About 12 million households use only cell phones, not landlines, and that number is projected to more than double in four years. However, the spotty service that wireless phones and carriers sometimes provide, as well as most plans' limited calling times, make landlines a more desirable option in certain situations. Telecoms and device makers are working to spice up landlines with added...

ABOARD AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT NO. 1 – Transcontinental flying underwent a sea change Wednesday. American Airlines Inc. became the first U.S. airline to launch wireless broadband access in-flight, turning the flight into a productive workday – and launching a service that industry officials say will soon become a necessity to attract lucrative business travelers and to offer in-flight...

“We're approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision,” says Pandora founder Tim Westergren in an interview with the Washington Post, regarding the livelihood of his online radio station living under a massive royalty hike imposed last year. “This is like a last stand for webcasting.”The rates that Westergren refers to were placed in effect last September by the Copyright Royalty Board and...

Fresh off its 'scolding' for breaking net neutrality laws by throttling BitTorrent users, Comcast has a new proposition, one that will slow Internet for the ISP's heaviest users during periods of high traffic.The heaviest users will see their top speeds reduced for periods lasting up to 20 minutes, which will allow service to other users to keep "flowing", says Mitch Bowling, Comcast's senior...

Four years ago, Verizon Communications embarked on an ambitious and expensive plan to run fiber optic cables, which can deliver ultra-fast Internet service and dozens of high-definition video channels along with old-fashioned telephone service, past 19 million homes, roughly half its territory. When it was announced, Verizon’s $23 billion planned investment in the service, called FiOS, was met...

The debate over new unlicensed spectrum the Federal Communications Commission is considering opening up is heating up as Google ups the ante with a new lobbying Web site. Google on Monday launched the new site called FreetheAirWaves.com to provide consumers with a voice, the company's policy guru said during a press conference call. Google and other technology companies such as Intel, Microsoft...

The DIR-130 can be connected to a cable or DSL line to share high-speed Internet access. It also doubles as an 8-port full-duplex 10/100 switch to connect up to eight Ethernet-enabled devices. Simply add more switches to expand your wired network. In addition, you can create a Virtual Private Network (VPN) with the DIR-130 and allow up to 25* off-site or traveling users to securely access your...

The Linksys Wireless-G Router for Mobile Broadband is really three devices in one box. First, there's the Wireless Access Point, which lets you connect both screaming fast Wireless-G (802.11g at 54Mbps) and Wireless-B (802.11b at 11Mbps) devices to the network. Second, it’s a built-in 4-port full-duplex 10/100 Switch to connect your wired-Ethernet devices together. Connect four PCs directly or...

The WBR-1310 Wireless Router’s built-in advanced firewall, threats of hackers penetrating your network are minimized. Some firewall features include functions that allow or disallow certain ports to be open for certain applications. Features like content filtering, MAC filtering, URL blocking, and domain blocking are useful tools to prevent other unwanted intruders from connecting to your network...

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The DIR-330 wireless VPN router provides an easy-to-deploy wireless routing, 10/100 switching, VPN, and firewall solution designed specifically for the Small Office / Home Office (SOHO) market that demands superior performance and...

The RangePlus Wireless Router is really three devices in one box. First, there's the Wireless Access Point, which lets you connect to the network without wires. There's also a built-in 4-port full-duplex 10/100 Switch to connect your wired-Ethernet devices together. Finally, the Router function ties it all together and lets your whole network share a high-speed cable or DSL Internet...

Windows Vista introduces a number of new features to the TCP/IP stack, including CTCP, and TCP Window Auto-Tuning. This new implementation works much better by default than previous Windows versions with broadband internet connections, and is able to adjust the RWIN value on the fly, depending on the BDP (bandwidth-delay product). This, however, introduces some problems with older routers and restricts the user from tweaking some of the TCP/IP parameters. Still, there is always some room for...

Windows 2003 SP1 and SP2/R2 (as well as Vista/2008) introduce some interesting new NDIS 6.0 hardware features to improve network performance. The parameters discussed below intended as an addition to our recommended XP/2003 network settings. Most of those parameters are new, introduced with the "Scalable Networking Pack".   TCP Chimney Offload TCP Chimney Offload is an extesion of NDIS 5 offloading, and makes it possible for network cards to replace the Windows TCP stack with...

I've often found it useful to get just the wireless functionality out of a WiFi router and reuse it as an access point. Wireless routers seem more common, and are often priced even lower than wireless access points. Adding an access point to a wired network already in place, or to one where the main NAT router is provided by the ISP is usually the easiest solution. However, introducing a second NAT router on the network is not a good idea, especially without some tweaking to set it up...

As you know, you can search directly from the address bar in modern Web browsers. This functionality is built into the browser and is configurable via menus, preferences (options) or toolbar buttons. Some browsers let you select your search engine of choice to use for adress bar searching.Many ISPs are now attempting to rake in a few extra dollars by using DNS redirects to "hijack" your address bar searches and feed the browser a dynamically created results page filled with sponsored...

Introduction The Travel Mate 292XC is a part of the 290 Series laptops from Acer. There is a large range of models within the 290 series with different specifications, some Centrino based, and others just Pentium M. This particular model being reviewed, the LX-T3505.455, is a Celeron M 330 processor version and it is a very well priced for its specifications. This model was purchased for about $599.99 CAD and has the following specs: Processor: Intel Celeron M 330 Processor...

Introduction D-Link was founded in 1986, and since then has catered to both consumer and SOHO users. D-Link is already a well known name in the home networking market, however in the past D-Link products have been considered inferior to those of their competitors such as Linksys (Cisco) and Netgear (Bay Networks). Recently this stigma has begun to disappear with D-Link taking a large portion of the home and SOHO markets. The D-Link DI-524 is one of the company's new series of Wireless-G routers,...

Introduction Compex is an established, yet forward-thinking company in the networking, wireless and telecommunications industry. The company was founded in 1987 and focuses on designing, development and manufacturing a complete line of networking products for the home, SOHO, broadband, and WLAN market needs. The NetPassage 26G is a notable addition to the wireless wave of broadband routers that is sweeping the current home/SOHO market. It comes with a...

Netgear is well known in the networking market.  Originally a consumer-oriented subsidiary of Bay Networks, they have since been spun off to become their own company.  Some of the first consumer routers came out of Netgear, and they have been a major player in the home networking scene.  Their latest line of products sports a new sleek look, a major change of the square purple boxes for which they were known.  Personally, I was a fan of the old box, but then again, not everybody wants a...