Review: Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2011

You can read my review of Trend's new cloud-based security suite on IT Reviews. It's an interesting concept that seems to work pretty well, especially suited for those who hate getting signature update reminders every time you turn on your notebook.

Review: AVM Fritz!Box Fon WLAN 7390

My review of the successor to the popular Fritz!Box 7270 has now been published by The Inquirer, IT Reviews and ZDNet UK. The new model adds Gigabit LAN and dual-radio Wi-Fi (giving you concurrent 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks) while keeping the impressive telephony features of its predecessor.

And it looks like AVM has listened to my cries for help - it says that MAC spoofing will be added to UK versions of the new firmware for the 7390 - apparently its not something that's used in Germany. This firmware also brings a brand new interface to the Fritz!Box, with a handy  overview home screen and revised menu structure. It also adds new features including guest Wi-Fi access and full IPv6 operation.

Note that the Fritz!Box 7390 has dropped in price since my review was published, and can now be bought for well under £200.

The Fritz!Box 7390 now has internal antennas for the dual-radio Wi-Fi

It has four Gigabit LAN ports, plus 3 phone ports and 2 USB ports

The internal antennas give it a sleek look

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Review: Draytek Vigor 2110Vn

My review of this VoIP router for Computeractive has just been published. It's a decent product if you know what you're doing and can live with its odd looks.

How to check your Wi-Fi security for free

With the news that around 25% of UK domestic wireless routers could be running unsecured or with weak encryption hitting the mainstream media, no doubt lots of techies around the country will be getting panic calls from friends and family this evening.

Checking Wi-Fi security is easy if you have access to the router and know what you're doing, but what about walking granny through the procedure? Wi-Fi scanning tools such as Inssider have the same problem. There is one handy alternative that could help, as long as the person on the other end of the phone can use a web browser. Cisco's free Wireless Networks Security Scan (powered by Cisco-owned Pure Networks) works a treat in most cases.

Click on the 'Start Scan' link and you'll be prompted to install an ActiveX add-on (it only works with Internet Explorer 6 or later). Accept this (choose 'install this add-on for all users' in the Info Bar warning) and the scan will start. It takes a few minutes to complete the scan before presenting a report.

I've found it's not very accurate on a lot of things (it doesn't recognise MS Security Essentials, for instance), but the main point here is that it tells you what the Wi-Fi security settings are. Click on the 'Wireless' seciton under the scan summary at the left for the Wi-Fi encryption details. OK, it classes WEP as 'secure', but at least it's a quick check to tell you what kind of security is in place without firing up the router interface or poking into Windows wireless settings. It also tells you whether the SSID has been changed from the default, although in my case it was wrong, probably because it's a new router model.

Acer C20 pico projector

I've just written an article for ZDNet's First Take blog about the new Acer C20 pocket projector. This is a 20-ANSI lumen device costing £280.

Review: Netgear ProSafe GS110TP smart switch

My review of this interesting new entry-level smart switch has now been published by V3.co.uk and ZDNet UK. It's an 8-port model with PoE capability and twin SFP uplink ports.

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Review: Solwise Mediaxtream PL1000

My review of the Solwise Gigabit powerline adapters has now been published by Computeractive. As I noted earlier, Solwise reported that the original models had a power supply fault that has now been fixed. Replacement units have been sent free of charge to all the original customers.

Review: Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4

My review of the 4-bay Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra has just been published by IT Reviews. It's a decent product with lots of interesting features, albeit with a few caveats for those new to NAS devices and media streaming.

Review: TP-Link 300Mbps High Gain Wireless N USB adapter

I'm a great fan of low-cost networking kit. Perhaps it's because I remember spending almost £100 on my first router, a four-port Linksys 100Mbps model that didn't even have wireless, and because in my magazine work we regularly played with stuff costing ten times that amount.

So when TP-Link offered me this budget adapter to have a look at, I couldn't resist. At £15 ex. VAT (cheapest price on Froogle is £16.31 inc. VAT at the time of writing), it's not really a rock-bottom price - you can pick up 802.11n dongles for under a tenner (like my own Tenda W311U from Ebuyer). At that price you usually get single-stream 150Mbps 11n models, although some 300Mbps models are starting to appear for under £10. The TP-Link TL-WN822N claims to offer not only full dual-stream 300Mbps performance, but superior range courtesy of its twin high gain (3dBi) external antennas.

That sounds like something crying out to be tested, so I was happy to oblige. To test network throughput, I used Passmark's Performance Test, which is a great general purpose benchmarking tool. The Advanced Networking module can measure TCP (or UDP) throughput for fixed or variable block sizes - I leave it at the default of 16,384-byte fixed blocks for TCP performance. It's not writing to the hard disk, so it gives a pretty good idea of raw network performance.

But first things first. The TL-WN822N comes smartly packaged with a 1.5m USB cable, quick installation leaflet and an 8cm mini-CD with the drivers. I tried plugging it into Windows 7 without the drivers installed to see whether Windows 7 could identify it, but no joy. Even worse, the drivers on the CD were unsigned, so I grabbed a set of newer WHQL-certified drivers from TP-Link's website. There's an optional client utility included for use with XP, but this doesn't install for Windows Vista/7.

At least the packaging doesn't look cheap

It's an extremely ugly product, with a single large green status light, a QSS button (TP-Link's WPS-compatible one-touch connect system) and two adjustable antennas that can rotate 180 degrees. The the USB cable comes out of the front, which isn't very elegant. It measures 9 x 7 x 1.5cm with the antennas folded. It supports WEP, WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK encryption.

After installation, the adapter connected happily to my Fritz!Box 7270 router at 11n speeds of 300Mbps. Checking in device manager, I found that you can set the 2.4GHz mode to almost any combination of standards - I set it to 11n-only mode for my tests. I compared it to my cheapo Tenda 150Mbps dongle and a Fritz WLAN USB Stick N (which is a 300Mbps dual-band 2.4/5GHz model).

My test environment is a fairly typical (well, for tech writers at least..) domestic setup, with the router on my desk in the living room. There is one room (two brick cavity walls and one breeze-block partition wall) between the router and the back garden, which is where I do the range tests. Conveniently, the bottom of the garden is 25m away, and not in line of sight of the router. There are also many other Wi-Fi routers broadcasting in the neighbourhood - on a normal day up to 10 SSIDs can be seen.


Near-field performance

I tested near-field performance with the adapters one metre away from the router, then tested them all again at 25m. I used my Acer Aspire One netbook running Windows 7 for all the tests.

TP-Link at 1m

FRitz WLAN at 1m

Tenda at 1m

Aspire One internal at 1m

This was quite surprising. The Fritz adapter managed 62.5Mbps, the Tenda 60.5Mbps and the TP-Link a whopping 73Mbps. The internal Atheros 11g adapter on the Aspire One managed 20.9Mbps.  The Tenda shows the most stable performance, and also highlights the fact the 150Mbps adapters are actually very good value, and with a strong signal can give almost identical performance to a 300Mbps adapter (where they fall down is on resilience to interference, which can affect range in noisy environments). But it's an impressive start for the TP-Link.

Far-field performance

At 25m, as expected the graphs look very different. In my normal test location I have found very few products able to give decent results, and in this test the Tenda dongle could not even establish a connection.

TP-Link at 25m

Fritz WLAN at 25m

Aspire One at 25m

The Fritz (4.9Mbps) and Aspire One (3.9Mbps) adapters give similar mediocre results, whereas the TP-Link returned a very impressive 11Mbps. Checking the signal strengths using Inssider, it confirmed that the TP-Link was able to pick up much fainter signals. Also, with the USB cable and adjustable antennas, you have more freedom to position it to get a decent signal. As you can see from the graph, there were still some pretty bad dropouts, but it never lost the connection completely. The Aspire One took several attempts to complete the test.

I think the figures above pretty much speak for themselves; if you can live with its odd looks, the TP-Link TL-WN822N delivers impressive 802.11n performance, and at this price you can't really go wrong.

Contact details
Web: TP-Link TL-WN822N
Phone: +44 (0) 845 147 0017


Note: This is an original review by me. I received no financial compensation for it, and the sample product was returned to the manufacturer after testing.


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