Just a quick post with a few speed tests captured at Cresta Shopping Center in Johannesburg and at Sun City near Pilanesburg.
Cresta Shopping Center
Sun City
Tags: Vodacom, 3G, mobile, South Africa
Vodacom 3G with Huawei Mobile Connect E172 in South Africa
November 21, 2008 by 4 Comments
This morning I stopped into the Vodacom store in Cresta Shopping Center, where I picked up a Huawei Mobile Connect E172 USB adapter for around R2,400 (roughly USD $240) without a contract. I purchased a SIM card for another R12, and signed up for a 5GB/mo data bundle for R980.
First impression: If this is 3G, then 3G just isn’t that impressive. Right from the shopping center, my speed tests were showing 82 ms pings (nice!) but only 1,075 kb/s down and 324 kb/s up. It’s very usable, but nowhere close to the “7.2 mbit/s” sales pitch of 3G. Still, the low latency makes it suitable for VoIP calling which is great.
What does impress me is the fact that right now I am sitting in Pilanesburg at Kwa Maritane and I’m able to get a GPRS connection, 539 ms ping with 47 kb/s down and 28 kb/s up. I’m practically “in the middle of nowhere” and I can still get GPRS. Back in America, this would almost certainly be a dead spot with no reception at all.
I’ll be here for the week, trying to survive on this slow connection–it’s okay for pushing and pulling emails without attachments and simpler web pages, but it’s going to make doing most of my work really challenging. I might have to pop down to Sun City to see if I can get better speeds to work with.
Tags: Vodacom, 3G, mobile, Huawei, Pilanesburg, South Africa
Oh, that first cigarette always tastes SO good
November 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment
Arrived in South Africa safe and sound as well as all our luggage. The kids were freaking awesome–they’re really cut out to be world travellers. I even survived the 18 hour stretch without a cigarette, without being all cranky and stuff.
Now, we’re at my mother- and father-in-law’s house in Victory Park, Gauteng and for now I’m using their ADSL connection. Here’s the speedtest.net results:
Tomorrow, we head into Cresta Shopping Center so I can pick up a HSPDA/3G card for my MacBook Pro and a few SIM cards for our BlackBerry phones so we can make local calls.
I’m being called downstairs for dinner, but I’ll try to fill in some more details when I get a chance.
Tags: family, travel, South Africa
The great voyage of 2008
November 19, 2008 by 1 Comment
I haven’t blogged about this yet, but tonight, we leave for South Africa for six weeks. We’re taking the kids with us, and they’re going to miss a few weeks of school in exchange for what will hopefully be an invaluable learning experience.
We will be visiting my spouse’s fairly large family all over the place. There will be places to go and people to see. We’ll be there through the holidays, returning in the new year.
I will be online as much as I can be through various connectivity methods–it’ll be interesting to see where and how I can get connected around the country.
If there are any South Africans reading this blog, feel free to share any tips or suggestions you might have. Thanks.
Tags: family, travel, South Africa
My Mongolian ball-in-cage puzzle, solved!
November 15, 2008 by 2 Comments
I love problem solving and puzzles. My friend Christina brought me back a fun one from her trip to Mongolia. Here it is, solved:
Apparently this puzzle type is what Stewart Coffin calls “Locked Nest.”
It may not look like much, but the challenge is to assemble it from a completely disassembled state. It’s not only geometrically challenging, having to visualize the pieces in their final states, but physically challenging, having to hold the thing together as you put it together. Several times, while I was working on the puzzle, a pin would slide out or a rod would be out of alignment and the pin would miss it.
This is definitely a puzzle I’ll enjoy solving many times over. It’s quite challenging.
Tags: Mongolian, puzzle, Stewart Coffin
The world would be better off without you!
November 12, 2008 by 8 Comments
Can you believe this crap? I mean, look:
Prosecutors say Drew, 49, of O’Fallon, Missouri, helped create a false-identity MySpace account and harassed Meier with cruel messages.
Meier, who was being treated for depression, hanged herself after allegedly receiving messages saying the world would be better off without her.
So, some kid becomes an hero and they want to prosecute using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? That is absurd.
Sure, what Lori Drew did to Megan Meier–sending cruel messages–wasn’t nice. But, “not nice” in this case is in no way criminal! Otherwise, there’s crimes being committed every day in school yards, offices, customer service departments, etc., across the country. Seriously, where do we draw the line?
I’m sure it doesn’t need to be asked, but where were Megan’s parents in all of this?
I hope the trial jurors are smart enough to figure out how ridiculous this whole thing is. Case law really needs to be established here so no one else can get crucified like this.
Before you go flying into a rage in my comments section about how insensitive I am, or how I’ve got it all wrong … listen carefully: the world would be better off without you! Go hang yourself, now.
Could Obama be the new Pragmatic Party?
November 6, 2008 by Leave a Comment
In May 2006, Scott Adams described what could be called the “Pragmatic Party” (sadly, his blog archives were nuked, but you can still read my entry). Last Tuesday, Barack Obama was elected President. Two days later, we have this website, change.gov:
Could Obama really be doing what Adams suggested? I was skeptical about Obama’s rallying cry for change, but this is incredibly hopeful looking.
Tags: politics, Barack Obama, Scott Adams, change
Opening up Windows Firewall for File and Printer Sharing
November 4, 2008 by 3 Comments
By default, Windows Firewall’s setting for File and Printer Sharing is set to “subnet” scope: only allow requests from the same subnet as itself. This is generally a good default security policy that balances safety with convenience, but on my home network, I run several different subnets (wired, wireless, VPN, etc.) and this tends to be an issue.
Here’s a very simple VB script that can be run with Windows Scripting Host to expand the scope from “subnet” to “any”:
Set objFirewall = CreateObject("HNetCfg.FwMgr")
Set objPolicy = objFirewall.LocalPolicy.CurrentProfile
Set colServices = objPolicy.Services
Set objService = colServices.Item(0)
objService.Enabled = TRUE
objService.Scope = 0
I stick that in a file named winfw-smb-scope-any.vbs and run it from a DOS prompt with cscript.exe. Done!
Do you have any other handy scripts you think are really useful? Tell me about them in the comments … thanks!
Tags: Windows Firewall, SMB, file sharing, scripting
Waiting for the Great Pumpkin of 2008
October 27, 2008 by Leave a Comment
Last night, Aunty Liz and Uncle Steve helped the girls carve some pumpkins! Here’s the result of everyone’s creative work:
So, we’re all ready for the visit of the Great Pumpkin this year, if it comes!
Tags: pumpkins
TiVo Hacking: Getting a Linksys WUSB54G working
October 27, 2008 by 4 Comments
So, I have a TiVo Series 2 stand-alone DVR with a Product Lifetime subscription. For years, I’ve had it connected to the home network using a Linksys WUSB11 wireless network adapter, but it finally died. I went and grabbed a Linksys WUSB54G as a replacement, but found out that the TiVo doesn’t support it. No problem, I know the TiVo runs Linux and there’s plenty of documentation on how to “hack” the TiVo so I can load my own kernel modules on it, etc.
It turns out that the Linksys WUSB54G v4 uses the Ralink 2570 chipset. Fortunately, there’s been effort on native Linux drivers for the Ralink family of wireless chipsets. The hurdle, of course, is that the TiVo’s MIPS R5432 is big-endian, so it presents a bit of a challenge porting the driver to the TiVo.
Working off the latest code for the legacy rt2570 driver from CVS, I’ve gotten it to compile using TiVo’s Linux 2.4.20 kernel. Loading the module, however, results in this:
rt2570: init usb.c: registered new driver rt2570 rt2570: idVendor = 0x13b1, idProduct = 0xd rt2570: idVendor = 0x13b1, idProduct = 0xd rt2570: using permanent MAC addr rt2570: Active MAC addr: 00:12:17:89:f5:02. rt2570: driver version 1.0.0 Unaligned Access to 0x80230b2b in kernel mode at 0xc0217be4 Unaligned Access to 0x80230b2d in kernel mode at 0xc0217c04 Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021b3dc Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021b408 Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021dc2c Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021dc08 Unaligned Access to 0x80357076 in kernel mode at 0xc021cd8c Unaligned Access to 0x80230f47 in kernel mode at 0xc0217be4 Unaligned Access to 0x80230f49 in kernel mode at 0xc0217c04 Unaligned Access to 0x80231155 in kernel mode at 0xc0217be4 Unaligned Access to 0x80231157 in kernel mode at 0xc0217c04
So, now I get to go fishing through /proc/ksyms and try to fix up all these unaligned access errors. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get through all of this and get the driver working.
Anyone out there have experience porting Linux device drivers like this? Got any tips or techniques that might help me? I’d really love any help I can get …
Update: I’m posting my debugging progress in a rt2x00 forum thread. Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow, right?
Update: I’ve gotten it working! I’ve addressed the majority of the unaligned access traps and I can now use my WUSB54G as a wireless NIC on my TiVo! Here’s a patch against rt2570-cvs-2008102616 of the driver and the corresponding kernel module binary:
- rt2570-tivo-mips.patch
- rt2570.o.gz (1.42 MB)
MD5: 64605e019929db714d583d160a6b513c
If you have a SA2 TiVo and want to use a Linksys WUSB54G as your wireless NIC, this driver is what you want. It works for me, anyway!
Tags: Linux, TiVo, open source, hacking, Linksys WUSB54G, Ralink 2570
Programmer, husband, father, singer, guitarist, tinkerer, reverse engineer, strange, and living in New Jersey. 
Latest comments