The TechBlogger

Internet connection not ready

I made a decision to switch my home office’s StarHub cable broadband to one of its MaxInfinity Fibre plan just over a month ago.  The decision was helped by the Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) willingness to let  me terminate my former contract without penalty – probably due to the fact that I have not taken any freebies ‘bait’ previously.

The scheduled installation finally took place on Tuesday morning, with the technician kindly giving me a call prior to coming over.  I suspect it was more to prevent a wasted trip caused by customers who forgot about the appointment dates than out of courtesy, but who am I to complain?

According to the StarHub technician, having my fibre optic termination point in my study a.k.a. Mission Control room  (as I did) is rather rare. Indeed, when the contractors from OpenNet (The company tasked with deploying Singapore’s Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network) came to wire up my apartment late last year,  I had to repeat my instructions to run the cable to my study quite a few times; they keep gesturing to my TV point in the living room.  Fortunately, my own contractors were present, and they actually did the work of running the fiber optics cable inside my house.

Install and wait

Anyway, the technician was able to complete  the fuss-free installation in about 20 minutes.  And the primary reason the process proved fuss free was entirely due to the fact that no testing was actually done. Apparently, it can take up to 3 days for the Internet to be activated upon installation. No idea if the situation is unique to StarHub, or pertains to all ISPs using Next Gen NBN.  This is of no consequence to me, since I still have my other broadband connections, but good to know in advance if you’re the impatient sort.

And yes, unlike ISPs like M1, StarHub makes it mandatory to use their Huawei HG256s Home Gateway (pictured above). Since I’ve no use for the Huawei’s wimpy Wi-Fi capabilities, I’ve promptly disabled it.  Power-users who want to make use of their own routers for NAT’ing and Port forwarding will need to configure your own router as a DMZ destination on the HG256s. On that front, I thought S’pore blogger Lester Chan did a good job outlining how he did bridged between his Huawei HG256s and D-Link DIR-855. (I did my IP addressing differently as my equipment is more versatile.)

Conclusion

So what’s my experience with the new fibre optic broadband connection? Actually, it feels pretty much the same to me.  Then again, I’m currently performing WAN load balancing across three different broadband links, so I’m sure that obfuscate my experience somewhat.  The enhanced upstream bandwidth will benefit me though – once I get the other components of my network in place.

Fibre broadband finally up the next morning after 24hours (I checked the modem's uptime log to verify)

A snapshot of my current test bed for testing networking devices

This photo of Bill Gates and three LCD monitors in the background was used in the CNNMoney article

I recently convinced a friend to get a new monitor for a dual-monitor setup, which led me to think again about the use of multiple monitors.  You see, I’m an advocate of using multiple monitors for productivity and health reasons – I believe they help you work faster and is better for your eyes in the long run.

The problem however, is that many people instinctively consider having even two monitors (never mind more than two) to be a luxury and unnecessary.  This immediately closes their mind as they file it under the “too expensive” without even considering the various benefits of working with multiple monitors.

Yet many would spend over a hundred thousand dollars to get a new car (It currently costs more than US$40k just to get a COE license to own a new car in Singapore) and would not hesitate to splurge thousands more on luxury items like designer handbags or watches that adds nothing to productivity.

Even billionaire Bill Gates admits to using three monitors in his office in a 2006 interview by Fortune.  You can read the article published on titled How I Work: Bill Gates.  In addition, the prices of LCD monitors have dipped substantially since 2006, and it may surprise you that the four LCD monitors on my home office desktop costs about the same as a 64GB iPad2 with a couple of accessories. Finally, a good LCD display can probably work for longer than five years, and is easily migrated to newer desktops or laptops.

So why don’t you give an additional monitor (or two) some consideration today?  And to show you how comparatively tame my own setup is, I’ve attached some pictures of various multi-monitor rigs below.

Received this image from Matrox PR about how its Extio fiber optics KVM is being used to put the servers/workstations far away (and eliminate noise)

Mitch Haile's home workstation. That's 1x 20" and 4x 30" LCD monitors or 11,440 x 1,600 connected via Mac Pro (Click on picture to go to Haile's site)

Stefan Didak’s home office desktop with erm, a lot of monitors (Click on picture to go to Didak’s site)

As part of my evaluation of the HP ProCurve 2915 8G PoE Switch, I connected a trio of Wi-Fi access points to check out its Power over Ethernet (PoE) capabilities.  For those not familiar with PoE, the technology enables the delivery of power over the same Ethernet cables used for data connectivity.

From left to right, you can see the:

• ZoneFlex 7962 dual-band 802.11n Smart Wi-Fi Access Point from Ruckus Wireless
• ECB-9500 Wireless N 300Mbps Access Point from EnGenius
• DAP-2555 AIRPREMIER N Dual Band Access Point from D-Link.

According to its web-based management console, the amount of power currently supplied by the ProCurve 2915 to the three access points (AP) is pegged at 12 watts out of a maximum of 134 watts (About 17 watts x 8).  As a managed switch, the ProCurve 2915 really shines in that it allows a network administrator to configure the POE power on a per-port level basis from 1W all the way to 33W. PoE output can also be disabled individually.

More than anything, I think the above setup shows the important role that PoE can play in the deployment of Wi-Fi APs in both small and mid-sized businesses and the enterprise today. Other devices that can benefit from an existing PoE infrastructure would be the use of IP phones and IP cameras.

I’ll post the link to my review of the HP ProCurve 2915 once it’s published on ITBusinessEdge.com.

The Peplink Balance 310 appliance arrived on Friday after an initial missed delivery from FedEx.  An internal refresh, the new appliance retains the ability to perform ISP load-balancing between three WAN sources that made the 2xx/3xx series such an ideal product for small and mid-sized businesses looking for an easy to use product.  Under-the-hood however, the revised Balance 310 now incorporates a much more powerful processor, bumps up the built-in LAN switch to 4x Gigabit Ethernet, and includes a USB port on the front for connecting a USB-based modem for mobile data access.

I’m not exaggerating on the sheer simplicity of web interface in the Peplink Balance, which is also used by Matt Mullenweg of WordPress for his home office.  (Mullenweg did a side-by-side review of three Peplink models here, though as I understand it, his Balance 310 is an older hardware revision)

Key highlights of the Balance 310′s capabilities:

• 100Mbps router throughput
• 7 load balancing algorithms (Weighted, Enforced, Persistence, Priority, Overflow, Least Used, and Lowest Latency Load Balancing Algorithms)
• Site-to-site VPN bonding (2 Peers; 30Mbps bonding VPN throughput)
• PPTP VPN Server (Recommended for 15 VPN users or fewer)
• 1U rackmount capable
• Inbound load balancing

You can find the product comparison page for the various Peplink Balance models here, or read my earlier review of the higher-end Balance 380 multi-WAN router on my ITBusinessEdge SMB Blog.

Four GbE ports, three Fast Ethernet WAN ports and one USB port makes the Balance 310 an ISP load-balancing powerhouse for SMBs

Updated Mission Control (a.k.a. my workstation) this month with the acquisition of two new 23-inch Dell UltraSharp (U2311H) LCD monitors, which I have just managed to mount. Getting them set up into a single desktop took longer, and required the use of my old Sony VAIO TZ26GN (1.06GHz) laptop. The Dells are connected via Matrox TripleHead2Go in dual-output mode, while my two older Samsung SyncMaster P2350 LCD monitors are actually connected to a Magma ExpressBox1 with a quad-output Matrox M9140 LP x 16 graphics card inside.  Finally, holding the various monitors in place are various “Desk Mount” monitor arms from Ergotron.

Some work still needs to be done to tidy/bundle up the various cables, though everything is up and working now.

Why go multi-monitor?  I wrote Increase Your Productivity with an Additional Monitor two years ago, but in a nutshell:

• Greater efficiency: ALT-Tab is a chore and productivity killer when you have 10 or more program windows open most of the time
• Your eyes: Why risk your eyesight squinting at a small laptop screen given the number of hours I spend at the computer a day?
• Affordability: LCD monitors are a steal now (All the monitors on my table costs only slightly more than a single 19-inch CRT back when I was studying)

Some quick points to consider:

• Setting up a multi-monitor setup powered by a laptop is much more challenging than with a desktop.
• Even one additional monitor makes a big difference; consider going this route if you are not technically inclined.
• The DualHead2Go/TripleHead2Go from Matrox are a gem and very easy to setup.
• Note that only the DisplayPort (DP) version of  TripleHead2Go supports triple monitors in 1920×1080 resolution.
• Quad monitor is really only possible (from a laptop) using a software-driven approach like MaxiVista (What I did), or  using DisplayLink’s USB graphics adapters.
• Monitor arms are essential for space management – or get monitors that come with an adjustable (E.g.: height, pivot, tilt and swivel) stand.

I plan on writing a more detailed article on how to setup multi-monitor rigs, so stay tuned.

Another view of my workstation; you can see one of the Samsung in portrait mode

A close-up of the ExpressBox Pro and my old Sony VAIO TZ26GN laptop