Onwards and Upwards

I do love tinkering with things since I was a kid. Sometimes I even made my own toys from parts of old ones, sticks, or whatever I could lay my hands on.

Eventually, my love for tinkering, especially with electronics, made me take up BS Electronics and Communications Engineering at UST. Granted, I never got a career related to being an ECE, still, it was an experience well worth it.

Anyway, one of the best electronics I've ever bought is my Linksys WRT610N router. It's a simultaneous band router, meaning it serves up wifi simultaneously on the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz frequency. I got it around 2009 i think, for 5,000php, as barely used (less than a month i think), which was a steal, since it was going around for 7-8k at that time.

So it's been loyally serving me for more than 4 years, and it's been chugging along quite nicely at 300Mbps wifi, and 1Gigabit on wired. I've flashed the firmware from stock linksys ROM to dd-wrt which really opened up possibilities for this router.

But my complaint was I wanted a longer range for it, but since it didn't have removeable external antennas, I had to rely on using UTP cables to really maximize the range for my network. Unfortunately, this doesnt work for devices which didn't have Ethernet ports (the tablets and the mobile phones).

Fortunately for me, I came across info about being able to add external antennas. All I needed were U.FL to RP-SMA pigtails. So i logged onto ebay, ordered a number of them from Hongkong, and 1 month later, I get to mod my trusty router.

So there you have it. From a poor 0 to 1 bar wifi signal from my bathroom, to a steady 2 bar wifi signal.

Now I can surf to my heart's content while doing a number 1.

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The technologies that I love : Broadband internet

I first got online around 1997, just several months after my parents bought us our first computer. My siblings and I were in university, and it was the opportune time to get on the computer age bandwagon.  Granted it was just  a Cyrix 686 based personal computer , it still opened a new world for us: encyclopedias on optical discs, document creation without the need for Liquid Paper, and what nots.

And then, my brother got his hand on a modem, and our world changed again. Suddenly, the entire world was within our fingertips. Internet, we have arrived!

Back then, our 14.4kbps modem was top of the line. It was enough to get on BBS, FTP sites, and a few websites. It was more than enough to send out emails, chatting, research and downloading pictures. It took several more months before the advent of MP3s and P2P. The Internet finally became cool.

Still, we were stuck with dial-up even a few years after I started working. We could still make do with 56kbps speed for chatting, browsing, e-mailing, downloading music and other small sized files. I still lived with my parents and siblings in the same house, we only used one computer, there was really no reason to get broadband internet for our house. No reason at all.

That was until BitTorrent came. That was before WiFi.

It wasn't Friendster. It wasn't Multiply. It wasn't Myspace. I was happily content with my computer on it's 56kbps internet bandwidth. But BitTorrent changed that. And WiFi.

You see BitTorrent as a P2P protocol allowed you to download a file from several sources or peers. Not just a single server. The more peers sharing or seeding that file, the faster the download. Although you're limited to your download bandwidth.

With host servers serving up that file, several downloaders will have to share the bandwidth of that server. So even if you have a broadband connection, your download speed will still be limited to the server's shared bandwidth allocated for you. Not with BitTorrent.

I remember I was at work when I was seriously thinking about calling up our telephone provider about that internet subscription. I was actually up the previous night thinking long and hard about it. We already had the phone line, and were paying monthly dues. All i needed to do was pay an additional 900 pesos for a 2 year lock in plan and I would have unlimited broadband internet. I called the next day after lunch. And i cant live a day offline ever since.

You see, whereas before, it took minutes for pages to load properly, now it took only seconds. Whereas MP3 files took me minutes to half hours to finish, it now only took a fraction of that. And this is the best part that i like: whereas it took a day for 800 Mb files, it only took 4 hours or less. (It actually takes it about 10-20minutes at my wife's Antipolo house because of the 3Mbps connection there).

And those 800Mb files? They're movies. And I'm a movie buff. To be able to get my hands on all the movies, past and present, especially the hard to get ones? It's bliss. I don't have to go to the local video stores and be frustrated with them not having copies of movies I'm looking for.

And now? I'm actually collecting HiDefinition movies now. 720p and 1080p formats. And collecting them is bearable despite their sizes ranging from 4 Gigabytes to 30 Gigabytes. They're visually stunning.

And then you can watch streaming videos over at YouTube. You can have a decent video call via Skype. You can remotely control your office computer from home. All because of broadband internet.

Now imagine if the Gbps connections of the future arrive at our doorstep tomorrow. Imagine the possibilities.

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