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Home networks and antivirus software

The folks over at Practically Networked recently posted an article that deserves to be emphasized - when you have a home network, you need to have up-to-date anti-virus software running on all of the PCs in the home network, not just on some of them. Any PC that is connected to the Internet leaves you exposed to viruses coming in - and once they get it through one PC, they can easily infect the rest of the PCs on your network.

One thing to keep in mind is that most of the large ISPs now provide anti-virus software to their subscribers for free. One example is Comcast. They give McAfee VirusScan free to their users - if you're a Comcast subscriber get the free software here. Don't think the software is really free? Well, Comcast emphasizes that it is here - read more.

Here's some resources for other ISPs:

-Adelphia says they provide free antivirus software to their residential customers as well - if you are an Adelphia customer use this page to find out more (looks like you do have to log in).

-Charter provides free anti-virus as well - more info here.

-SBC Yahoo! DSL service also provides free anti-virus - info here.

-EarthLink's free antivirus software can be found here.

Wi-Spy: New gadget to help fix home network interference

Ever suddenly experience degraded wireless network performance for no apparent reason? I certainly have.

Most people know that microwaves, cordless phones and baby monitors can interfere with your home wireless network's performance and cause your connection speed to slow down or you to lose your connection alltogether. I for one have a nasty habit of leaving the baby monitor right by my laptop - duh!

Well, now there is a new small gadget to help you diagnose wireless interference problems. It's called the Wi-Spy and it is a customized USB key that you plug into a USB port on your computer. The Wi-Spy then proceeds to analyze the 2.4 GHz frequency band in real-time and provide you with all kinds of charts and graphs. You can even record what is going on and play it back later.

Wi-Spy provides some telltale example patterns of what the signal will look like if you are experiencing a microwave interfering with your wireless network for example. This reminds me a lot of the handheld ultrasound my wife rented when she was pregnant with our son. We listened for our son's heartbeat, but there were all kinds of swishing sounds going on - hard to tell what they were! Thankfully the company provided a CD of what a typical heartbeat sounded like, and what some of the other sounds were that we were hearing.

Here's a screen shot of the Wi-Spy in action:

This is a pretty geeky device - I think most people can just try to keep cordless phones and other wireless devices away from their laptops, wireless routers and computers and they will be fine - but, for the more serious home networking aficionados, and for home network installers, this seems like a great tool.

The Wi-Spy retails for $99 - very inexpensive for what it does. You can buy it directly from the manufacturer, MetaGeek (what a great name).

TiVo Thinking About Ditching The Upfront Hurdle

TiVo Thinking About Ditching The Upfront Hurdle   
Davis Freeberg writes "In a candid interview with Bloomberg news, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers discussed what he's been able to accomplish thus far at TiVo and the direction that he'd like to take the company in the future.  During the interview he offered a lot of great information, but the most interesting piece is that TiVo is considering offering a subscription only model for their subscribers.  Once someone uses a TiVo it will be difficult to go back to the generic PVR.  By giving new consumers the opportunity to try TiVo without making a $300 investment, the company can expand their appeal beyond just the early adopter crowd.  Rogers also talks extensively about his background with NBC, his time at law school and the work that he did as a Congressional aide."  That's funny... it's been almost three years since we suggested TiVo should do exactly that and people thought we were crazy.             

DSL Gateways Could Open the Door to the Digital Home, New Report Says

Emerging residential gateway products could become the linchpin technology to bring together the growing array of consumer digital devices, says HeavyReading.com.

Read the full article here - DSL Gateways Could Open the Door to the Digital Home, New Report Says

Home network and computer security very low - study says

A study conducted by America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance says that home networks and the computers on them are wide open to attacks.

Key findings include:

• 81% of computers lack core protections (recently updated anti-virus software, a properly configured firewall, spyware protection)
• 56% of computers lack current virus protection
• 44% of computers lack a properly configured firewall
• 38% of computers lack any spyware protection software (actually I would have thought this would be a lot higher)

There's also some interesting wireless networking specific information in the survey results. They found that 53% of the respondents who were using a wireless network had WEP encryption  or WPA encryption turned on - this is much higher than I would have expected. Of course that still leaves 47% having no encryption at all on and leaving their wireless communications basically wide open to hackers.

Full results of the online security survey can be found here.

New Linksys router takes home networking to next level

Linksys has announced a new wireless router that also includes what they are calling a 'storage link' which lets you add as much storage on to your network as you want by simply plugging a USB hard drive or flash drive into the router. This is a really exciting enhancement because it could provide a really inexpensive way to add network attached storage to your home network (without having to buy a specialized network attached storage device). Pricing of this new router, the Linksys WRTSL54GS Wireless-G Media Storage Link Router with Speed Booster, has not yet been announced.

Linksys describes the router as four devices in one:

• First, there's the Wireless Access Point, which lets you connect Wireless-G, Wireless-B, and other performance-enhanced SpeedBooster devices to the network.
• There's also a built-in 4-port full-duplex 10/100 Switch to connect your wired-Ethernet devices together.
• There's the Storage Link feature that lets you easily add gigabytes of storage space onto your network using readily available USB 2.0 hard drives -- or plug in a USB flash disk, for a convenient way of accessing your portable data files.
• There's a built-in Media Server, which streams music, video, and photos from the attached storage device to any UPnP compatible media adapter.

You can also set the router up so that your storage is accessible from the Internet -- files can be easily downloaded via your web browser. Your files can be available publicly, or you can create password-protected accounts for authorized users.

This ability to access files remotely from anywhere is something that advanced users have done for a long time with services such as Go To My PC. But this has not yet caught on with the mass-market. Network Magic home networking software also offers this ability to access any files on your home network remotely using just an Internet browser. See Network Magic's remote access feature called Net2Go here.