostitch does the rest! Digital photos in, panoramas out. You have to try this - it is amazing!

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Skype Uncovered - the Naked Truth

Skype Uncovered

This is about as techy as it gets. Worried about what Skype is doing on your machine and how it works? Find out here. The authors of the presentation seem to have significant anxieties about Skype's vulnerability to attack (as potentially "the biggest botnet ever" on page 95).

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

ADSL Max - Are you ready for it?

Sam Knows

With BT upgrading their exchanges to deliver (upto) 8 Meg ADSL, in most cases, by the end of March are you prepared to take advantage of the increase? The Samknows website has great information on all the exchanges, check it out.

To get the increase in speed you may need to contact your ISP to be regraded. One thing to consider is your router. UBS modems probably won't deliver at this speed, and Ethernet routers with only a 10 meg connection will probably max out at 5 or 6 meg. To be future proof, look for one that supports ADSL 2+ at upto 24 meg.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

LookOut! Losing it? Look no further!

LookOut

Fed up with not being able to find an email, but you know it's there! This is the answer to all your problems. For those that like the instant search in Lotus Notes™ and hate Microsoft Outlook™ for its lack of a decent search... this is for you!

Lookout is a lightning-fast search for your email, files, and desktop which is integrated with Outlook.

Built on top of a powerful search engine, Lookout is the only personal search engine that can search all of your email directly from within Outlook - in seconds...

It will index your Email messages, contacts, calendar, notes, tasks, etc. and even files on your PC if you so wish. Enjoy!

*update: if using with Outlook2007 (and maybe later) find the patch for the DLL. Microsoft tried to kill this great tool!