As I have mentioned on this blog more times than I care to remember, I'm a bit of a geek.  I love tech, love making tech work well, and love integrating tech into anything where tech can be integrated.  One of the places I have decided to integrate as much tech as possible is in my home.  This is not unique, most homes nowdays are getting exceedingly complex, simply because the range of "cool" devices for the home is growing.  In fact, home networks are sometimes as complex as a small business or small corporate networks.  

Unfortunately for most people, integrating tech into their home means huge expense, because the only choices are to buy (more expensive and generally poor performing) wireless devices, or to retrofit a finished home with wiring to support the necessary infrastructure.  Retrofit usually means tearing apart walls, rebuilding walls, and trying to snake cables through existing walls.

Knowing the pain that this causes, when I was building my house 8 years ago, I wanted to run tons of wire to support anything that I could dream up.   Technology 8 years ago wasn't anywhere near where it is today - but I knew it would get there, and I knew awesome hardware would only come down in price.

For starters, I wanted multiple three way jacks in every room of the house - each containing two pieces of CAT-5e (For phone and gigabit ethernet, or dual gigabit ethernet) and a piece of quad-shield RG6 (for cable TV).  I also wanted to run speaker wire in the living room for surround sound, and speaker wire into all of the bedrooms and the ceilings of the bathrooms.  Additionally, I wanted to install my own alarm system - I didn't want the cookie cutter piece of crap my homebuilder offered - I wanted an alarm with the features I wanted, the sensors I wanted, and wanted it all installed the way I wanted it installed and where I wanted it installed.  Finally, I wanted to run some power wire and RG-6 to several points on the outside of the house so that I could easily install a surveillance system.  At the time, that seemed nutty - but today they are so reasonably priced, I'm glad I ran the wire long ago.

Keep in mind, I decided to build this house when I was 26 years old.  I knew that I wouldn't be able to afford everything right away - but, wire is relatively cheap.  Wiring a newbuilt home is especially affordable when you can run it yourself before the drywall is installed and pay your friends to help with a couple of cases of bud light =).

So... I bought almost two miles of wire.  More quad shield RG-6, CAT-5e, Speaker Wire, Power Wire, and other miscellaneous wire than you could possibly imagine.  Enough wire that it took me two trips in my 1993 Eagle Talon hatchback (with the seats DOWN, mind you) to get it out to my house.  Now, if you saw my house - you'd wonder where in the hell all this wire was going to go.  I live in a modestly sized home (1700-ish square feet) on a slab.  It took an entire weekend - but I ran nearly all of that wire - even to places I didn't know if I would ever need it.

Flash forward 8 years to today.  Nearly every wire has been properly terminated and is active and available for use.  I use business class networking gear and firewall and have a 50 megabit internet connection.  My surveillance system is active and can be monitored even when away from home.  The alarm is exactly the way I wanted it, my home entertainment center is modest but all of the wires are hidden, and all of the rooms upstairs have volume controls and in-wall or in-ceiling speakers.

So - it's done?  No way.  "Done" is not in my DNA.  I continually upgrade and replace hardware, and sell my old goods on eBay to keep the tech fresh in my house.  As my network has grown and gotten faster, it's reach has gotten further (external devices remote from my home), and it has gotten more complex - I decided it was time to start monitoring it.

This is especially more important to me now that some internet service providers are starting to monitor their users and apply caps.  My ISP is not one of those, but it really has myself asking "how much bandwidth do I use?".  Most of my services in my house (netflix, xbox live, vonage, etc) all consume bandwidth just to operate - and to me, these are very much all "black box devices" and I have no idea what they are using.  So I have decided to start a series of articles describing the answers to this very question.  So to start off, I wanted to describe my home network and how I'll be monitoring it with an awesome piece of software provided to me from Paessler called PRTG Network Monitor.

So - below you will find a diagram of the majority of the devices in my home - not everything is on this particular diagram, but the most important bits are:

Crazy eh?  Yeah - I didn't realize how much crap I had until I set out on this trek to start monitoring everything.

So, from the outside world, my home is connected to the internet via a 50 megabit cable connection through a Motorola DOCSIS 3 cable modem.  This connection offers a pretty stable 50 megabits downstream and 5 megabits upstream - more than enough to supply my media devices with the media they need, allow me to VPN into my network to use my resources or monitor surveillance from remote if needed, and provide some extra speed so that surfing the web doesn't slow to a crawl just because I'm watching netflix.

The motorola cable modem meets my home by way of a Cisco ASA 5505 firewall appliance.   From here, access is split through the house via two Gigabit Cisco SRW2016 business class switches - one in the computer room, and another downstairs.

All of the desktop and laptop computers in my house are really focused on performance - they all have SSDs for their boot drives, and on laptops - this is the only drive.  They have a minimum of 8GB of RAM, and powerful processors.  Since space comes at a premium on SSDs - none of my laptops and desktops contain anything more than temporary data.

So where is all of the data?  It's on the server.  The main machine that is the centerpiece of the home is a dual quad core Nehalem Xeon server with 4TB of RAID5 disk space, 24GB of RAM, and dual gigabit ethernet adapters.  This contains a basic O/S install that houses a few fileshares and a copy of VMWare server.  VMWare runs five seperate Virtual machines - a Domain Controller, a Subversion Server, a Web/Email Server (internal only - used for development testing), a generic Windows XP Snapshot VM that I use whenever I want to "test" a piece of software and then revert to a clean image, and a newly added PRTG Network monitor machine.

The rest of the devices in the home are either wired or wireless, but are mostly either network appliances or network connected media devices, printers, or other simple systems.

So - that is a quick introduction to what is going on in my world.  This network started with a single domain controller and two laptops and over the years has evolved into this behemoth.  This network not only keeps me entertained at home, it also supports my livelihood.  Being a professional developer by trade, this network often serves as an important test bed for products or technologies that I am working on.

As you can see, without a proper monitoring solution - outages or breaks in my network can be as hard to find in my home as they would be in a small corporate network.  Keep in mind that networks like mine are becoming more and more commonplace in homes as even the most mundane devices are given wireless network access.

Over the next several months, I am going to be posting several articles ranging from the installation and configuration of PRTG Network Monitor (in my experience, the best network monitoring product you can find, bar none), to real world findings as I continually monitor the network I just described.  Specifically, I am interested to see exactly how much data I use over a month, a quarter, and a year with devices like AppleTV, XBox, Vonage, etc.  It is by monitoring my usage that I hope to put some sense behind the bandwidth caps that some ISPs are enforcing nowdays.

Now - keep in mind, I don't torrent, I don't host a website or e-mail server in my home, etc.  Regardless of how crazy my network configuration seems - my usage model is pretty standard.  I'm hoping that my real world results will equate similarly with that of many of my readers, and I hope you will find it interesting.

Next up - I will be discussing installation and configuration of PRTG Network monitor.  Stay Tuned!

So - I'm working on some android ports of some of my popular apps through my company, GeekUtils.  I have a Nexus One for testing with a phone - but I didn't have a tablet and decided it was time to buy one.

I had some Best Buy gift cards floating around, and I wanted to pick up my new toy in the store on a Friday - so buying my first choice (The Asus Transformer) was out.  I read good things about the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and I like the form factor (it's about the same size as my iPad 2) - so thats what I went with.

Writing an in-depth review at this point is impossible, simply because I have not had that much time to play with it - besides, there are already hundreds of reviews out there.  Instead, I'll post some categorized "likes and dislikes" from my point of view.

Aesthetics - Likes:

• Size: Slightly narrower than the iPad2 and slightly taller, it averages out to "about" the same size.  It's *barely* thinner than the iPad2, but if you've installed the smart cover on your iPad2, like most people have, it's about the thickness of the smart cover itself thinner.... they're that close.
• Speakers: This tablet is obviously intended to be used the majority of the time in landscape mode.  Like the iPad, orientation switches automatically - but unlike the iPad, the speakers are on opposite ends on the short sides of the device, the dock connector is on one of the long sides, and the volume/wake switch is on the long side opposite the dock connector.  It's a bit weird to get used to, because with the iPad2, I use it mostly in portrait orientation - with the galaxy, it spends 90% of it's time in landscape.  This does, however, create some cool bonuses:
  • The dock connector is on the long side.  If you get a dock with a keyboard, similarly to the Asus Transformer, this thing would look about like a mini laptop.  Many people like to browse webpages on their iPad2's in landscape mode, but with the dock connector on the bottom - unless you are using a bluetooth keyboard, you don't have this "convertible" feel.
  • The speakers being on the left and right sides when held in landscape create a great spatial awareness if you're playing a game or watching a movie that takes advantage of stereo sound.  The iPad2 only has one speaker - on the bottom, so unless you're using headphones, you don't get the same quality of audio.
• The screen is good - resolution is 1280x800, which is slightly higher than the iPad2's 1024x768 screen.  It's not so much higher that it makes you ooh and ahh, but it's definately slightly more crisp.
• The weight is good - slightly lighter than the iPad - but I believe this is due to the amount of plastic - which, you will see below, is one of my dislikes.

So, today I was looking through one of my favorite sites for Apple news and I came across an article entitled "AT&T Sued Over Alleged Overbilling for iOS Device Data Usage".  Apparently, there is a class action lawsuit brewing alleging that AT&T overbills iPhone and iPad users for data usage.  Unfortunately, I think there are a couple of flaws in this lawsuit.

The first is that the plaintiffs are stating that AT&T systematically overbills clients for data usage even when the device is not using any data.  Of course, the yardstick they are using to measure that the phone is "not using data" is the claim that they are turning off push notifications, turning off applications, and allowing the phone to sit unused.  The main problem here is that there is no evidence cited that will prove that the phone or pad isn't actually using data.  What do I mean?  Let me explain.

First, Push Notifications.  The way Apple implements push notifications, in some instances, the device STILL RECEIVES the notification - it just ignores it if you have disabled it.  Some apps (like Facebook) have their own push notification control panel, while others (and most of them) use the standard Apple provided push notification management system where your decision to opt-out of notifications is made by visiting the Notification Settings control panel on the device.  In this control panel, you can disable all notifications, or you can go in on an app-by-app basis and disable alerts, badges, and sounds.  Disabling all three of these supposedly disables the notification.

Here's the kicker - from what I can tell - this doesn't DISABLE push notifications - it simply tells your device when they come in to ignore them.  I've implemented a push notification server for my company, GeekUtils.  When a developer like myself implements a push notification server a couple of things happen.

• User installs app that has notifications
• App asks user whether they would like to receive notifications
• If the user says yes, the device provides a unique push identifier that the developer can then use to send push notifications to that specific device.
• If the user says no, the device provides a unique push identifier that the developer can then use to send push notifications to that specific device.
• User receives (or doesn't receive) push notifications depending on their initial setting
• At some point in time, the user decides to change their mind and if they were RECEIVING notifications, they turn it off.  If they were not, they turn them on.  At this point, the user is configuring their opt-in or opt-out status in a device control panel OUTSIDE of the application that will push.  This changes nothing from the developer's perspective, and the developer never receives notification of this settings change.

So - many of you out there are in the same predicament that I am in....  you have a DVR loaned to you from your cable company, and you have an external SATA (eSATA) drive attached to expand your storage.  In my case, Time Warner is my provider and I have an Explorer 8300HD.  Thankfully, Time Warner leaves the eSATA port on the 8300HD enabled, so you can buy yourself a nice SATA hard drive, a cheap eSATA case, and then assemble it and hook it to your DVR to instantly expand your storage.

When I first read that this was a possibility, I built a relatively benign 250GB external drive to hook up.  I wanted to test to make sure that it really worked without dumping a lot of dough in the event it either didn't work at all, or didn't work right.

So I originally purchased a Western Digital Caviar Blue 250GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Drive, and an Antec MX-1 External Enclosure and a cheap eSATA cable.  The Antec has a decent appearance, is reasonably priced, and it includes a nice mechanism for keeping the drive cool and happy.   Once the products arrived, I dropped the hard drive into the case, shut the power off on my DVR (disconnected from the wall - the normal power button just puts it in standby), and plugged in the eSATA cable to the DVR and the Antec.

To make sure that the drive was recognized, I powered the Antec first, then I plugged the DVR back in.  Much to my suprise, the DVR booted up and instantly recognized the Antec as supplemental storage.  I happily began using the DVR as you normally would - and then ran into an issue.....

I ran out of space.  Even worse, I had many shows on my DVR that I didn't want to lose - but I really needed a bigger drive.

Ordering a new drive is no problem.  Replacing the 250 with a bigger drive also isn't a problem.  Backup of the data, however, IS a problem.  I shut everything down and decided that I would try to use something like Norton Ghost to make an image of the disk, and then would move the image on to the new drive.

Big problem - the file format is proprietary.  Plug the drive into a computer, and it simply shows up blank, unformatted, uninitialized, etc - the "status" depends on what app you use.

So I started to look all around the net.  I knew that somewhere out there had to be a product similar to Ghost that would just do a bit-by-bit dupe of a drive.  After many frustrating hours of searching, I seemed to have found it.  Called Active@ Disk Image, it looked like the perfect product.  Seems like it will do normal "Ghost" type functions where you can back up known formats to images, restore images, etc - but more importantly - it had a "Clone" feature that looked like it was exactly what I wanted - a bit-by-bit clone of a disk regardless of format.

So, I got a copy.  I will do a full writeup in a future article complete with screenshots, but let me just tell you that it made a very simple task of taking the data from my 250GB drive and cloning it on to a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Drive.  I knew the copy was good, Active@ Disk Image seemed like a very solid product - but I really wondered if it would work.  Once the copy finished, I put the 1TB drive into the Antec enclosure, plugged everything in, and Viola - guess what - all of my shows were still there, and the amount of available space had tripled.

Look for the full writeup in a future post, but in the meantime - if you're looking to dupe any drive of an unknown format - give this software a shot.  They even have a free trial where you can try it out.

So, admittedly, I'm a bit of a technology geek...  I enjoy reading about new technology, watching how that technology gets applied, and watching how new technology starts out inaccessible to the masses, but eventually ends up in the most mundane devices in your home.

AMOLED and other flavors of OLED technology are included in these technologies that I have been watching.  Only a couple of short years ago - Sonly launched the first OLED television - an 11" screen that was aesthetically appealing, with a stunning picture, and a price tag north of $10,000 USD.  Now, in 2009 - we have cell phones that are coming with AMOLED screens (The google Nexus One, the Samsung Impression (AT&T)) - meaning that OLED displays are already showing in low cost consumer devices.

Knowing that Samsung is considered one of the pioneers in this field (According to wikipedia, they produce 1 in every 2 OLED displays sold today) - one would assume that the new LED TV's that they are advertising are neatly fitted into this category, and mark the start of the transition of this awesome new technology into everyone's home.

Well... if you assumed that, like i did, you'd be wrong.  It started last winter when they started a huge marketing push for their new LED TV's.  If you watch NFL football, you would have seen these ads all over - because "Samsung LED TV" was one of the sponsors of the NFL broadcasts.  Initially, when I saw these ads, I was excited.  Then I saw retailers like newegg.com - one of the sites I purchase from nearly constantly, creating NEW CATEGORIES in their home theater top level category for LED TV's....  Browse that category, and sure enough - all of these new Samsung sets appear there.

So what's the problem??  Well - the problem is that these are not LED TV's at all.  They are simply LED backlit LCD's - another emerging technology that is becoming very common place rather than the flourescent backlit LCD's of yore.  For example, most netbooks with 10.1" displays are LED backlit, the new iMac and Macbook's are LED backlit, increasing numbers of laptops are LED backlit - but these manufacturers are not falsely advertising these products using the name of an emerging technology.

Now, let me say, although it does not sound like it, I am a HUGE samsung fan.  I have samsung LCDs on all of my desktop computers, I supported and used the blackjack phones until the iPhone came out, and I currently have a Samsung LED-DLP TV that I love (although they are not making it anymore which is a shame).  I'm also a huge newegg.com fan.  This deceptive advertising, however, has me a little peeved.  Just yesterday, I was at our local pizza shop having a pie (Enrico's, for all of you Central Ohio peeps) - and I overheard a conversation where a guy was telling his buddy at the table next to me how his LED TV was technologically superior to his buddies LCD TV.  I felt like saying "You're an idiot" - but guess what - I refrained, because not only does Samsung mislead - so do the retailers.

I'm sure that the total DOLT at best buy who sold him his TV probably didn't read any of the specs on the set and basically told this dude it was OLED.  Another pet peeve of mine are the idiots at consumer electronics stores that shouldn't be selling toasters, let alone PC's and Home Theater components... but thats another story for another blog post.

The moral of the story?  READ THE DAMNED SPECS - don't just buy the hype.  Sure, the new Samsung TV's are beautiful and I'd love to have one.  Additionally, I would easily buy one of the new sets over an older flourescent backlit model simply due to the longevity that LED could provide.  Perfect example of how you should be an educated consumer when you're spending that kind of money, and how you should research what you're getting rather than letting someone else tell you what you're getting.

Update 1/10/10 - LG and several other manufacturers have started selling LED backlit LCD TVs now to compete with this new line of Samsung TVs.  Visiting their websites, I have noticed that everyone EXCEPT Samsung are correctly calling these LED Backlit LCD TVs or LED-LCD TVs.  The most important part is that it still contains LCD in the name.  LED is too easily confused with OLED and Samsung really needs to stop this.

Update 1/11/10 - after a little research, I found that the UK's truth in advertising group (The ASA) Has requested Samsung Pull their ads for the very reason I mentioned above.... click here for the story on cnet.

Update 2/1/10 - After a long note that I sent directly to Newegg.com, I've noticed that they are now correctly lists these TV's as LED-LCD..  nice work, NewEgg - I'm now a fan again. ;)  Good to see you listen to customers.