Tag Archives: network

Cisco Linksys E3200 Wi-Fi Router

Posted on October 5, 2012 in Technology
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I bought the Cisco Linksys E3200 High Performance Dual-Band N Router recently, and it now serves as the primary wireless access point for my wireless network. Like its many other E-series siblings, the E3200 has a minimalist yet stylish look. It’s impressive specifications and performance puts it squarely among the top-end of the wireless-N broadband router product category. This Linksys E3200 replaces my previous Linksys WRT610N which, unfortunately, didn’t last very long. It somehow got stuck in a reboot loop….

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HomePlug Misadventures

Posted on September 16, 2012 in Technology
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HomePlug sounds like a clever solution to home networking. It’s wired networking, but instead of having to run UTP network cables, it uses the power lines in your home. If you’re trying to install a network in your home, and you didn’t already have some sort of infrastructure in place, HomePlug is certainly one of the several options that you might consider. Sadly, I’ve found HomePlug to be somewhat unreliable, and I’d wish I had done enough research to realize…

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Mobile Data is All We’ll Need

Posted on December 24, 2011 in Technology
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The recent furore over the $14K phone bill of a SingTel subscriber shows how much our phone usage patterns have changed in the last decade. Originally used for making voice calls, then moving on to SMS text messages, many of us are nowadays predominantly using our phones for mobile data communications. More specifically, we’re using our phones for mobile access to the Internet. It’s the communication tools and services that’s on the Internet that we care about, not so much…

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COM Tech Days and Recruiting Network Associates

Posted on August 26, 2011 in Technology
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We have for some time wanted to conduct an event styled like Sun Tech Days or Microsoft Tech Days. The sort of conference or workshop that would cover a variety of techie topics. No sales, no marketing, just technology. Of course, considering our resources and our target audience, ours would be just a baby version of what the big companies are doing. It would still be interesting and unique, here in my school, because there aren’t quite other workshops like…

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Fuss About Location Tracking

Posted on April 24, 2011 in Technology
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The recent uproar over location tracking in iOS devices seem to be overblown. Did anyone not realize that their iPhones or iPads could track their location? You can be tracked so many ways. Your favourite iOS device is just one of those many ways of being tracked. Location tracking is so everywhere in the technology of today.

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Inside Singapore’s OpenNet

Posted on March 31, 2011 in Technology

If you’re a network techie like me, you will probably be very interested to know how Singapore’s OpenNet fibre-to-the-home network works. What is the technology that runs the fibre-to-the-home network? How is it related to the fibre optic networks that are already common place in enterprise and campus environments? There isn’t much engineering information you can easily find, at least not from IDA and OpenNet themselves. However, with help from Google search, I’ve managed to find a variety of information…

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Test Your Skills at Outdoing SingTel and StarHub

Posted on November 7, 2009 in Technology

Cisco recently made available an interesting simulation game called myPlanNet. If you’ve played SimCity, as I’m sure most people are familiar with, you’d find some of the concepts similar. In myPlanNet, you are the CEO of a service provider, and what you do is to manage your business as it evolves through the different eras from primitive dial-up, through broadband and mobile connectivity, into the futuristic (although certainly not farfetched) medianet age.

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10 Gigabit Ethernet Line Cards

Posted on May 20, 2009 in Technology

The 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) standard was ratified in 2002, but we finally only got around to installing our first 10GE interface last year. This year, we have another big bunch of 10GE links interconnecting a big bunch of our switches. 10GE still costs a bomb. The Cisco 16-port 10GE line card lists for something like S$80K. Yes, that’s a big sum of money, particularly since the line card on its own is not very useful: You still need a…

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Recruiting Student Network Engineers

Posted on August 14, 2008 in Miscellaneous

We’re starting to recruit student helpers again. They will help us with our network and data centre operations. This is like an internship, a program that we’ve run for one semester already. It is a really exciting opportunity for students as they will get hands-on learning experience working with production enterprise networks and data centres.

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Bungled Software Upgrade

Posted on June 4, 2008 in Technology

Software upgrades are usually not terribly complicated things. Of course, the newly upgraded software many introduce new problems, such as incompatibilities or interoperability issues with other software or systems. The same is not too different for firmware upgrades of network switches. They are not trivial (that’s why you need network engineers…), but they are documented procedures that can be and are routinely carried out by network operators and providers.

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