Following on from my earlier post last month on “Router reliability musings“, I recently did some additional “testing”, and figured now was a good time to post a follow-up.
You see, I was a bit concerned about routers, specifically for anything more than a basic one or two PC household. Where are you left when you’re slightly more than that?
What about people who have had “good results” with the Thomson TG585? Those who’ve had a terrible time with the NetComm NB6Plus4Wn? Was I really losing my touch? Could I have really missed the mark so badly?
A couple of people have asked me after trying CyanogenMod or MIUI how they can restore back to the latest official builds from Google.
Thankfully it’s nice and easy!
No screenshots, but we’ll dive right in and get moving, it should only take 2-3 minutes once you’ve got all the files.
Before we begin, now is a good time to backup your SMS messages using SMS Backup & Restore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.riteshsahu.SMSBackupRestore
It’ll save it to a .xml file on your phone that you can easily restore afterwards. Copy this off your phone to your PC, as everything will be *wiped*. By wiped I mean *everything*, completely 100% gone from your phone.
Having been asked a number of times in the recent weeks about routers and modems for both ADSL2+ and VDSL2, I figured it was time to revisit the subject.
I wrote about it some 2 1/2 years ago now, and unfortunately not a lot has changed. ISPs are still giving out cheap routers by and large. People are still having silly little issues with their routers. Connections still drop more than they need to (And for some reason people just ‘put up with it’ and presume its how things ought to be, presumably because they don’t know better). Sadly, there’s just as much confusion as there ever has been.
Thankfully its not too difficult to get a solid connection, and while some people may balk at the idea of having to purchase their own router / modem devices, a lot of people will find that the juice is worth the squeeze.
After the success of the Galaxy S tutorials I wrote back when I had one, I figured now I’ve had my Galaxy Nexus for coming up to two months that I should do likewise.
I’ve been taking a bit of a hiatus from MIUI since I got the Galaxy Nexus in late January 2012, but knew that the MIUI team (I’m talking specifically at miuiandroid.com) had been working on it. I’ve not tried any of the other builds that are available out there, but figured I’d just dive right in and give MIUI a whirl.
Turns out it’s quick and painless, far less effort than the Galaxy S was, which is nice for a change. Now, I’m looking forward to the weekly updates that come from MIUI!
So, lets get started, we’ll begin with backing up your device first.
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So, I’m trialling some small advertising on the blog here. I get enough hits that I figured I’d see if I could capitalize on it a little, cover the cost of the hosting and the domain maybe.
Hopefully it’s not too annoying, we’ll see where I go with it in the long run.
I’ve also added a Donate button on the right-hand side if you like what I do, or if I’ve helped in any way, that’ll go towards my beer fund!
If you have any feedback on them, too intrusive, different sizing, whatever … I’m happy for the feedback in the comments.
Thanks!
So the Linksys SPA962 is a great phone, and coupled with the SPA932 Attendant Console makes it a “must have” for any receptionist when you’re running an Asterisk IP PBX.
However, getting it to run happily can be a bit of a mission if you’ve never done it before.
Thankfully, it’s not too difficult
I’m personally betting NFC will be pretty major in 2012, and just because down here in little old NZ we’re a bit behind the curve, I’m betting it’ll be big in 2013 for us too. I think there is HUGE potential to do a lot with NFC, and I can’t wait to see how it evolves with the inclusion in more and more phone models.
At the time of writing, NFC is only available in two phones I’m aware of: The Nexus S and the Galaxy Nexus.
However, had I not gone and bought myself a Galaxy Nexus recently, I would probably have continued blissfully unaware about what NFC is. In fact, I know people who’ve had the Nexus S for quite a while who’ve never really looked in to it (And why would you bother? What on earth does it do, after all?). But since I’m the technology evangelist that I am, now that I’ve got it, I’m asking others if they’ve heard of it.
To be frank I usually get blank stares from people, and that’s cool, 3-4 months I would have given blank stares back as well if somebody had asked me about it. It was really only when I saw some of the features that the new Andriod-4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) was coming with that I really understood.
So what is NFC? What can it do? Why would you want it?
NFC stands for “Near Field Communication”, and it basically means “Talking between things that are real close to each other”
There are many things you can do with it, including mobile payments! Think about doing away with your wallet, no more EFTPOS or credit cards, you now just need your cellphone and you’re good to shop!
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So I had a problem recently where the phone number that I was dialling wasn’t being passed on to the destination. In otherwords:
I call 0800 83 83 83 (Pretend here, I don’t really work for Pizza Hut).
My asterisk box picks up and says “Oh hai, you want Pizza Hut on 0800 83 83 83, I’ll pass you on to that user”.
Asterisk sends me off to the Pizza Hut server.
Then on the Pizza Hut box we receive something that looks like this:
-- Executing [s@from-trunk:1] Set("SIP/VoIP_Provider-0000014f", "__FROM_DID=s") in new stack
The “__FROM_DID=s” basically means it’s not getting the information it needs from the remote side, so then the Pizza Hut server will say:
“Hi this is the Pizza Hut asterisk server, who do you want?! You haven’t told me? Meh, I’ll hang up on you, try again later”
Not good 
Thankfully it’s not too hard to get it to forward on the correct details.
So, I got fed up with the crappy speeds from Slingshot, that and it’d been 8 weeks since I’d heard back from them, even though I knew the Ops Manager was gonna be on holiday (That’s still a long holiday), so now we’d figured out that my second Naked DSL connection was working, I switched away from Slingshot.
I figured, it was time for VDSL2!
Now, I’m signed up with Hosting Direct, I get excellent speeds 24/7, I’m syncing a ton faster, currently 19mbps down and 10mbps up (Was down to around 9.5mbps on ADSL2+ since Slingshot put in the new line) and I’m loving it! I don’t know why they advertise it as 30M down / 10M up, coz its not a guaranteed minimum, nor is it the limit? I know people with them getting over 50mbps download, so it seems kind if odd. They’ve told me they aren’t throttling it or artificially limiting it in any way, which is cool, you get what you pay for!
However, there’s a few “Gotchas” about VDSL2 when coming from ADSL2+ that you might want to be aware of.
