What’s the best router for my old desktop, three-year-old laptop, new PC laptop, MacBook, MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPad and HDTV home theater with NetFlix?  We don’t care about the technical stuff, just give us an answer!

You got it!  While routers depend heavily on use-case, we won’t bore you with that.  We own, troubleshoot, and use all of the above stuff and more every day in our own homes.

Here’s the Apple Router we use:

Airport Extreme 802.11N (5TH GEN)

Here’s the gigabit hub we use:
NETGEAR GS105 ProSafe 5-Port Gigabit Ethernet Desktop Switch – 10/100/1000 Mbps

Here’s the article which won us over to the apple router.  We are truly not a Mac people, we’re computer people.  So too is Brian Klug of AnandTech.com: one of the most objective review sites on the net.

Here’s the article link which discusses the AirPort Extreme 5th Generation

The article really gets technical!  In the interest of brevity, here’s an excerpt from the conclusion section of the article:

I guess the reason that I personally use an Airport Extreme (in conjunction with another device for NAT) is that it’s really one of a small number of 802.11n dual-band APs I’ve tried that actually works without locking up, becoming unstable periodically, dropping the session from overheating when being pushed to 100% for hours, or requiring a daily reboot. There are just so many other consumer level 802.11n APs  that either fall short or are incredibly frustrating and unreliable.

AnandTech Reviewers are never that kind about anything, ever.

Next, for those with a HDTV configuration which includes networking, do not expect to be happy with even the best WiFi connection.  WiFi, even with MiMo can’t hold a candle to a slow and steady cable for streaming.

Why? Because your streaming HD video will always be competing with something for your router’s attention.  Cell phones, laptops, or simply walls with adobe, metal mesh, or plaster wreck the absolute dependability of a solid cable connection.

“I’m not going to put a network cable across my living room to get a better picture!  What’s the best way to get the best of all worlds?”

Power-line Networking / Power-line Ethernet (PLE for brevity)  sounds crazy.  But it works!  Using the electrical wiring in your house, two boxes can establish a rock solid connection between your PlayStation, Xbox 360, Netflix enabled HDTV, Blu-ray Player, & DVR!  Simply plug the home theater devices in to the hub mentioned above, leaving any single port available for Ethernet over power line uplink, plug the last port of the hub in to one EOP box and plug it directly in to an outlet (no extension cords, no multipliers).  Next, plug the other PLE box next to your router anywhere in the same house and your connection will find its own way through the wiring to its match across the house! While some report this up-link can take up to 45 minutes, we have rarely observed more than 60 seconds before PLE is working at full speed!

Here’s a link to one of the faster PLE interfaces.  Again, even the slowest PLE will beat the best modern WiFi in the long run.

For good measure, I’m also going to give you some other router links.  Any one of these will be an order of magnitude  more capable, nimble, and, of course, speedy than what you currently have.

I’m going to rank them by amazon’s popularity which, in this case nearly correlates to overall ease-of-use.

1. Cisco-Linksys E4200 Dual-Band Wireless-N Router
2. Netgear N900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router (WNDR4500)
3. Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR3700

Here’s the clincher:  Most non-industry specific end-users would use Apple hardware if it was less expensive.  We’re not judging, simply stating what we’ve heard time and time again.

That said, the Airport Extreme 5th Generation is just over 20% more expensive than the cheapest router on the list and exactly the same price as the current version of the same router (N900 vs. N600).  Yes there are other routers which cost half as much, but for an extra $80, you’re getting gigabit Ethernet and dual band WiFi. Dual band means that another, non- 5 Gigahertz compliant device can connect to the same router as your MacBook Pro without one slowing the other’s connection to the router.

If you end up going with the Airport Extreme, we personally like these mounts because they let you put your router out of the way )(under a desk, on the inside of a closet, behind a bookshelf, etc).  Routers and cables are ugly.  This mount keeps the router within reach but out of the way.

H-Squared AIRMOUNT-S Air Mount for Airport Extreme

We hope that helps clear some of the mystery up.  As usual, we love your questions!  Call Nerds Limited today! If we’re with clients, don’t worry! Leave us a voice mail and we will call you the moment we’re available to talk.  Phone time is always free so don’t hesitate.  Text or call us 24/7. 505.750.8885 or drop us an email.  Our address is NerdsLimited@Gmail.com

Not everything shared over P2P networks is piracy.  In fact, much of the content delivery on the web is done with private torrents which allow companies to share large files between their different distribution nodes evenly. Spotify uses a peer-to-peer network along with streaming servers to stream music to its desktop music player.  Peercasting networks such as  FreeCast and Rawflow depend upon P2P networks to ensure the fastest possible delivery of their streaming media to listeners worldwide.

If you’ve ever used the free, legal, and open source Linux based OS Ubuntu, you know downloading the whole OS via direct download takes quite a while the torrent link allows you to download the entire file in as little as 10 minutes.  So why would we write about torrents?

Much of Nerds Limited’s repair work involves removing our client’s precious data from computers crawling with viruses.  Some of which infected our client’s systems because the systems had been used to download torrents (legal or otherwise) without proper discretion.  This article is intended to give users, both Windows and Mac a few tips about torrent selection and proper torrent protection.

Windows 7

Windows users who download all of their system updates and use a good free or premium Anti-Virus application (MS Security Essentials, and ESET’s NOD32 respectively) aren’t nearly as prone to infection as they were in the past.  In order for a virus to infect your system, it needs to fool you in to installing it.  This can be done in any number of ways, the most common of which with torrents is hiding in an archive file such as .Zip or .Rar. If you find yourself downloading a torrent whose files are compressed, stop immediately and delete the file.  It may contain malware.

Windows Torrent Client

There are literally hundreds of torrent clients out there, the best of which, in our humble opinion is μTorrent (pronounced U-Torrent).  The μ means micro and refers to the small amount of memory required to run the client.  It is available for both Mac and Windows and works extremely well without slowing down your system.

Here’s the Key to Safety: Run with Protection

Picking good .torrent files isn’t good enough!  The design of P2P framework allows your computer to connect to any system which is currently offering the files you need at the time you’re asking for them.  That’s not good! A brilliant little application called Peer Block acts as an active operator between your torrent client and those you’re both uploading to and downloading from, to ensure no data is transferred with known bad servers.  From PeerBlock.com:

PeerBlock lets you control who your computer “talks to” on the Internet.  By selecting appropriate lists of “known bad” computers, you can block communication with advertising or spyware oriented servers, computers monitoring your p2p activities, computers which have been “hacked”, even entire countries!  They can’t get in to your computer, and your computer won’t try to send them anything either.

Peer Block must be running and with current block lists downloaded every second μTorrent is running.  If used properly, it can really help keep you safe when using P2P technology to download legal and free media quickly and efficiently.

Mac Torrent Client(s)

The most popular Mac torrent client is Transmission.  Transmission is fast and simple.  It includes the same technology Peer Block uses to block bad hosts but recently stopped including the URL to automatically block the worst of the worst.  There is a tedious workaround, but for the most part, transmission doesn’t make it easy to keep a nice block list easily maintained.  Remember, just because Macs are less prone to malware in the wild doesn’t mean downloading copyrighted material illegally can’t get you arrested and sued for all you’re worth!  We aren’t condoning piracy.  Rather, we’re trying to educate the public about safe and unsafe methods of file transfer in this amazing communications revolution!

Call Nerds Limited or email us if you have questions.

Disclaimer: If you use torrents to transfer copyrighted material, you’re breaking the law.  NerdsLimited.com does not condone any use of torrents to transfer material illegally.

Join Nerds Limited on the Facebook!

Facebook has finally simplified their privacy settings.  They can be found here.  Feel free to contact us with questions.

Have you ever accessed your FaceBook account from a non-encrypted wifi hotspot? Of course you have!  Everyone does it!  Coffee shops, restaurants, and even many college campuses allow unencrypted access for simplicity.  The drawback is unsecured FaceBook sessions can easily be hijacked without any elaborate computer knowledge.

How do I enable encryption?

I’m glad you asked!  Log in to you FaceBook account [top right of the screen], -> account settings, -> account security.  Check the box next to ‘Browse FaceBook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible.’ That’s it!  You’re all done!

Here’s a brief YouTube video for slightly more detail.