At the turn of the century it was most often the case that we used a single machine connected directly to a phone line whereas now it would be rare to find a home that hasn’t been networked to [...]]]> One of the biggest growth areas for home computing this decade has been the humble network.

At the turn of the century it was most often the case that we used a single machine connected directly to a phone line whereas now it would be rare to find a home that hasn’t been networked to some extent.  Applications range from wireless Internet on a laptop, file sharing between two machines, a hard drive set up to distribute media around the home, a wireless printer which all the family can access or a games console piggybacking the main Internet connection.

The conventional methods of deploying a network around your home are well known; you can either connect via a network cable or connect wirelessly over the airwaves and while usually suitable, both methods have potential disadvantages.  A wired network is of course limited by a physical connection being needed between your devices whereas a wireless network can fall down if installed in to a house that doesn’t have favourable conditions; a particularly large house or one with particularly thick walls for example.

A route that few people are familiar with is that of AC Networking.  Although not the ideal solution for many, it does have some quite distinct advantages if you find that a conventional wired or wireless network lets you down.  To get started you simply need a minimum of two power line access points which can then be plugged in to any of the existing plug sockets in your home for the two to begin talking to one another.  The technology works by modulating a carrier wave along the existing power cables in your home therefore your entire home wiring essentially becomes a network cable that can be tapped in to at will.

Because you are using the mains cabling that runs all throughout your house the distance or objects between the two points are irrespective while at the same time removing the need to lay dedicated network cabling.  Plug your broadband router in to an power line adaptor downstairs and your computer in to one upstairs and with the minimum of fuss you’ll have a physical connection between the two.

You can restrict access to the network by implementing a number of security procedures similar to those present on a wireless network but owing to the fact your neighbours will be on a different wiring ring, these features are potentially redundant.

What makes the technology more useful is that you can combine elements of power line, wireless and conventional wired networking together in the one location by building on the strengths of all three technologies.  You could for example have a wireless router plugged in to both your broadband connection and a power line adaptor with a second router plugged in to a power line adaptor upstairs; by having two wireless routers in opposite ends of the same building the chance of being without wireless signal would be slim.

Alternatively, have the wireless router plugged in to both your broadband connection and a power line adaptor downstairs but upstairs plug a power line adaptor straight in to a conventional wired network switch in a kids game room upstairs.  They could then connect a PlayStation 3, Xbox and PC directly in to this switch therefore benefiting from a physical connection straight in to the router downstairs without having to worry about issues such as wireless signal strength.

Most modern day power line adaptors support 200Mbps which compares favourably to a standard wired network which would run at 100Mbps and a standard ‘g’ rated wireless network running at 54Mbps.  Prices start at around £60 for a pair of power line access points.

It is undeniable that Broadband take-up in the UK has been huge; the majority of the public now access the Internet via a [...]]]> There is a new breed of superfast broadband approaching which will be welcome news to the majority of the British public that are currently stuck with a maximum top speed of 8Mbps.

It is undeniable that Broadband take-up in the UK has been huge; the majority of the public now access the Internet via a broadband connection rather than a conventional dial up modem. A few weeks back I talked about broadband packages which made Internet access either free or incredibly cheap meaning that even occasional Internet users would be financially better off with a broadband connection.

Although the prices have been tumbling, a ceiling limit on the speeds obtainable has been reached and this needs to be broken through; although 8Mbps is a comfortable speed which will suit the majority of users we are lagging well behind many other parts of the world. A limited number of users in built up areas in Japan for example are currently able to receive blisteringly fast 1000Mbps speeds.

At present, the UK broadband provider for choice when it comes to the speed of connection is Virgin Media who have been offering 20Mbps for years now and have just introduced 50Mbps across the UK. Clearly the speed difference between the Virgin offering and standard ADSL which comes through your conventional phone line is huge.

The difference in speed is due to the type of cable employed for carrying the signal. Virgin uses a relatively new and advanced fibre optic system – this explains why you do have to live in a Virgin cabled area (formally Telewest and NTL) to receive the service. Other broadband products transmitted through your conventional phone line rely on old copper cables; these were originally designed for carrying voice calls and as such there is a limit to the speed that data can be transmitted along them.

Although 50Mbps will be more than enough for the majority of Internet users, Virgin are currently trialling a 200Mbps broadband service in Kent. If the service were to be unveiled across the UK it would give Virgin Media customers one of the fastest broadband services in the world.

Unfortunately only 12.6 million homes are in a Virgin Media cabled area which is why many have to ADSL broadband though their conventional phone line. In order to increase the speeds available to these users BT is currently upgrading exchanges across the UK to ADSL 2+ which will offer up to 20Mbps. Although Torbay hasn’t yet been switched over the exchanges should be upgraded by summer of next year which will result in an approximate doubling of speed at, most likely, no extra cost.

After the ADSL 2+ rollout it would be fair to say that we would have pretty much reached the theoretical maximum speed that you can transfer data down a copper cable. In order to overcome this, BT has began rolling out its own fibre optic broadband across the country however current plans will seen only 40% of UK households covered by 2012 and it is unlikely that they will cover Torbay in this initial phase.

At present, your best bet for the fastest broadband in Torbay is to check if you are in a Virgin covered area (check availability at www.virginmedia.com). Alternatively, if you are not covered, sit back and wait for the ADSL 2+ rollout; unfortunately this will more than likely have to suffice until we have a nationwide rollout of fibre optic technology across the UK.

It was interesting to read your article about YouTube last week although one of the disadvantages of this website is that it has not been possible to download [...]]]> I’ve received a couple of e-mails in the last week which I thought I’d share with my Click readers.

It was interesting to read your article about YouTube last week although one of the disadvantages of this website is that it has not been possible to download the videos on YouTube for offline use. This means that you will not be able to view the videos away from an internet connection, and if one of the videos is removed for any reason you will not be able to see it again.

This problem is solved with YouRipper (free from www.snapfiles.com/get/youripper.html) which allows you to download any YouTube video as a Flash video in .flv format. YouRipper acts like a video recorder for YouTube, and allows archiving of your favourite material.

The .flv format that YouRipper will save the video as cannot be played in most of the common media players but it can be played in the freeware FLV player which is available as a separate download at http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/FLV-Player-Download-27852.html. This is a useful piece of software as it is a nuisance to be permanently tied to what is available online at YouTube.

Ian MacMillan, via e-mail

Another good find there by Ian and another piece of software for me to add to my rapidly expanding collection. I see a particularly good use for this program would be downloading music videos then converting them to AVI format with a free program such as Riva (www.rivavx.com) with the intention of then compiling them to a CD or DVD.

Until recently I have been able to transmit & receive photographs in the format JPEG however, I find now that although photographs are received I cannot open them. I get a message to the effect that Outlook Express restricted the opening of the attachments due to unsafe content.

The sources are well known to me so I know that the images are no unsafe and moreover, messages that contain photographs that were previously openable have become unopenable. My AVG anti-virus reports on each e-mail ‘No virus present’ and AdAware reports no critical objects.

Keith Wheatley

This is an extremely common problem for many people hence I have chosen to feature it in Click this week. Microsoft in all their wisdom decided that in a recent update to Outlook Express that they would disable the opening of all files attached to e-mails. Whilst some would consider this prudent security I consider it to be over the top, especially when you consider the files you are discussing couldn’t possibly contain a virus as they are not executable.

There is an easy way around this fortunately so when in Outlook Express click on the ‘Tools’ tab, ‘Options’, then ‘Security’ and then make sure that there is no tick in the ‘Do not allow files to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus’ box.

Google Web Accelerator [...]]]> After spending last week look at a dial up Internet accelerator which wasn’t recommended for broadband I thought this week that I’d do the opposite and take a look at a similar piece of software designed for broadband but not dial up connections.

Google Web Accelerator although still in Beta format is an interesting piece of free software designed by the same team that have bought us so many other useful pieces of software over the past year. The idea is that you install a small piece of software which then makes use of Googles global network to improve the speed your pages load in several ways.

Such tactics include sending your page request through a dedicated network of machines designed for Google accelerator traffic, storing copies of recently viewed pages, downloading only the changed material in a page since the last time you viewed it, prefetching certain pages, managing your Internet connection and compressing data before it is sent to your computer.

Google accelerator takes literally seconds to install by visiting http://webaccelerator.google.com and once installed it will automatically keep itself up to date. I must be honest in saying that I didn’t notice a huge speed increase when I installed the software however I am currently sat on a 4mb/s Broadband connection so pages tend to load instantly anyway.

Once installed there are several settings that you can play around with to customise how the software works:

Internet connection: Google automatically assume that your connection is below 1mb/s however if it is above this then you should specify this here.

Prefetching: One of the things Google does to speed up your connection is to prefetch pages before you actually click the link. Then if you click a link the information is already on your computer so it doesn’t need to be downloaded. Obviously if you only have a limited download limit every month you’re not going to want to blow it all on Google prefetching pages that you might then not necessary read.

Clear your history: This deletes files stored in your web accelerator cache to clear your surfing history.

Don’t accelerate these sites: This option allows you to turn off Google accelerator for viewing specific sites which is useful if you have a problem with using the software on incompatible pages. You can also choose to temporarily disable Google web accelerator for whatever reason at any point.

The software includes a counter that supposedly shows you how much time you have saved waiting for pages to load whilst using the software although how accurate this counter is I have no idea. As mentioned at the start of this article the software is currently in beta test (unfinished) format and so independent tests on speed gain claims are unavailable at present.

One of the primary concerns with using this software is to do with privacy as the Google team will be able to see all requests for all unencrypted pages along with your IP address. If you fill in a form on such a page Google could also theoretically see personal details although it is worth bearing in mind that this is no more information than your usual ISP can see anyway although understandably this does worry some users. In reality a company such as Google would not ever use this data in any way so you should feel safe and additionally it doesn’t attempt to accelerate any secure websites so online shopping security isn’t compromised.

I would recommend giving the software a run though especially if you have a broadband connection which verges on the slow end of the market. I would appreciate any comments that you may have regarding this software and then perhaps we can do a follow up article when it comes out of the testing period.

This week I’ve been considering setting up a dating agency for virus programmers; in my opinion if we could get them out of the house and into social circles then they wouldn’t spend their Saturday nights creating viruses such as the Sasser worm which I’ve had to spend this week [...]]]>

This week I’ve been considering setting up a dating agency for virus programmers; in my opinion if we could get them out of the house and into social circles then they wouldn’t spend their Saturday nights creating viruses such as the Sasser worm which I’ve had to spend this week removing from various computers around the bay. Unfortunately I believe this could be a short lived dating agency as I’d imagine that the majority of virus programmers would be spotty adolescent boys but it’s still something worth thinking about nevertheless.

Anyway, there is no time to be bitter, the Sasser worm is out in the wild and has already infected tens of thousands of machines so what do we do now to protect ourselves or to remove any traces of it if we are already infected? Luckily it only really affects Windows XP so people with an operating system before this don’t really have to worry; just ensure that your virus checker is up to date and do a complete scan of your system. If you do have Windows XP and don’t believe that you’ve been infected then just ensure that you do a Windows Update and installed all the critical updates and turn on the Internet firewall; it’s as simple as that. If you’re not sure how to turn on your firewall then just right click on your Internet connection, click on ‘properties’ and then on ‘advanced’ then enable the firewall from there.

If you have been infected then chances are that you’ll definitely know it; your machine will be shutting down intermittently and going a lot slower than it did several days ago and in this case there are a number of steps you need to do to clean up your machine. To start, the biggest problem some people are having is that the computer will shut down automatically when connected to the Internet and this is preventing them from installing the appropriate patches. To get around this restart your computer and ensure that it doesn’t reconnect to the Internet automatically when you log back on then click on ‘start’ and ‘run’ and then type in ‘shutdown –i’ which should caused a dialog box to appear. Now just change the 20 seconds setting to 9999 seconds as this will then give you a good few hours to install all the needed updates before your computer restarts. It would also be a good idea to disable System Restore at this point to ensure that Windows doesn’t make a backup of the worm we are trying to remove.

Next we have to remove any instances of the virus running in memory as if the virus is present in the background then it could hinder our attempts to remove it. To do this press <CTRL>, <ALT> and <DELETE> on your keyboard at the same time then when the task manager box appears click on the ‘processes’ tab. Now locate any items in the list that have the names ‘avserve.exe’, ‘avserve2.exe’ or any process consisting of four or five digits followed by ‘_up.exe’ so, for example, ‘5867_up.exe’, click on these processes one at a time and click on ‘End Process’ until they have all disappeared from the list. These processes are all virus files and as I mentioned above we really need to remove these from memory before attempting to permanently remove them from your hard disk.

Now is time to download a removal tool that Symantec have developed; unfortunately the website address to get it off their site is around 130 characters long so I’ve copied it onto my site for ease of publication – Head to www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/fixsasser.exe and then choose to open the file. Simply run it and it should go through and remove any instances of Sasser from your computer. You now want to ensure that your firewall is activated as per the instructions I gave above and then you should go to the Windows Update site and choose to install all of the critical update files. Once this process has completed simply restart your machine and you should be free of Sasser although now would be a good time to ensure that your virus checker is fully up to date and perform a complete scan before breaking open the champagne.

You know you’ve struck a cord with the general public when you get stopped in the street by people you’ve never met who ask you how your installation of ADSL is going. For those of you who haven’t seen my last couple of articles, I’ve been running a feature [...]]]>

You know you’ve struck a cord with the general public when you get stopped in the street by people you’ve never met who ask you how your installation of ADSL is going. For those of you who haven’t seen my last couple of articles, I’ve been running a feature promoting the benefits of getting a high speed always on Internet connection (ADSL) and the difficulties that I personally have had in receiving it.

As the last word on this, BT have now decided that I am unable to get the ADSL service after weeks of continually changing their mind and they have no idea when I will be able to. I recently received a letter from Eddie Bent from E-Strategy Net who offered the following advice to those people in a similar position to myself:

“Dear Mr Holgate,

I am writing in response to your article in Saturdays edition of the Herald Express, titled BT confusion with ADSL.

In my experience of ADSL (5 years working for a couple of well known ISPs), BT are generally thought of as the last point of call for information regarding issues such as these. You might be better off speaking to a more customer focused ISP. It is a myth that BT staff are more knowledgeable simply because ISPs have to use their backbone.

With reference to your telephone number (01803 555981), it does appear that it is not yet recognised by BT as a valid number. There are usually two reasons for this; either it is a new telephone line/number or your telephony service is provided by another supplier (Eurobell for example).

The current situation regarding the rollout of ADSL is based, purely, on a pre-registration scheme. BT have looked at the exchanges that have yet to be enabled and have set a trigger level for registrations. For example, if the trigger level were set at 400 for TQ4 7QH, then you would require 400 definite requests for orders of ADSL before the exchange would be enabled.

This scheme is, in my opinion, a stalling opportunity. The trigger levels describe the level of subscribers required before BT can reach a break-even figure. In effect, they are unwilling to invest in any further exchanges unless there is a guarantee that they won’t make a loss. Good business sense perhaps, but this doesn’t assist with the governments objective that Great Britain will be a leader in e-business by 2005.

However, as the ADSL market is changing frequently, I would perhaps hold fire on ISDN and either wait until the end of the year or explore other options including wireless and satellite (a little more expensive though!).

I hope this information is of some assistance. My experience in this industry enables me to provide balanced and impartial advice, which appears to in demand judging by my inbox.

Kindest Regards, Eddie Bent (www.e-strategy.net)”

Eddie Bent makes some interesting points, especially that BT shouldn’t be considered the only choice when thinking about getting Broadband installed in your home. There are literally dozens of ISPs out there that are willing to supply you with broadband access and although the service they offer will still ultimately depend on BTs ability to provide an ADSL line in your area you may find that there customer service will be superior to that of BT.

For a list of broadband providers that support ADSL try visiting the following website – http://www.broadband1.bt.com/getting_broadband/suppliers.asp where you will see a list of all those that give you the ability to supply you at home, your business or those that are prepared to register your interest in the service to pass along to BT if your local area isn’t currently ADSL enabled.

I have summed up the benefits of ADSL over the past couple of weeks by recommending it to people who use the Internet a moderate to high amount although as I’ve experienced myself, a lot of people will not be able to receive the service. Check on their website and if you can get ADSL then I’ve seen it working and even in these early days it’s extremely fast so go ahead and order it.

Thank-you for your weekly column in the Herald Express, I have found it helpful on more than one occasion.

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro 430 CDT and use Freeserve as my ISP using Outlook Express to send and receive my mail and Internet Explorer for [...]]]>

Thank-you for your weekly column in the Herald Express, I have found it helpful on more than one occasion.

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro 430 CDT and use Freeserve as my ISP using Outlook Express to send and receive my mail and Internet Explorer for Internet connection (Both use the same connection settings).

At home everything is okay, but when I go to my daughter’s house and connect through her telephone line I can receive my mail without any problem but am unable to send any e-mails. I have tried putting her telephone number in the Dial-Up Networking settings but nothing seems to solve the situation. Do I have to set up a new account if I want to use her telephone line or do I have to go through Internet Explorer to send e-mails while I’m connected to the Internet?

I am still a beginner as far as my computing skills are concerned but would be very grateful if you can tell me what I should do.

Barry Doan, Babbacombe.

Before I answer this question, I’ll clarify a common error that I picked up on whilst reading your letter which a lot of the people I have helped in the past tend to make. When you connect to the Internet from Windows, you are not using Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express or similar application to connect to the Internet as these are just programs that can be used to access the Internet. What you are actually dialling up with is ‘Windows Dial Up Networking’, an integral part of the Operating System that takes control of the actual process of establishing a connection to the Internet via your ISP (Internet Service Provider). Once the connection is established, Dial Up Networking acts like a window to the Internet so any suitable programs can see through it in order to send and receive data. You can see, therefore that Internet Explorer or Outlook Express aren’t the programs that connect to the Internet and this should always be kept in mind when we’re diagnosing problems regarding the Internet.

Moving back to your problem, one thing that strikes about Freeserve is that when you sign up for the service you are asked to provide the number which you will be dialling from to connect to the service.

I have installed Freeserve for customers before and if the wrong number is given then I’ve found that the service just won’t let you connect at all. However, I do feel that since the only thing that is really different between your daughters’ house and your own is the number that you’re using to dial the service then this must be the root of the problem. I’d recommend that you try phoning Freeserve customer services and get them to temporarily change the number on their records to that of your daughters and try again. If sending e-mail now works fine from her phone number then you know this is the cause of the problem which will get you a good footing in order to be able to call Freeserve and discuss with them a possible workaround for this problem.

You may remember the letter I received from Richard Stinton last month regarding the problem he was having with Norton Utilities 2001 which is described as follows –

“I have never had any success with the ZIP Rescue Disc.  The system does almost recover on a test, and I achieve the Norton Lifebelt Screen with icons, and it even thinks it has recovered the system, but alas the whole system locks up; nothing works except the movement of the cursor.  A window appears saying that ‘Explorer caused and invalid page fault’. The only way out is to de-power!”

I was unable to answer is question but wrote to Symantec regarding who suggested this solution that I received just a few days ago –

“If you test a Zip Rescue Disk set by going beyond the initial screen giving you options to choose for recovery then there can be damage to that system. By going beyond that screen you are fixing an operating system that is in good shape. To test a Rescue Disk Set, all you need to do is make sure that it boots up to the screen giving you options to choose what you want to do.

Best Regards, Rick Collins, Symantec Technical Support”