March 29th, 2009
Signing off from the SOHO Networking blog
This is my final post for the SOHO Networking blog. It’s been fun handling the blog over the last several months, and I plan to continue covering networked media solutions over at the ZDNet Home Theater blog, since the lines between many home networking and home theater devices continue to blur. Please join me over there, and check out our SOHO Reviews section for continuing coverage of routers, NAS devices, and other Wi-Fi products.
March 25th, 2009
Seagate matches Western Digital with 8TB BlackArmor NAS devices
The NAS wars continue to heat up, with Seagate launching the latest salvo with an expansion of its BlackArmor line to cover small businesses (as well as those hardcore storage enthusiasts who don’t mind dropping a grand for their own NAS unit). The model numbers are a bit deceiving as the 420 and 440 don’t correspond to the number of drive bays—each has four—but the amount of bays that come filled from Seagate. The 420 comes with a pair of 1TB drives for $799.99, while the 440 has three configurations: four 1TB drives ($1,199.99), four 1.5TB drives ($1,699.99), or four 2TB drives (price TBA). That 8TB 440 matches the maximum storage that rival Western Digital will be offering with its updated ShareSpace line. The 6GB BlackArmor only costs $100 less than the 8TB ShareSpace, so expect the 8TB 440 to lose the pricing back to WD.
In terms of features, the new BlackArmor devices roll out the usual litany offered by high-end NAS units: two Gigabit Ethernet ports, four USB ports, hot-swappable drives, iTunes and DNLA server capabilities, RAID Level 0, 1, 10, and 5 support, and remote access. It comes with a small on-board LED for status info on its otherwise monolithic black exterior, and lets you encrypt everything on the drives from individual files to entire volumes.
Whether the dueling hard drive giants can beat the likes of Buffalo, Netgear, and other networking companies at their own game remains to be seen, but at least WD and Seagate are now on the field competing.
March 23rd, 2009
Bigfoot Network's Killer Xeno network interface cards are designed for online gamers
Bigfoot Networks targeted a niche, but growing, market segment when it released its network interface card (NIC) for gamers, appropriately called Killer, a couple of years back. Since then, gamers’ demands for features like lag-free chatting have only increased, though so, too, has networking technology. So Bigfoot today announced at the Game Developers Conference the next generation of, erm, Killer: the Killer Xeno series.
Xeno comes in two flavors: Pro and Ultra, with the biggest difference between the two being that Ultra has twice the onboard memory (256MB) than the Pro. Both featured a new networking processor as well as integrated audio to help improve the in-game chatting experience. They also sport a new form factor, now requiring an open PCI Express slot whereas the first-generation Killer cards needed only a PCI slot. Along with improved bandwidth control, the additional memory and new interface (and its superior throughput) promise reduced latency that can impact both game play and real-time trash talking.
The Xeno Pro is slated to cost $129.99 and be available from gaming PC company (well, subsidiary of Dell) Alienware and component maker EVGA in April. The Xeno Ultra, which also features an on-card LED display for call, game, and network info, will be on sale the following month from online tech retailers. For you hardcore fraggers, is this add-on worth the price? Let us know in the TalkBack section.
March 18th, 2009
Iomega's free updates to StorCenter ix2 NAS include BitTorrent support, remote access
With competition getting fierce in the market for network storage, manufacturers need to step up in order to keep up. Last month, Iomega jumped into the four-drive-bay NAS game with its StorCenter ix4 device. Now it’s spiffing up its two-drive offering released last fall: The company has announced updated features for the StorCenter ix2 that are available in newly shipping units and as well as in a free download for previous owners.
The biggest news is that the ix2 now supports BitTorrent for all those nice-and-legal downloads you want to grab from your peer-to-peers, and catches up to competitors by offering remote access to its files from any computer, though there is a catch. While the first year of remote access is free, Iomega is charging $9.95 per year after that. The company provides a performance improvement in the form of “jumbo frame” support, which provides more bandwidth for larger file transfers. It has also instituted a folder quota system to let you set limits on the size of folders on the device so you can prevent them from getting too large and crowding out other files and folders.
The ix2 still lacks iTunes server support, but is otherwise pretty full featured for a $299.95 1TB version (or $479.95 for 2GB), including two USB ports. Gigabit Ethernet connection, RAID Level 1 compatibility and support for UPnP and DNLA devices in addition to its new features. The design is a bit underwhelming, however, and it lacks the hot-swappable drives of its more expensive four-bay sibling.
March 16th, 2009
iPhone OS 3.0: What new Wi-Fi improvements and features do you want?
For iPhone users, the good news about tomorrow’s event debuting the latest version of its OS appears to be that cut and paste will finally be implemented, thanks perhaps to the upcoming competition from the Palm Pre. The bad news is that running background apps beyond Apple’s own may still not available, even though it was promised to arrive several months ago.
What else should make the cut as new features of the iPhone (and iPod Touch)? Since this is a networking blog, let’s focus on the devices’ Wi-Fi functionality. What could be done to improve this aspect? Apple may not want you to do so, but checking out what’s hot in the world of jailbroken iPhone apps is always instructive, as its limitations are overcome—even running official iPhone Store apps in the background. While AT&T has mentioned that the iPhone will eventually be allowed to share its Wi-Fi connections with your laptop, no timeline has been announced. In the meantime, jailbreak app PDAnet already offers the capability without any potential added costs AT&T may tack on. It’d sure be nice if Apple is set to include this feature without letting its sole U.S. cellular partner add fees to our data plans.
Another annoyance that hopefully will be shed in version 3.0 is needing to drill down into the Settings menu every time you want to turn the Wi-Fi mode on or off. Again, a jailbreak app has already remedied that irritant: SBsettings gives you one screen on which you can make adjustments to popular settings, including toggling Wi-Fi on and off.
Are there other refinements Apple should offer when it comes to Wi-Fi capabilities in iPhone OS 3.0? Let us know in the TalkBack section, and we’ll see if any of them show up during Apple’s event tomorrow.
March 11th, 2009
Is free Wi-Fi the next big thing for broadband providers? Cablevision's success says so.
A few months ago, I reported on Cablevision rolling out free Wi-Fi for its subscribers in Long Island as a way to stem the flow of customers toward cellular broadband providers. It sounded like a smart idea at the time, but a new report suggests that it was a really smart move for Cablevision.
According to telecommunications market research firm Dell’Oro Group, Cablevision gained a whopping 70 percent more subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2008 than it did in the previous quarter, while the overall market declined 10 percent. Dell’Oro attributes the subscriber growth in large part to the free Wi-Fi. It’s little surprise, then, that Comcast has since started its own free Wi-Fi trial for subscribers in northern New Jersey.
Is free Wi-Fi in your local area (including on your commute) a feature that would influence your decision on broadband providing, or keep you from switching providers? Let us know the our TalkBack section.
March 8th, 2009
Netgear introduces "cloud backup" service for its ReadyNAS network drives
Cloud computing is one of the buzzwords for 2009, so I guess it’s no surprise that Netgear is jumping on the bandwagon with its announcement that its ReadyNAS Vault service is bringing “cloud backup” to its network storage devices.
On its surface, ReadyNAS Vault doesn’t sound so different from the online backup features that some NAS manufacturers make available to their customers. You pay a monthly fee ($5.95 for basic, $19.95 for business) to back up files to Netgear’s own data center, which can be accessed remotely from any Web browser. Iomega offers a similar service with Mozy for $4.95 per month for consumers with its StorCenter Pro ix4-100 NAS drive, or priced per gigabyte of storage for business users. The Vault does seem to be tightly integrated with the ReadyNAS administrative interface, though, and you can monitor and adjust backup jobs from any browser. You can also manage multiple drives from a single login. Like Mozy’s business service, ReadyNAS Vault can detect any changes to files on a network and then automatically back them up online.
No doubt other NAS makers will start integrating online backup better in their offerings as a result of ReadyNAS Vault. And the advantage of offsite backup that doesn’t require saving to your own external drive and then keeping that drive in a safe alternative location will appeal especially to small businesses. Whether this constitutes a revolution in “cloud backup” is open to debate, but ReadyNAS owners can give the Vault service a spin for free for 30 days to test out its advantages.
March 4th, 2009
Western Digital's updated ShareSpace NAS device can handle 8TB of storage
It was only a couple of weeks ago that I posted about storage giant Western Digital updating its My Book World Edition network drive, but the company is upping the NAS ante with its refresh to its ShareSpace four-bay device, now offering up to a massive 8TB of storage.
As with the My Book World, that new capacity comes in the form of WD’s Caviar Green drive, which run quieter and consume less power than conventional hard drives. A firmware upgrade (also available for owners of previous ShareSpaces) promises 30-percent improvement in file reading and writing times, while the device is now a DLNA-certified media server in addition to its iTunes server capabilities. The ShareSpace still has an additional full slate of features, including three USB ports, including one front-mounted port that you can connect an external drive to and then hit a button to transfer all its file to the NAS device. It also supports RAID Level 0, 1, and 5 configurations, and comes with the same automatic backup software that the My Book World now ships with.
The bad news: Since 2TB drives have just hit the market, the 8TB ShareSpace costs a lot. $1,799.99, to be exact. Clearly, that configuration is positioned for small- and medium-sized enterprises. You’ll spend much less if you go for the 2TB ($699.99) or 4TB ($999.99) varieties, instead. All three are now available at Western Digital’s online store.
March 3rd, 2009
Apple delivers refreshed networking lineup today, too
Turns out you won’t need to wait to find out what Apple’s plans are for those new AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule units it recently delivered to the FCC. In addition to freshening up its desktop lineup, the company has put the new simultaneous dual-band networking products on sale today. In addition to letting you run 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks at the same time, the devices have a new guest networking feature—give friends and family access to your Internet connection but prevent them from access files on your computers and/or network storage.
The new AirPort Extreme is now available for $179, while the updated Time Capsule router/network drive is $299 for 500GB of storage and $499 for 1GB. Time Capsule also now works with Apple’s MobileMe service to give you remote access to your files saved on Time Capsule’s drive.
March 2nd, 2009
Apple readying new simultaneous dual-band AirPort Express, Time Capsule?
No sooner is there a rumor that Apple is planning an event (in this case, a March 24 one) than speculation begins on what the company is going to announce during its presentation (presumably a Jobs-less one this time). Already there’s talk of fresh versions of Mac desktops, and Engadget is reporting that new versions of Apple’s AirPort Extreme router and Time Capsule router/network storage have reached the FCC.
Since both devices already work on either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz channels, Engadget speculates that the new units may work on those frequencies simultaneously. In fact, correspondence on the FCC Web site here and here seems to confirm this. There are no other noteworthy details that can be gleaned from the documentation, such as new capacities for the Time Capsule. As you probably already know, the 5GHz channel is lot less crowded with interference from other devices like cordless phones, which can impact 2.4GHz-based networking. This simultaneously dual-band support is still fairly uncommon among new networking products—no doubt related to cost considerations—but price has never been a big concern when it comes to Apple’s product launches anyway.
Sean Portnoy spent several years as an editor at Computer Shopper magazine, most recently serving as online executive editor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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Recent Entries
- Signing off from the SOHO Networking blog
- Seagate matches Western Digital with 8TB BlackArmor NAS devices
- Bigfoot Network’s Killer Xeno network interface cards are designed for online gamers
- Iomega’s free updates to StorCenter ix2 NAS include BitTorrent support, remote access
- iPhone OS 3.0: What new Wi-Fi improvements and features do you want?
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