BrainBeat Productions Multimedia blog

long time reader of this blog will know that I have had problems with my Netgear DG834g router since I upgraded my internet account to ADSL2+ where is would at time drop out every few minutes. Now with Internode my isp offering annex m on their ADSL2+ extreme plans I decided to bite the bullet and get another. After much searching I decided on the Billion BiPAC 7401VGPM router as I if fully ADSL2+ and annex M compliant.From a lot of reviews I have read it is one of the best routers for throughput while maintaining good line stability. The router also has many other useful features like a b/g wireless capability, VOIP port, strong Firewall, 4 port Ethernet switch.
From my testing of it over the last few days I have found it to be a lot more stable that my previous with me only having it lose syince once other that the times I have restarted the router etc. I have also found that it was it has synced and good speeds but still falling significantly short of the the theoretical maximum speed of ADSL2+ for downstream but on upstream it has been very good with the bes sync of 2.38Mbps. on a throughput front I have been able to download files at up to 1.5MBps and upload at up to 260kBps which are both very good. It seems that the strength of the signal from the wireless antenna is slightly higher that what I has previously making the wireless experience better and faster.

When Setting up the router I was presented with a very large range of options with which you can set. Some reviews have stated that it is too complicated to set up, to some extent I would have to agree that it is not a great router for a beginner as you can certainly get lost in the options. I however feel that the more options available the better as you can set it up exactly how you want it to run as apposed to what some quick setup page can produce. On the web interface I found it to be nice and clean and well laid out It can be hard to find some options as they are places in places where you would not expect them or requiring to go through another page to get to them. Throughout the setup I only came with a few problems one of which as when I turned on the firewall on at all a majority of programms that require acces to the internet could not connect to get the working requires opening the ports they use to connect to the Internet. The other was with my website where I set up a ‘virtual server’ to point to my website but when I tried accessing my website from within my network I was unable to connect and the page would time out. I did some testing and found the it was still working to the Internet but not to my intra net. I ended up finding the only soluting was to set the router to its factory defaults and setting it up again and have found it to be working fine now. I am thinking that there may be a bug in the current firmware causing the problem.

Overall I have found that this is a much better device that what I had been using previously and would recommend anone who is looking to buy a new router to take a look at the Billion 74x range of routers.

For those who are wondering what annex M is, it as a ADSL2+ standard which increases the theoretical maximum upload speed of an ADSL2+ connection from 1.2Mbps to 2.4Mbps. And I hear you say why is this important and the simple answere is the higher the speed of my upload (or bandwidth) the more people who can connect to my website and at faster speeds.

Today I bought myself the recently released Xbox 360 Live Vision from BigW for $58.85 (rrp $59.95). The Xbox 360 Live Vision is essentially a web cam for you Xbox 360 which you can use on an PC but you can not use a normal web cam on the 360. The Vision has been created to provide competition to the Playstation 2’s Eye Toy. So far the Vision is only usable in 2 games ( Uno and Totemball ) and for taking pictures to use as you gamer tag avatar. There are a whole lot more games in development that use the Vision of which some will allow you to capture you face and put in on a character in game. I havetried it out using the free Totem ball game and found the the controling of the Totem ball was quite easy but I found my shoulders got sore quickly from playing it. The package includes the Vision camera, an Xbox live headset, 1 month gold Xbox live membership and a code to unlock the full version of the Xbox Live Arcade game Uno. I do recommend all 360 owners to purchase it as It will allow for more game play options but as there are only 2 games that use it yet I would wait until more come out.

On Friday i bought a Usbex Landrive IDE external hard disk enclosure and a 320Gb IDE Western Digital hard disk as a quick and easy backup solution. I was after an external hard disk as not all files will fit on a DVD and Blue Ray and HD DVD solutions are still rare and very expensive and are unlikely to be as fast either, Also a hard disk is reusable. I also thought that as this enclosure has a network adapter it could be a useful place to store data that can be accessed anywhere on the network any time of the day without having to run a full time file server.

The installation process of the hard disk is very easy as all you have to do is unscrew the 4 thumb screws and 2 other screws and slide the casing off. Then you connect up the cables and place the IDE hard disk into the enclosure, screw the drive into the enclosure with the provided screws. Lastly slide the casing back on and screw in the screws.

The Landrive has 2 methods for connection to a PC, these are USB 2 and Ethernet and comes with cables to connect through both. To use the drive you must first connect the Landrive up to your computer via an Ethernet connection and load up a web browser and load up the web interface. Through the web interface on the status page you can change its name,the admin’s login name and password, timezone (which in my case I could not set properly as they did not have the time zome for me in Adelaide) language, and if you want it to act as a DHCP server ( control the assigning of IP addresses of devices on the network).The status page also shows what hard drisk you have installed in it, the ammount of free space and the total capacity of the drive. The IP Config page allows you to set the Landrive to either get 1 automatically through DHCP or set a static one. The Maintenance page allows you to upload new firmware, reboot the Landrive, and reset the setting to the defaults. In order to make the you need to go to the Disk utility page and format the drive this was amazingly fast as it was completed in about 1 second. The disk utility page also has an option to set when the hard disk should sleep after no activity, and a scan disk utility to search the hard disk for errors.On th Samba administration page you can create directories on the drive, make those directories viewable by computers on the network and set password protection on directories you want to restrict the access to. Lastly on the FTP server page you can set the Landrive to be an FTP server which you could make available to the Internet or just your intranet depending on you Routers settings and set you user accounts with various access levels.

So far the Landrive has preformed well with no problems appearing after being connected to the network for the last few days. The speed of file transfers over the network is a little slow managing about 13Mbps but is a lot faster while connected via a USB 2 connection. This slow network speed mean that it can’t be used to store Digital Television recordings as most channels average 15Mbps for their network stream. While the device is on it runs very quietly as there is no fans and it deadens the vibration of the drive fairly well. As it is passively cooled it does get a bit warm maintaining a case temperature of about 40°c this is probably ok for now but on a warm day it may be a good idea to either switch it off or try and cool it down a bit.

All up I would have to say that the Landrive is not a bad choice for and external hard disk enclosure especially if you want to use it on a network, I think it is also good value. I was able to buy the Landrive for $105 and a hard disk to go in $155 from Getright computers in Adelaide. Totaling $260 for a 320 external USB 2 hard disk and NAS(Network-attached storage) drive.

Brainbeat Prodcutions