802.11n router recommendations and opinons...?

I am thinking of getting a 802.11n wireless router. A lot of the
companies use the Atheros 802.11n chipset and there is some talk that
they have drop the connection a lot. So I am wondering if anyone has
any thoughts or recommendations. I might get the Trendnet that was in
today's Fry's ad. Just beginning to investigate the various 802.11n
routers.

Randall wrote:
> I am thinking of getting a 802.11n wireless router. A lot of the
> companies use the Atheros 802.11n chipset and there is some talk that
> they have drop the connection a lot. So I am wondering if anyone has
> any thoughts or recommendations. I might get the Trendnet that was in
> today's Fry's ad. Just beginning to investigate the various 802.11n
> routers.
Can you get it from a place with an easy return deal?

In <(E-Mail Removed)> Jeff Liebermann <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

>$180 will get you an Apple Aiport Extreme. It's simultaneous dual
>band and 802.11n.

It also, at least per the written specs, allows you
to set up "guest access", where the folk on that stream
don't see your side.

But one thing it seems to be missing is a QOS setting
for VOIP phones. you didn't happen to run into
that capability, perchance?

--
__________________________________________________ ___
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
(E-Mail Removed)
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 07:45:14 +0100, LR <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> We have been using a couple of freecom 500GB drives
>> <http://www.freecom.com/ecproduct_detail.asp?ID=3402&CatID=&sCatID=>
>> which we use as storage for up to six people rather than system backups
>
> It's "only" 100Mbits/sec on the ethernet port. The SATA drive is
> probably 3Gbits/sec. With a gigabit interface, you can go much
> faster. I've been benchmarking my backups and simply copies across
> the network. In my never humble opinion, gigabit ethernet is a
> definite requirement.
>
> Ummm... don't forget to backup your backup. I use two NAS boxes. The
> 2nd box is replicated from the first. I haven't found anything I like
> yet. I'm doing compressed image backups of the main NAS server, but
> have not found any software or company that makes me feel safe.
>
>> and I was hoping I could either use one of these on the USB port or use
>> our portable USB drive as I don't wish to add a switch to the network,
>> having only 3 ethernet ports is annoying.
>
> Add the switch but remember that the bottleneck will be the
> 100Mbit/sec ethernet at the NAS drive. If all your traffic shares a
> common cable or port, it's a bottleneck.
>
>> We have recently been given a
>> 320GB USB drive which now contains backup's for the windows machines
>> <http://www.goclickfree.com/products_portablebackup.php>
>> but I haven't had a good play with it yet.
>
> Nothing wonderful about those drives. I can't tell if they're FAT32
> or NTFS. The latest fad in backups is to backup by file type. Most
> vendors have added that feature. For example, the Arcsoft TotalBackup
> software that came with the Simpletech drive will do that:
> <http://www.arcsoft.com/products/totalmediabackup/>
> The catch is that most of these products are totally useless for
> backing up the entire drive and getting literally everything. That's
> what I want. I want to be able to restore a machine to its original
> condition without missing anything. Sure, I have to deal with big
> bloated files and useless garbage, but that's the price of image
> backups. Besides getting everything, image backups are also much
> faster than file by file. One image backup program I've bought and
> tried 1.5GBytes/minute to a USB2 drive.
>
>
>
>
I like the Acronis TI products for that.

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:13:29 -0400, George <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>> I like the Acronis TI products for that.
>
> Why do you like it? Much as I value everyone's opinions, they're
> kinda useless without the attendent testimonials.


Trying to image a running machine always makes me wonder if I got a good
snapshot. Assuming Windows boxes then with TI it all depends on your
apps being VSS aware. A few years back they just weren't ready for prime
time. What I used to do previously was boot up on the recovery CD. Then
you were really sure nothing was open or uncommitted.

>
> I tried Acronis image backup about 2 years ago and had the same
> problem I had with every other image backup program that backs up
> while Windoze is running. Files that change during the backup appear
> on the image as corrupted garbage. What inspired my recent search for
> the one true backup solution was having two important hard disk drives
> fail after a relatively short running period (2 years).
>
> In one case, I had run a DVD backup using Farstone DriveClone 5.1:
> <http://www.farstone.com>
> back in Dec 2008. I just noticed that this product isn't offered on
> their web site any more (it was last week). When I restored from the
> backup, I received a boot error which indicated that the registry was
> corrupted. No problem as I was able to restore it from backups I made
> using ERUNT. However, there were a variety of other file corruptions
> that pointed to other open programs and files were also corrupted.
> Support was totally useless and could only answer my questions with
> more questions. To add to the confusion, the machine would not boot
> the XP CD or recovery console. Both resulted in a blue screen and a
> stop 0x0000007B error. The failed SATA drive was a Samsung, while the
> replacement was a Western Dismal. After much Googling (and 4 days of
> worrying), I discovered that I had to disable AHCI IDE emulation to
> get the Western Digital drive to work.
>
> A week later, another drive died (Maxtor 80GB SATA). For this
> adventure, I used DriveClone Express 6.0. This one did NOT run from
> Windoze but booted from a CD or USB flash drive. No open file
> corruption. It worked much better until I had to backup a failing
> hard disk. Drive Clone Express 6.0 would proceed until it hit a CRC
> error, and quit with an Error 0x17. My email to support (no phone
> support) asking for a list of errors and how to bypass a CRC error
> were answered with "run chkdsk /f /r". In addition, their built in
> chkdsk feature returned "invalid argument" if I checked the /F box.
> Nothing like customer debugged software. I quickly switched back to
> Norton Ghost 2003 (floppy disk boot) but the drive died in the middle
> of the backup. By pure luck, all was not lost. The customer had a 2
> month old backup on his SimpleTech backup drive using Arcsoft
> TotalMedia Backup. I reinstalled Windoze XP, updated, restored from
> the backup, and then spent the next 3 days untangling the mess. It
> was great for restoring the user files, but useless for system files.
> Fortunately, the really important files all came back. I also had to
> do it twice because I mis-spelled the user name. Yet another backup
> program that runs from Windoze that doesn't work quite right.
>
> I note that Acronis True Image:
> <http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/>
> offers:
> Live Backups
> Keep working right through your backup for maximum convenience.
> which in my never humble opinion, is an invitation to a repeat
> performance of my aforementioned backup horror stories.
>
> So, now you have what I consider to be typical problems with backup
> software. Back in about 2002, I tried using Acronis backup at a local
> ISP. I forgot the exact details but I have correspondence log
> somewhere that details a long and disgusting horror story. $500 and
> many hours wasted trying to make that mess work.


>
> I'll probably try Acronis True Image 2009 and try to break it. I have
> a few drives with CRC error floating around the office. At least I
> know some of the impending problems. However, it will have to wait. I
> have to deliver the restored machines and I'm out of diskspace on my
> assortment of USB drives because I've been furiously backing up
> everything in sight. I'm also headed for a colonoscopy on Weds, which
> is a good excuse for a few days off.
>

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

>
> Ummm... fire up the task manager and look at the huge list of programs
> running in the background. All of them (and their data and log files)
> are susceptible to corruption. At this point, I'm abandoning my quest
> for a program that runs from Windoze, and only looking at programs
> that boot from a CD or flash drive.
>
I should have said minimal stuff was open. I haven't had any issues
imaging such systems or any that are VSS aware.

TI will build a some flavor Linux bootable recovery CD of itself and
they also have a plugin for Bart PE.

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

> Actually, the DISKPART program is available for XP:
> <http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=300415>
> If the flash drive boot works, it eliminates my major objection to
> backing up from a running system. Thanks.... I'll give it a try.
>

And you can always use the BartPE plugin and build a BartPE which will
either boot from a CD or from flash.