Oi! I don’t want to share my 3G mobile broadband connection
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Blog, broadband, hardware, Mobile Phones, Wireless, Internet on
So a press release lands on my virtual desk this morning, informing me that I have ’so much freedom’ in my pocket and extolling the virtues of sharing the mobile 3G Internet. There is just one thing wrong with this enthusiastic release for a 3G router so I can share my mobile broadband connection around between friends, family and colleagues - and that’s the real world.
“The new Wireless Mobile Router 300N X2 enables the user to easily share wireless mobile 3G internet at any location such as a hotel, conference room, café or camping site” the email from the PR begins, and the release itself continues with such classic lines as “ideal for mobile users, who want to share mobile 3G internet with multiple users at any location”.
I particularly liked the optimism shown by Sitecom, whose product this is bigging up, when talking in terms of sharing ones “3G internet subscription with colleagues in a conference room or on a business trip, with fellow students at school or with family on the camping site”.
Have these people never actually bought a mobile phone, or indeed a 3G mobile broadband access dongle and used it for Internet related stuff? Have they never looked at the terms of the contract? Or do they live in some fantasy world where the words ‘usage cap’ and ‘monthly data limits’ have not been invented perhaps? Accessing the Internet courtesy of your mobile device is great, but exceed the monthly limit and you’ll find yourself either dumped into the world of no access (or at least no vaguely usable access) or the world of the ‘now the network provider can charge you at the truly exorbitant per Mb rate’ which is even worse.
I am fortunate in that pretty much everywhere I go my 3G connection is rubbish, meaning that I can stay within my monthly data cap. That said, when armed with a netbook and a 3G dongle in an area of decent reception and given a day with nothing better to do I am like most nerds in that I can do some serious damage to it by way of streaming video and some monster downloading sessions or perhaps a bit of chatting via Skype even.
Look, I am willing to admit that this mobile router looks impressive on paper: “two Internal High Performance Antennas to strengthen the range of the wireless network” which “reduce dead spots and guarantee expanded coverage at any location” and comes complete with 802.11n and WPA2 support via a one-button setup system.
But, and it’s a huge J-Lo booty sized but, why would anyone in their right mind want to share their 3G Internet access with anyone? Seriously, if you are on a camping trip with me bring your own Internet enabled mobile device. Honestly, if we are at a conference and your mobile phone won;t connect to the Internet well tough, should have bought a better mobile phone. And as for fellow students at school, gee whizz, if ever there’s a case for a stupid argument in a press release getting some kind of award then that has to be it.
Here’s the bottom line: buy your own 3G dongle, buy your own 3G mobile phone, use a WiFi hotspot.
So, to conclude, nice looking bit of kit which falls squarely into the for use by millionaires, tech philanthropists and idiots only.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
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80 percent of viruses love Windows 7
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Blog, Wireless, Security, Microsoft on
According to one leading security research lab, Windows 7 is vulnerable to an astonishing 8 out of 10 viruses it was exposed to during testing. But wait a minute, just how astonishing is this, really?
Sophos loaded a retail release copy of Windows 7 onto a clean PC, configured it to the system default as far as the User Account Control process was concerned, and failed to install any anti-virus software. OK, so this might be a little unfair you would think, but it does represent the actions of many a person new to the new OS. Microsoft insists it is the most secure version of Windows yet, and ‘ordinary users’ will take the company at its word.
What Sophos did next was less typical, instead of connecting the machine to the Internet and clicking every link under the sun until it was infected up the wazoo, it instead “grabbed the next 10 unique samples that arrived in the SophosLabs feed to see how well the newer, more secure version of Windows and UAC held up” says researcher Chet Wisniewski.
Unsurprisingly, Windows 7 didn’t do too well in fighting off these new threats. Indeed, it only managed to prevent 2 out of those 10 from operating correctly. Wisniewski insists that this just goes to show that his pre-launch warning that the UAC is not fit to protect a PC from malware was indeed correct. While I actually agree with him on this point I’d also argue that any machine that is not running an up to date anti-virus solution is asking for trouble no matter what version of Windows is installed.
I’d be more interested to see that same test performed on the same Windows 7 PC but running different AV solutions, including the new and free Microsoft Security Essentials to be honest. I wonder how far and how many of those 10 viruses would get then?
I wonder if Microsoft will come out fighting against Sophos this time, like it did when XP Mode security came under attack in the summer?
Rated: 68% (5 votes)
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Virgin on the ridiculous
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Wireless, Internet on
There is no denying that Richard Branson is a business genius, you don’t make a billion without getting something right after all, but he is a fool in equal measure. Pretty much every press launch I have been to Branson has ensured the focus of media attention is on him and some silly stunt, be that hanging from a crane in a spacesuit or jumping off a tall building and doing himself no favours in the family jewels department. Occasionally, it seems to me, the tomfoolery crosses over from the PR side of things and encroaches on business territory. It is the only explanation I can think of when I have had the misfortune to travel on a (late as usual) Virgin train. It is also the only reason I can think of that he entered into that war of words with Sky TV, a war that was truly verging on the ridiculous and which every outsider I spoke to agreed he could never win.
So it has come as no real surprise to discover that Virgin Media is apparently struggling to compete in the digital TV arena, and has all but conceded defeat by moving focus away from pay TV households to those looking for bigger, faster, fatter broadband instead.
According to Michael Phillips, product director at BroadbandChoices cable provides the potential for truly high speed connections, which is why Virgin Media is currently testing a 50Mbps service. Even here, the fool card gets played once you look beyond the bearded man in a jumpsuit attached to a giant firework rocket with 50Mb stamped on the side launching into the atmosphere (OK, I admit I am only guessing that this is how Branson will launch the service) and start to consider the impact of traffic shaping on the end user speed. “Virgin Media announced its traffic shaping policy earlier this year, and even on the top 20Mb package, customers could find themselves throttled to only 5Mb during peak hours - when obviously, people are most likely to be using the Internet” Phillips told me. “In a market where broadband speeds are advertised as ‘up to’ because of the unreliability of speeds and technology, cable has proven to be more reliable than ADSL. Our own Speed Tester results - taken from over 100,000 speed tests last month - show that cable customers enjoyed an average of 47.5 per cent of their promised speeds, compared to an average of 37.7 per cent for ADSL customers. Virgin Media is looking to regain some of the 40,000 customers that defected after Sky pulled its basic channels, with applications that need much faster broadband. Few other providers can offer the type of speeds needed for high-definition video-on-demand and home surveillance but using these applications could see customers’ speeds throttled and there is little point in a 50Mb connection that is cut each time you use it.”
Phillips argues that the Broadband XL package at 20Mb has a peak-hour allowance of 3GB which could be exceeded after only 20 minutes if the connection was running at top speed. After this time, the connection would be limited to 5Mb for the next four hours. Virgin Media has said that this policy would only affect the top five per cent of downloaders. Fair enough, apart from the fact that by marketing itself as a super-fast broadband provider it is encouraging people to act in just this way - otherwise why bother with such a fat pipe?
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