Author Archive
Buying a Socket 771 Quad-Core Xeon CPU
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Ivan's Tech Talk on December 21st, 2008
I’ve recently spent time researching Socket 771 Xeon CPUs, to figure out options when upgrading or building from scratch, finally I’ve been able to connect some dots. There are two series of Quad-Core socket 771 Xeon available: The Clovertown 53XX and the Harpertown 54XX. The Harpertown was released earlier this year and it boasts more on-board cache (12MB vs 8MB on 53XX Xeons) and higher clock rates. Read the rest of this entry »
Dual Quad-Core workstation on a budget – part 2
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Ivan's Tech Talk on December 21st, 2008
Dell Precision 490
In my last post I wrote about trying to obtain a dual quad-core workstation on the cheap, I wrote that buying a new bare-bones dual Xeon setup (case, power supply and empty motherboard) would run $500-$700.
Well the reason I started this article is that I found Dell Precision 490 bare bones systems on E-Bay for as cheap as $150. Read the rest of this entry »
Trendnet TEW-624UB 300 Mbps Wireless N USB Adapter H/W:B1.1R
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Wireless Networking on December 21st, 2008
Trendnet TEW-632BRP
Today I noticed that Fry’s is selling the Trendnet TEW-624UB adapter for only $19 (Price is good until December 23rd) . Last month I paid $59. This cheaper model has the same exact UPC as the $59 version, but the hardware revision listed on the back is B1.1 instead of A1.0. The new packaging doesn’t list its 802.11N as draft anymore. So this $19 adapter is the newest model version. Read the rest of this entry »
New wireless speed record: 71 Mbps with Netgear WNR3500 RangeMax Wireless N Router
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Wireless Networking on December 14th, 2008
I am very excited to be writing this! Finally I’ve seen some decent wireless-n speed with off-the-shelf products. Last week I wrote about finally seeing 38 Mbps with an all Netgear combination: the WNR 3500 Gigabit router and the WNDA 3100 Dual-Band USB adapter. I was so happy to see 38 Mbps then that I didnt really beat on that setup very hard. Well I did more testing with that setup this weekend, and now, I can’t recommend the WNDA 3100 anymore. Things change fast! Read the rest of this entry »
Printing to your Lexmark X9350 over wireless
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Desktop Printing on December 13th, 2008
I’ve been using this printer via USB for some while now, without a hitch. It comes with a wireless adapter built it, so I tried to use that to print with from another machine. No Luck. The other machine was never able to browse to the printer to add it. I was able to get the printer’s web setup via its IP address, and I could even ping the printer from the other machine, but no matter what I tried I couldnt add this printer via the windows “Add Printer” dialog. Read the rest of this entry »
How I test wireless products
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Wireless Networking on December 13th, 2008
Netgear WNDR 3300
I’m explaining my wireless testing in detail with this post so I can abbreviate more and hopefully make it quicker to write up product reviews later on. After installing the wireless router and adapter, the main way I test is to do lots of file copies between my test machine and a file server directly attached to the wireless router. I copy the same amount of data each test pass, so I just have to measure how long it takes, and do some basic math to arrive at the effective throughput in millions of bits per second (Mbps). Read the rest of this entry »
Review: Buffalo DriveStation External USB 2.0 Hard Drive 1TB
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Product Reviews on December 10th, 2008
Everyone (or just me?) has a few hard drives full of pictures, songs, video, and software. If you want to back all of that up, DVDs are not practical. You gotta get a BIG external hard drive you can move from computer to computer. I’m very happy to be able to write a positive review. The Buffalo DriveStation has exceeded my expectations! Read the rest of this entry »
Dual Quad-Core workstation on a budget – part 1.
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Computer Builds on December 5th, 2008
I use a Dell precision 490 at work, and it’s wonderful. Two Quad-Core 2.0GHz Xeon E5335′s, 4GB RAM, Raid 0 Striped HDDs. With 8 cpu’s I can run a lot of virtuals and still use the machine.
But I’ve been spoiled by this machine, and now I want one for home. Unfortunately they are expensive. As configured that work machine was over $3,000. Well worth it, but thats out of my budget.
So my project, and the subject of this article, is to see how cheaply I can duplicate the performance of my dell precision 490 workstation. Read the rest of this entry »
The experts help me figure out my WLAN problems
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Wireless Networking on December 2nd, 2008
I asked my linkedin extended network to help me figure out why I was getting such lousy WLAN performance. This was my question:
Why is WLAN still so slow? How come wireless-N products don’t test significantly faster than plain old 802.11G?
I’ve been doing lots of performance testing of WLAN products and writing up the results on my blog (www.bohannontech.com). I was excited at first because I bought some nice new 802.11N 270Mbps products from all of the major brands, Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, and Trend. These products often show a connection speed of 270Mbps, but the actual speeds of file copies is terrible – some as slow as 6 Mbps, and this is with 2 computers in the same room. When I run the same tests with wired Ethernet, I will consistently get 80Mbps.
Has anyone been able to get a real performing wireless-N setup and if so, can you recommend any products? Read the rest of this entry »
I finally saw 38 Mbps of throughput over wireless
Posted by Ivan Bohannon in Wireless Networking on November 30th, 2008
After nearly two weeks of performance testing, and using about a 12 different products, I seemed to have stumbled on the fastest wireless-n configuration to date:
A NETGEAR WNR3500 in 300Mbps mode at Channel 6,10 and a NETGEAR WNDA 3100.
The windows connection speed on my test PC showed 300 Mbps, and I had to have my test machine in the same room as the WNR3500.
The first test run was fairly fast, about 27 Mbps. The second test run was slower, about 25 Mbps, but during both of those tests I saw throughput spike to the high 30s, so I knew it could go faster if I got a “clean” run.
3rd time was a charm, I got clean test run that measured at 38 Mbps. Hey after a disappointing two weeks of product testing, that’s the fastest non-Ethernet connection I’ve seen. Read the rest of this entry »
