Dave West's Blog

So I ordered some wireless equipment from the FON network people. If you don’t know about it check out en.fon.com

I really like the idea behind this, people either re-flash their linksys router with some firmware from FON, or you can buy a little wireless router, La Fonera. This is what I decided to do, it was 5 Euros, plus p&p. I thought “brillant, a really cheap wireless network for myself!”

Then it arrived….

Firstly it looks really good, very small, white with the FON logo splashed on it, then a little white antenna on it. Very smart. I connected it up, first problem, the instructions are dated that come with it. To get the full instructions on how to properly install it now I had to go online. Anyway once that was sorted because of the set up I have here (router, hardware firewall/VPN) I had some routing issues. Got that fixed, ending up with three different LAN’s, the wired, wireless private and wireless public.

Then the public FON network, the real point behind FON, disappeared! Sodding thing. Left it turned off for a day, then after restarting both the wireless networks returned.

So its all working now, I sorted the routing out, still a slight problem with getting traffic from my wireless PC to my wired XBox (The whole point in this) but I’ll sort that latter. So I can now take out the horrible cable that is streched across the dinning room and living room floor….

…well no I can’t. The wireless network works lovely, until you try and put any traffic across the damn thing, yeah that’s helpful! So after everything I contact the support team and they go through a few tests with me, but can’t solve it so now they want me to send it back, to Spain. Nice, my 5 Euro, cheap wireless network suddenly just got much more expensive.

AJ, at work, also brought one of these and although he didn’t have as much trouble with this as I have, he has still found the wireless network to be very flaky. For example he ran a test downloading a file to his pc via the wired network and then the wireless network the wired was fine, but the wireless speed was all over the place.

My finally thoughts on this are that the FON network is a great idea, being able to share my connection at home to be able to use anyone else’s FON network anywhere in the world. Brilliant. But very little help if at home I can’t use the damn thing myself.

I recently reinstalled my PC with Windows as it was full of junk, I also decided it was about time I installed Linux to have a go. So I got the DVD edition of Fedora Core 5, partly because I’ve heard good things about it, and also as we have some new servers going in at work which are running on the same so it make sense that I use it at home to get used to it.I’ve decided that carrer wise I want to get into the Sys admin side of things for UNIX and Linux, so I need to start somewhere, and messing up my PC at home would be better than breaking one of the mail servers or something at work.

So the install started pretty badly, I couldn’t get the install set-up to start in the graphical mode. So I booted back into Windows and did some research, which lead to find out that my graphics card, a Gefore 6600GT ( I think) had “issues” with Fedora. So I read through a few forums and found a couple of commands that ment I could start the install forcing it to use different drivers. Horah, it worked.

So I got Fedora up and running, oooooo. Now I wanted to get the newest drivers from Nvidia installed so I could set my screen to a higher resolution. Easy I think, I’ll downlaod the drivers and install them, nope not that easy. I didn’t have binutils, or something. So I look around and really can’t find anything about how to install that. So my manager, who knows a thing or two about linux, comes round and shows me how I can use the “yum” package to intsall new software, and update my software already on. Great, so now I can install my shiney new graphics drivers, nope, not yet. Now I appear to be missing a compiler, god dame this is getting annoying….

And thats pretty much as far as I have got now, AJ has said he’ll come round again and have another look, maybe tomorrow. In the mean time I am ordering an Idiots guide to Linux, or something along those lines.

See I told you not to read this one!