Daily Technical

I’ve had the Blackberry 8320 (from T-mobile) for about 3 or 4 months now. I chose this model over the 8310 specifically because I wanted the WiFi option (rather than GPS) for voice and data coverage while at home, since my cell coverage blows chunks where I live.

I’ve been very happy with my BB since I got it and the wireless option has worked very well. Well that is until I had to replace my old Linksys wireless router at home due to old age and failing hardware.

First thing to note, my old router was an 802.11 b/g capable device.  The (first) replacement device that I purchased was a lower end Netgear. I only mention this because the performance of this router simply stunk. Frequent disconnects finally forced me to return it and spend a little more money on a better device, the Linksys WRT110. This router has 802.11 b / g and n capability.

I configured the new router and decided to leave all three protocols running. I also had to re-configure every network attached device since I chose to create a new SSID and use WPA rather than the WEP I had been using on the old one box.

So, the fun part; after changing the wireless settings on the 3 laptops, the Wii, the Playstation and the X7675 printer, it was time to change the two Blackberries. (Oh, did I forget to mention that The Wife has the 8220 flip?) Configured the flip phone first, connected to the AP just fine.  Then finally, my turn. Go through the scan for network process, 8320 finds the SSID, enter the passphrase and click Connect. And – - phone reboots. Huh. I must have done something wrong. Let’s do it again. Go through the same process again and big surprise, same result. After doing this several times, the phone no longer evens sees the network.

After some Googleing,  I learn that the 8320 does not have the ability to connect to an 802.11n network. But wait, the wireless router is transmitting in b / g and n, what gives? Rather than simply force the router to transmit in only b/g, I decide to see if the fine folks at RIM have released a newer version of firmware that may address this issue. I find out that my Curve has the prehistoric 4.2 version installed while a new and improved 4.5 had been recently released.  (Tmobile customers can find new firmware on this page.)

A helpful note for any of you considering the firmware upgrade, leave yourself at least an hour or so to complete this upgrade. You’ll have to download an 88 meg file, backup the blackberry, transfer the new file, etc. etc.

So, I complete the upgrade to the phone, hopeful that this may resolve my reboot / non-connect issue. But, as you’ve probably guessed, no such luck. Still not even seeing my network. Although every other device in my house connects without a problem.

Without any other options at this point, I finally resort to disabling 802.11n on my new router, leaving only b and g available. Once again, go through the BB setup – hold my breath for a moment – and voila, finds the network and connects just fine.

In the end, I undoubtedly wasted far too much time trying to get the Curve to connect to my n network. And here’s the reality; none of my laptops currently have an n-capable network card, nor the Wii, or the printer – and obviously not the phone. Not to mention that I’ll likely never be able to take advantage of the whopping 600 Mbit/s that the 802.11n spec provides.

One bonus out of this entire exercise – the 8320 does not have video capability. Until you upgrade to 4.5.

As you will notice, I have not written a post in this blog since February of ‘08 – nearly a year! When I started my blog (just over a year ago) I did so with the intention of focusing the content solely on Web Operations (my current day job) and only posting when I felt as though I had something of real value to share with everyone. As the year wore on, it felt as though the bulk of my web operations experience was pretty common, without real value, and that last thing I want to do is waste a reader’s time.

Considering it has been nearly a year between posts, it has proven to be a bit of a struggle to focus only on web ops with stories that I think will be relevant for the intended audience (it’s proven difficult for me anyway, not so much for Allspaw over at Kitchen Soap – good ops stuff there). So, I have decided to expand the scope of my blog. Rather than dedicate the blog entirely to web operations, I’ve decided to target a wider audience and talk about the role technology plays in my daily life as it has for the last … well, let’s just say quite a few years.

I have always considered myself a technology generalist. In my career I’ve held positions in various disciplines within the field. A few on the list are; hardware repairs (pc’s, printers, overhead projectors – long before whiteboards), network administration, development, infrastructure design, security and most recently, web operations. Given my geek history and realization of the fact that technology plays such an integral part of my daily life, I think it will be much easier – and hopefully more beneficial for prospective readers – to write meaningful posts about my experiences with technology in my day to day activities.

And so with that, barrfbag.com will now be called Daily Technical. And you can ask, but I really don’t know what I was thinking with the original name (not sure I love the new name either, but I guess ya gotta call it something).

I’ll leave you with one very useful item, the O’Reilly Velocity Web Performance and Operations conference is coming up on June 22 this summer. I attended their inaugural conference last year and it was well worth every penny. I highly recommend attending if you are able.

Brian