Showing posts with label WiFi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WiFi. Show all posts

Sunday, August 16, 2015

How To Check Wifi Strength

Below are some tools that will assist in checking wifi strength.



Desktop Software

WifiInfoView by NirSoft 
"WifiInfoView scans the wireless networks in your area and displays extensive information about them, including: Network Name (SSID), MAC Address, ...."

"Wireshark is a free and open-source packet analyzer. It is used for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and communications protocol development, ...."


Smartphone Apps
Wifi Analyzer for Android
The advantage of having such smartphone app is that it is easier to carry the smartphone around the premises and analyse the wifi signal strength instead of carrying the laptop around. 

Wifi Solver FDTD
$0.99 to buy (as of 17 Aug 2015)
This app is supposed to be based on some seriously advanced computational solver on electromagnetics signal. The downside is that the app is not free.

Sunday, April 06, 2014

How to use hotel wifi safely


The links below are to a few articles about how to use FREE hotel wifi safely. In summary:
1. There is no real safe way to use hotel wifi - Be Warned
2. Using the hotel LAN (not wifi) is even worse
3. Using VPN provides a layer of protection since it hides the data transmitted from your device to the internet. However it still doesn't prevent a trojan from being planted on your system and accessing your file system.


http://us.norton.com/yoursecurityresource/detail.jsp?aid=free_wifi


http://traveltips.usatoday.com/safely-use-wireless-internet-hotels-2970.html


http://www.wikihow.com/Stay-Safe-While-Using-Hotel-WiFi


http://blog.hotspotshield.com/2013/06/17/hotel-wifi-security/


http://forums.cnet.com/7723-6132_102-565662/how-can-i-use-free-wifi-in-hotel-safely/

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Notes Google Nexus 7

Just got a Nexus 7, 32GB Wifi, at OfficeWorks price match as a result of Bing Lee sale.
Anyway, just thought I'd start up some notes, starting with some links.

"23 Essential Tweaks to Perform on Your New Nexus 7 Android Tablet"
http://www.tested.com/tech/android/63025-23-essential-nexus-7-tweaks/


"Welcome to the Nexus: A Beginner’s Guide to the Google Nexus 7"
http://reviewlagoon.com/welcome-to-the-nexus-a-beginners-guide-to-the-google-nexus-7/

"Google's Official Nexus 7 site"
http://www.google.com.au/nexus/7/


Connecting by Wifi - very important to follow these steps if you want to maintain hiding your local wireless SSID but still want the Nexus 7 to remember it.
- Let your wifi router hide SSID, that is do not let it broadcast SSID
- Find out the MAC from the Nexus 7. Go to: Settings - About Tablet - Status - Wifi Mac address
- Go to the router administration and add the Nexus' MAC address.
- Go to the Nexus wireless setting and Add Network. Go To: Settings - Wifi - tap the "+"  symbol to add new network.
- The do a scan for wireless networks on the Nexus. If it cannot find your network, unhide the SSID on your router, then scan with the Nexus again.
- Once the Nexus is connected to the wireless network, go to the router administration and hide the SSID again. From now, the Nexus should be able to connect wirelessly, even with SSID hidden.

Security
1. Do not allow
Settings - Personal - Security - Unknown Sources - uncheck

Sunday, March 04, 2012

How to Boost Your Broadband Speed

Here are 10 very simple tips to increase broadband speeds and links to several useful tools.

1. Test Your TV
Apart from TV there are other electrical equipment that can cause interference.

2. Avoid Extension Wiring - longer wire has poorer signals

3. Tweak your Wifi -
NetStumbler software (www.netstumbler.com/downloads) - use to which WiFi channels your neighbours are using.

4. Get Diagnosed - get help from your ISP.

5. Sort your system
Use unblocka (www.unblocka.com) to tune your settings to improve speed.

6. Keep your router up to date

7. Fine Tune MTU settings
MTU is one of the modem settings that can be changed. It controls the packet size of transmission. To identify issues with MTU - see www.pcauthority.com.au/links/129broad1. A guide on how to adjust MTU is found in www.dslreports.com/tweaks/MTU . Also the Speed Guide TCP Optimizer (www.speedguide.net/downloads.php) will identify the optimal MTU.

8. Ask for Interleaving
If you cannot solve your interference problems, you may be able to ask your ISP to switch on interleaving to improve performance. This essentially chops the packet into smaller pieces and has better error correction. This improve stability but may increase or decrease speed.

9. Replace your filters
A guide to test filters can be found at: www.pcauthority.com.au/links/129broad2

The technical details of what the inside of a filter looks like can be found in (www.adslnation.com/support/filters.php)

10. Watch out for AR7 routers
Routers with the AR7 chipset is known to have a fault so may cause connection to drop out. To find a list of router models containing this chipset, go to www.linux-mips.org/wiki/AR7
Firmware updates for some routers to correct this issue may be listed in www.pcauthority.com.au/links/129broad3

Thursday, April 22, 2010

How to Connect to Telstra Remote Working Solution (TRWS) on a corporate laptop.


This short guide shows how to setup VPN connection using a laptop configured to use Telstra Remote Working Solution.

Before going through this setup, the following pre-requisites need to be satisfied:
  1. Your laptop has the TRWS installed and is running Windows.
  2.  The connection is intended to use your laptop to connect to your home wireless network. The TRWS software will then provide a VPN tunnel through your home WiFi network, into the public internet, and securely into your corporate network,
  3. Your home WiFi network is already setup and you have these information: WiFi SSID, WiFi Security Mode and WiFi password.
  4. RSA SecureID token Device. This device is on all the time and a number is displayed, which changes after a certain amount of time.


The following steps will help setup the connection for the first time. The login steps below need to be done each time you login again.
1.    1.      Switch on Laptop.
2.   2. Look for the physical switch for the WiFi on the actual laptop. Its location is different for different laptop  models. Ensure this is switched on.
3.    3. When the laptop booted and is ready for work, then open up the TRWS application  either by:
i)                    Start – All Programs – Telstra – TRWS; or
ii)                  Click on the TRWS icon on the desktop.



4.    4.   From the TRWS, click Settings – Login Information.
5.    5.   In the Login Information, fill in the Username, Password, click Save Password and select the relevant country. Click OK.


6.      6. Go back to the TRWS dialog, click Settings – Connection Strings.
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7.   7.   In the Connection Strings, click on the WLAN.
8.   8.   Under the WLAN tab, select the Device for your WiFi hardware on your laptop. Then click the Add button. The Add Personal Network dialog appears.



9.  9.    Fill in the SSID box and the Security box with the WEP, WPA or WPA2 password. The type of Security would depend on how your home WiFi is configured.
10  10.  Under the SSID, there is a checkbox called “Non-Broadcast”. If your WiFi Network is usually hidden, then please tick this checkbox. Click OK to finish with the Add Personal Network dialog.
11  11.  Going back to the WLAN tab, your WiFi network should be listed (not necessarily connected) in the Personal Networks box.
12  12.  Put a tick in the “Display all WLAN networks” box.
13  13.  At this stage, if the home WiFi is hidden based on SSID, make sure it is set to Not Hidden or Unhide. It can be set to Hidden again at the end of this guide. You may need the help of your home WiFi administrator for this.
14  14.  Click OK to finish with the Connection Strings dialog.

15  15.  At the TRWS main dialog, your home WiFi network may appear in the list under Phonebook – Available Networks. Double click on your WiFi network in the list.
16  16.  If it does not appear in the list, then under the menu, select Bookmarks – select your WiFi list under there. If it does not appear here either, then check that the WiFi network is Not Hidden.
17  17.  Also, to check that the WiFi adapter hardware inside the laptop is working, under the Phonebook – Available Networks, there should be a list of WiFi networks possibly from your neighbours. This just shows the WiFi in your laptop is working.


18.  If the previous steps have been successful, that just means that the laptop is connected to your home network. To establish a VPN (Virtual Private Connection) to your company,  the following extra steps are needed. A dialog to establish a VPN appears. Click OK. Go to step 21.

     19.  If the above dialog does not appear automatically after 5 minutes of connection, then go to the Taskbar in Windows and look for a yellow padlock icon. Double click on this to open up the VPN client connection status.


      20.  In the VPN client status dialog above, double click on the connection entry, eg “cbamras”. This will open up the dialog in step 18. Click on the network option and click OK.
      21.  Another dialog appears to login to the VPN. The user name is “r” plus your normal username in the company. The password is your normal password in the company plus the numbers in the RSA Secure ID token. These instructions may differ for different corporations.
22.  At this stage you have connected to both the internet and your corporate VPN.

      23.  Some other notes:
       -  to browse the internet, you may need to give your corporate username and password, if it a corporate web proxy is used.

24. How to Reset Network password
On the occasion that your user password has been changed at the network, and your laptop password is out of sync, here are the steps to change the password on the laptop:
- Switch on the laptop and boot until the Windows login prompt.
- Login to Windows using the old password.
- Connect to the office network using Telstra RAS as described in this article.
- Once the laptop has established connection with the office network, the press Ctrl-Alt-Del and Lock the computer.
- Unlock the computer by   Ctrl-Alt-Del  and then enter the old password.
- Then press again Ctrl-Alt-Del and Lock the computer.
- This time, unlock the computer using the new password on the network.
- The laptop should now have the same password as the network.