Improving Your WiFi?

I was scrolling through Facebook the other day and realised that there was a trend in WiFi improvement-related articles on my timeline. Instantly, I was interested in what my friends are sharing and what suggestions the articles have to counter the problems of bad WiFi reception. To be honest, I was rather disappointed as the recommended solutions were either "old and reused ideas" or just took too much effort.

Before continuing, if you are hoping that I might have some tricks that will improve your WiFi reception significantly for free, I will probably disappoint you in this particular post. Common tech tips such as using a soda can to extend the range of the router or find the most suitable place for your router to transmit its radio waves are undoubtedly correct. These methods will boost the coverage of the router. However, in my own experience, such approach does not provide a significant improvement in wireless performance. Therefore, are the efforts that you have invested in improving WiFi coverage worth it for a small performance boost?

Picture Credits: Soda Can Solution (1), Router Positioning and Soda Can Solution (2) 

In Singapore, radio bandwidths are congested and densely populated homes are known characteristics to deter good WiFi performance. Improving WiFi performance will then require much more drastic solutions to counter such problems. One of the most efficient methods in terms of cost and application will be powerline adapter. These devices usually come in pairs and will require your household power wall plugs (for each adapter) in order for the system to work. Powerline adapters use existing electrical lines in your home to transmit / receive data. Hence, there is no need for additional long Ethernet cables to be laid from your router to the destination. Essentially, a powerline network is a wired network and such networks are definitely more reliable and consistent in its throughput speed as compared to its wireless counterpart.

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TP-Link Powerline Adapter

Personally, I used powerline network to solve the unreliable WiFi issues in my home as the WiFi signal is not strong enough to provide any efficient data speed for my Internet consumption. In my bedroom, I have attached a powerline adapter with access point features so that my usage of the Internet can be wireless. With an investment of roughly $50 SGD (3 years ago), I am still enjoying a consistent and reliable WiFi performance (about 40 Mbps, on 2.4GHz) in my bedroom 24/7.

There are certainly some drawbacks of such a system--one being the efficiency of data transmission. As you can see from the paragraph above, 40Mbps is around 20% of my overall throughput speed, meaning 80% of efficiency loss. Though there is a loss in performance, 40Mbps is still realistically adequate for most applications and I will pick reliability over inconsistent services anytime. Additionally, modern powerline adapters have power pass-through features, thus retaining the functionality of your house plug. 

Maybe, after all, I do have a free suggestion that will improve your WiFi experience significantly, and that is to schedule your router IP leased time. Your router will automatically manage the IP addresses of the devices connected to its network when the leased time is up. This process of reorganising the IP addresses will take some time to complete. To avoid downtime in your internet usage, schedule your router to only renew the leases at a set time where you're most probably sleeping or not using the internet.

In my case, I have set my leased time to be 24 hours, which is more than enough time to access the web.

YWFU

Managing Your Storage Data

It's been two plus years since I have migrated all my crucial data into a personal Network Attached Storage (NAS). For those who want a short and sweet answer, get it, and for those who can afford, get one with a redundancy feature, as that would be even better. 

I used to dump my data into multiple portable hard drives and retire them into my cupboard, genuinely hoping that I will never use them. I was naive enough to think that this will work in any case of a hard drive failure. Much to my dismay, I was really unlucky that one of my backup hard drives failed when I needed to retrieve some data. Worse still, the hard drive was only used once during the archiving process and yes, I did check all my files before I kept the hard drive. 

After much research, I realised my mistake in assuming that the service life of a hard drive will remain full when not in use. I mean, logically speaking, if an item is only used once, it should not even spoil when it is not being used right? Reality check: real world items do not work that way. 

The physical design of a hard disk drive (HDD) has its limitations since the whole enclosure functions from a spinning platter (the part that stores your data) and a reader to read and write from it. This mechanical design is much more fragile as compared to a solid state drive (SSD) as there are moving parts that are more sensitive to displacement either caused by accidents or general wear and tear. Normally, it is advisable to replace your HDD after 4-5 years of usage as a preventive measure for a hard disk failure. 

Thus, one might conclude that ensuring the backup drives are well within the recommended time frame of serviceability will do the trick. However, that is only part of the equation because it does not provide any redundancy feature. NAS systems provide a solution that distinctively answers the problem mentioned above. Not only will that provide adequate storage space for your archived files (depending on the system configuration) most of the time, but also most NAS will bundle redundancy features together with the system, such as redundant array of independent disks (RAID) or physical USB backup. 

The purpose of this post is to share my experiences in applying and integrating a NAS into my digital life. When I first started out looking for a better solution, I was not ready to invest a good sum of money into NAS. Thus, I chose the WD My Cloud NAS as my backup solution as I can afford it comfortably, and the price per GB (about 0.08 cents) was rather close to a standard HDD ratio.  Setting up the device was rather straightforward if you have some background in computer networking. 

Organising the backed up files was easy as you skipped through all the agonising moments of labelling your hard disk physically and neatly (a little OCD problem of mine). The only essential steps were to store the relevant files to the relevant folders where you can comprehend it easily. Since this is Network Attached Storage, accessibility of files on multiple platforms (Cloud Computing) through The Internet is also possible. This factor has greatly cultivated my habit of using portable devices of average storage size, for example, my 16GB Nexus 5. I would usually store all my critical data on my phone and still retain accessibility to my other files in NAS when needed (e.g. photos, documents). Although one might have to be a little disciplined to manage the consumption of your offline storage space, it does not bother me anymore as of late since I do not have to worry about running out of inbuilt storage space. 

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How I label my disk drives

With the added attributes of NAS system, the initial cost of a simple NAS system will always be higher than a generic HDD solution. However, the increment in price will be justified in the long run as replacement of a failed hard drive is much easier and reindexing a new drive will also shorten system downtime. Although my WD My Cloud does not allow drives to be hot swappable, I used a physical hard disk of larger storage capacity (not necessary) to backup the My Cloud unit in case it fails. 

Another factor that might bottleneck the performance of your NAS will be the data throughput of your network. The download / upload speed of your network will usually determine how fast your NAS performs, henceforth, additional thoughts in planning your networking system are also crucial in optimising your NAS performance. 

Throughout this whole experience, I am really glad to have taken on the NAS solution and make my data more centralised to access. There are also many other solutions such as Google Drive, which provides 15GB of free storage space for your cloud computing needs, and Rack Space, which provides different packing tiers for those who wish to have a private cloud without the hassle of managing the hardware. 

Cloud computing has definitely gained more traction than what I have observed since I started exploring NAS. Advantages of cloud computing are definitely attracting more people into the scene. Nonetheless, such systems should be managed properly to prevent compromise in data integrity. 

YWFU 

Future Proofing Your Technology

In one of my previous posts, I've discussed internal upgradability of laptops becoming a rarity. Most individuals will then do the perceived and most sensible approach: buying the highest end hardware they can afford, hoping to "future proof" the device in the coming years.

With the nature of technology advancement being so rapid, such approach may be deemed unwise. New, faster and more efficient hardware are coming out of the market almost every day. Thus, the best components of today may very well be second best the next day. Hence, it's going take tremendous effort to keep up with the standard financially. This alone makes the approach ineffective unless you are able to afford it financially.

Having a realistic idea of what you are going to use your device for is important. That being said, a realistic goal refers to the list of tasks that you are already doing on a daily basis. This includes the task that is related to your work or hobby. In my own opinion, I will always try to avoid buying additional hardware thinking that I'll utilise them in the future, for example, buying a high-performance graphic card and thinking that it will be used in future video editing work. Unless you are an avid video editor or working in this line professionally, chances of you needing such high-end hardware are low. In general, your machine must be functional and efficient in its tasks and any additional bell and whistle will just incur more cost.

I am not saying that I do not support the development of new hardware in the computing world. Developments such as these are critical for the industry to progress. However, spending money in unnecessary hardware specification for your machine makes me cringe because it does not "future proof" your machine entirely (remember the best of today may be second best of tomorrow), and that is often a common mistake made by individuals, including me. Back then, when I was purchasing a laptop (Macintosh based) for my diploma studies in audio visual technology,  I also made a mistake in spending the extra cash for an upgrade in a graphic card, thinking that this upgrade will vastly benefit my work. To be honest, in any way you compare it, the additional horsepower from the graphic card does definitely help in my rendering workload. However, the extra processing power from the card is not necessary to complete the task. Many would often equate better hardware to the quality of work, especially in the field of creative works, which is definitely not true in any way. At the end of the day, pick a configuration that will be able to perform the tasks given at a comfortable speed.

In practice, when buying hardware for myself, "future proofing" will never be a criteria that I will consider. No matter how well you planned and budgeted your hardware, it will never truly be "future proof". On the other hand, scalability options in one machine is often a better sought after approach. Not only will it help to compliment your existing system, it also helps to keep your machine up to date with introductions of new hardware (e.g. Network attached storage (NAS) to expand your storage capacity, or raid drives to improve your read/write speeds so as to off load the burden on a single internal drive). Such practices allow the user to only make purchases of new hardware relevant to their needs, and scalability of the system can be done periodically so as not to tax the user financially.

If one insists on "future proofing" his/her new purchase hardware, I would only recommend getting the best processing chip you can afford as this is the only component that is often difficult to switch or be upgraded.

YWFU