RE: OK, Timeout what works with what on the EPOD

[REB.Barnett@xxxxxxx]

My Orinoco Residential Gateway networking kit arrived yesterday, but I
didn't have as much time as I'd hoped to play with it. I'll send Mark a
ful=
l
review with some piccies soon, but in the meantime...

> 1) Have you sucessfully used EPOD Wireless? If yes what did you
use?=20
> Cost/buy it from.

Yes. Using the Orinoco Residential Gateway Kit, from www.un-wired.co.uk.
Cost was =A3360 all in, and gets you an AP and one PCMCIA card. You can do
this cheaper by not using an AP - I'll say more about this later.

> 2) Assuming you got wireless going, what is your practical
experience=20
> of:
>    2.1) Internet access (using ICS or what?)

I encountered a few problems, but I suspect that they are down to my lack
o=
f
understanding on how to configure IP networking, and lack of time last
nigh=
t
to learn. In brief my setup is the ePOD + Orinoco PCMCIA card connecting to
a Residential Gateway that is configured as an ethernet bridge. This is
connected to my 10BaseT network, and to a Win NT4 box running MS Proxy
Server. I've had success connecting to some sites (http://news.bbc.co.uk,
http://www.automatedhome.co.uk
and my local servers), but others are 'serve=
r
not found' according to the proxy server. Pretty sure this is a
configuration issue.

In terms of performance, the wireless LAN itself is excellent. I've not
benchmarked it yet with a laptop, but when accessing local HTTP servers it
runs far in excess of the speed you'd expect from a 64kbit ISDN connection.
Pocket IE on the ePOD however seems a little slow at rendering complex
page=
s
such the BBC's news page. Smaller pages such as Mark's site perform nicely.
This is an observation of both Pocket IE3 and Pocket IE4. If I have time
I'll try connecting to a Terminal Server tonight and browse via that to
determine performance that way.

In terms of experience, it's excellent. Pocket IE3 has a 'fit page to
screen' mode which works really well at condensing fonts, white space and
images such that pages fit perfectly full screen without spilling over
sideways.

>    2.2) HA software, e.g. Web Browser to Homeseer or similar

Didn't try.

>    2.3) Accessing files from EPOD to server

Connection to my NT server was a breeze - the easiest way is simply via
standard command prompt network commands. i.e. NET USE

Once connected, I can use Explorer to navigate the directory structure
quit=
e
happily. Pocket Word seems to handle double clicking native Word documents
quite happily and can access even multi-megabyte docs for editing. Machine
didn't seem to like it when I double clicked a 27MB BMP though... Programs
can be downloaded to and run/installed from a network share, which makes
installing apps to the ePOD a breeze even without much local storage.

I could also access my local web server quite happily. Primary app on that
at the moment is an on-line photo album, and the ePOD was quite happy and
speedy at browsing that. As an aside, photos display very nicely on screen,
although the screen is limited in colour depth.

> 3) Given all of the above, how does this all compliment or replace=20
> somthing like HomeVision?

Dunno. I only have Comfort and web based automation, so it is a perfect
compliment to these. It's had the highest WAF so far of anything I've
bought, which must say something about it.

You didn't ask about range of the wireless LAN. I've only done brief
testing, but in my 3 bedroom 1930s detached house I had no problems. AP is
located in cupboard under the stairs, which is pretty central. All rooms
seem to get between 50% and 100% signal. Even if I go out to the garage and
sit in my Faraday cage, I can still get about a moderate signal, and that's
with the signal passing through brick partition wall, an outside wall and a
car. Oddly, orientation of the ePOD's antenna seems to make more of a
difference that distance/obstacles. Holding the ePOD in front of me when in
bed gets nigh on full signal, lying over in bed to the left reduces the
signal down to 'poor'. Network access on 'poor' doesn't seem much/any
slower.

Anyway, I'll do a slightly more thorough review when I've got it working
completely and send it to Mark to put on his site (save cluttering up the
list).

Ray Barnett.

=20