OzCableguy

Fritz MT-F phones and German Language firmware notice

OzCableguy — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:59:56 +0000

The Fritz MT-F phones are shipped with German language as default, firmware version 1.02.27. It will come up with German message to register alternating with the English message:

If left for a few minutes it will show “not registered” in English and alternate to German

When the MT-F is registered to a fritzbox with internet access it will switch to English and update to the latest firmware. From then on it will be in English even if reset to factory defaults.

Not Enough Bandwidth for your VPN Tunnel?

OzCableguy — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 02:07:09 +0000

A DrayTek multi-WAN router with VPN load balance may be the answer.

Click here for more info at DrayTek Australia’s blog
Click here to check out the DrayTek range.
Click here for DrayTek’s model comparison table.

Children grow up addicted to online porn sites: Third of 10-year-olds have seen explicit images

OzCableguy — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 05:23:46 +0000

I just read this disturbing article at the dailymail.co.uk about a report submitted to British MPs stating that 4 out of 5 16 year old boys and girls regularly access online porn while one in three 10 year olds have seen explicit online material, and no one’s really sure how this will affect the sexual development of the next generation. Already there are warning signs of girls feeling pressured to look and act in more sexually explicit ways in order to attract a boyfriend, and boys having unrealistic expectations of sex along with increasing evidence of “porn addiction” where guys actually prefer spending time with their computers than with a real person.

Obviously, solutions are needed and there are “opt out” options and filtering services available with many ISPs. However, not everyone wants a blanket ban on all content and would prefer to just shield this stuff from the younger eyes in the household. In that case the only solution is to stay opted in and take personal responsibility for filtering out the bad stuff.

While there are plenty of software “NetNanny” type solutions that can be installed on PCs, this means also being smarter than your kids to properly lock down their PCs so they don’t just circumvent the restrictions, and let’s face it, most kids know more about this stuff than we Gen Xers do, and if not they certainly know how to find out.

This leaves handling the restrictions at some point after the ISP but before it reaches the PCs – the router.

Now, most routers will allow some degree of keyword or URL filtering which helps but it doesn’t go anywhere near far enough. A Google image search for example will still get past most keyword filters. The other problem is there’s usually only space for 20 or so keywords which isn’t anywhere near enough to even filter out accidental porn coming back from innocent searches let alone a deliberate effort.

The next step up is Netgear’s Live Parental Control system available on many Netgear Wireless-N router and
gateway products. This is basically a free open source web filtering subscription service which appears to do the job quite well.

Then you have paid subscription services like DrayTek’s Globalview Web Content Filtering service starting from around $30 per year on their base models. Without the subscription, DrayTek still have their CSM (Content Security Management) system which allows quite an impressive degree of manual control. DrayTek have a policy based system where a “group” of PCs can be created to be filtered while all other PCs remain unfiltered. Other routers usually have a similar option where a particular PC or several PCs can stay out of the filtered category.

Another good one is the Cyberoam NetGenie NG11EH Wireless Router with Family Protection. Click here for more about the NetGenie Parental control system.

DrayTek FAQ Updates

OzCableguy — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 03:21:19 +0000

DrayTek Australia just added a few new FAQs to their knowledge base including:

How to identify and recover a router with corrupt firmware. (See also my blog post here)
Configuring a router for 3G or 4G access
How to block access to certain websites. (See also my blog post here).
Bridging a Vigor120 (For some background information about bridging modems see my Router FAQ 3.6).
Port Forwarding.

Check out DrayTek Australia’s blog post here for more.

Draytek 2830 series and ReadyNAS Jumbo Frames

OzCableguy — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 01:50:27 +0000

A customer reported an interesting problem this week which had us all scratching our heads for a while. He upgraded to a new Draytek 2830Vn+ from a Billion router and suddenly found that a Windows 7 PC could no longer access his Netgear ReadyNAS after the change over. Other XP PCs were fine.

The issue turned out to be having the Jumbo Frames feature enabled on the ReadyNAS and the way Windows 7 and the Draytek processed this data. The solution was to enable Jumbo Frames on the Draytek which is done via Telnet using the following commands:

>port jumbo on

>port jumbo size “___” (size range is from 1537 to 0922 bytes).

Thanks to Erick at Draytek and Lachlan for getting to the bottom of this one.

Planet PoE Injector Hubs

OzCableguy — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:29:27 +0000

Planet’s Aussie importer recently introduced a new line of products called “injector hubs” which I thought warranted a little futher explanation. These at first glance appear to be similar to a PoE switch with only half the number of ports capable of PoE but they’re actually quite a bit different. They’re better thought of as a stack of PoE injectors built into one unit, and they’re hubs, not switches, which would quite often be used in conjunction with a switch per the diagram below. The other aspect is half the ports are inputs while the other half are outputs. eg in the case of the 48 port HPOE-2400G, 24 ports are inputs and 24 are outputs with PoE.

There’s 4 port, 12 port and 24 port versions available. Check them out at the online shop here.

95Mbps download on a FritzBox

OzCableguy — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 06:26:46 +0000

Raaj Menon, CEO of PCRange who import the Fritz and Billion amongst other products, recently got hooked up to the NBN and achieved an amazing 95Mbps downstream and 35Mbps Upstream using a Fritz AVM7390.

See the Channel 7 Adelaide news report here.
See Raaj’s personal blog about his experience here.

Click here to check out both of the Fritz routers.

Fritz 3G Modem Compatibility List

OzCableguy — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 04:45:18 +0000

We’re still waiting on an official compatibility list from Fritz but they can confirm so far that the following modems will work -

Huawei E160/E/G
Huawei E169/G
Huawei E170
Huawei E172
Huawei E173
Huawei E176
Huawei E180
Huawei E220
Huawei E1762
Huawei K3520
Huawei K3565
Huawei K3715
Sierra 885 Compass
ZTE MF622

Click here to check the Fritz forums for any updates. In the meantime my advice is if you don’t see it in the list above or on the forums and/or can’t get positive confirmation from someone else who has tried it already then assume it won’t work.

Click here to check out the Fritz range.

Also available at the online shop are discounts on the Fritz AVMMT-F cordless phones and the AVMWLAN dual band wireless adapters if purchased with a Fritz router, as well as discounts on the routers with a signup with Exetel or TPG.
Click here to check out all of the options.

VoIP Router Comparison

OzCableguy — Mon, 30 May 2011 06:37:30 +0000

I get a lot of enquiries asking whether one product or brand is better than another and/or which one is the best. The problem is there isn’t a simple answer I can give in most cases because it all comes down to the features needed (or wanted) and how much you’d like to spend. A cheaper product may be everything one person will ever need or want and perform flawlessly for many years, while a more discerning buyer might need something more powerful and complex to adequately look after their needs. Other people might not have considered certain features but once made aware of them they decide that the extra dollars are worth spending.

One of the hottest categories at the moment are Routers with VoIP and/or 11n wireless and/or with 3G dongle support (or all of the above) so I put together a chart in XLS format (downloadable here) comparing the more popular products at the moment and the features I think differentiate them the best. The product names can be clicked to go through to my reviews for more information and to check the latest price.

There are a few notable exceptions from this list which I left out because I think the technology is starting to date (like 11g wireless products like the Billion 7401VGPR3, 7404VGPX/7404VGOX) or they’re getting up into a higher end category, but if you’re in the market for something cheaper or dearer than the ones on my list then these are definitely still worth a look.

Routers that support a block of public IP addresses

OzCableguy — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:43:49 +0000

I occasionally get requests from people wanting a router that can deal with blocks of public IP addresses, also known as IP Aliasing (information I don’t have in the Find-A-Router tool).
This old Snapgear Knowledge Base Article explains the pros and cons of the various ways routers can be configured for this situation. See also this FAQ in the Draytek Knowledge Base on the topic.

Draytek report that the Vigor3300/3300V will support up to 32 public IP addresses per WAN interface. All other models will support 8.

Billion state that the 74xx, 78xx and BiGuard can support IP Aliases. All of them can support up to 10 IP Aliases.

Netgear report that all of their higher end routers like the FVS336G, SRXN3205 & SRX5308 have this feature. There is no limit to the number of IP addresses because it’s based on port forwarding. However they can forward to a public IP address instead of the WAN IP address.

D-Link tell me the DSR-500N or DSR-1000N and their DFL series Firewalls all support it.

Cyberoam report that all of their models support it with no limit on addresses.

Cisco told me to call their pre-sales hotline.

Linksys report that nothing in their consumer range had this capability.

SMC state that all of their routers can support at least two public IP address but can’t qualify beyond that.

EnGenius tell me their routers don’t support it.