Samsung Mobile 4G Hotspot (Verizon)

This hotspot is really fast - I've gotten 17 down and 14 up driving in my car!

I bought both Verizon 4G hotspots - Samsung and Novatel - and I also had the the previous Novatel 2200 mi-fi.

The Samsung is the true successor to the Novatel 3G mi-fi, carrying on the tradition of the Novatel's form factor, while Novatel has incredibly veered off course with their 4G hotspot which is nothing like their previous model.

The Samsung form factor is way better than the Novatel 4G hotspot, which is dreadful.  The new Novatel is not at all like the previous Novatel mi-fi.  It's bigger than the Samsung, has a cheesy chrome bezel, and little feet - showing that they designed it as a very small table-top router.  The Samsung has a nice soft-touch matte plastic case, and is smaller than a deck of playing cards - it's like a stack of credit cards in size.

The Samsung is much more similar to the previous 3G Novatel mifi in size and form.  The Samsung works great in a pocket or in the sunglasses pocket on the inside roof of your car or under the visors.  Also, it has LED's for on/off/low-battery, 4G, 3G, and network activity.  The Novatel eInk paper display sounds good in reviews but it is very dull, hard to see, and ugly.

You can set the Samsung to sleep after not being used for a period of time (like 30 minutes) to save battery, or you can set it to never sleep.

You can safely ignore the negative reviews, which are entirely attributable a combo of the first firmware version, customers who have never used a mobile hotspot, battery-save 30-minute shutdown (which can be turned off), and also Verizon 4G is still in its early implementation phase and is occasionally off-line or slow, although those problems are slowly becoming much less frequent.

Early online mag reviewers made a big deal over the Novatel having a battery indicator, but it only has 3 bars, is almost invisible, and the Samsung does warn you on low battery when the green on-button turns red.

The Samsung charger is small and portable, the Novatel charger is the typical big clunker.  The Samsung USB-A to USB-micro-B cable plugs into your computer OR into the wall plug, and will charge from either.  The Novatel will NOT function as a wireless hotspot while plugged into a computer.

The Samsung has one flaw - the browser interface does not contain an option to save the router's configuration as a file to your pc, whereas the Novatel has it.

PS:  I'm finishing up a small and completely free iPhone app that checks the Samsung charger status - it should be in the app store early July 2011, so if you have an iPhone search for "HotSpot Sam". 

Quirky: cool products site..

Quirky is this site where people co-invent products, and then if enough people actually want to buy them, the products get produced. "Cordies" is just one of the products.

quirky - Cordies Cable Management

OPEN DNS - JUST DO IT!

Hopefully you know what DNS is (otherwise lookee here).

If you are a small business or home user, chances are your current DNS is given to your firewall/router automatically by your service ISP.

That allows the ISP to track every website ever visited from your location, and remember, the ISP knows exactly who you are - they are the ones that can and do match up your IP address with your name, address, account, and billing info.

Plus they tend to be slow.  How slow?  Check Steve Gibson's (the famed GRC.com)  DNS Nameserver Performance utility.

An excellent and widely accepted alternative is to access  your firewall/router's configuration pages, and in the WAN, Network, DHCP, or similar area, enter the IP addresses for the free OPENDNS.COM DNS servers.

Another good thing about OPENDNS: very often other Domain servers, when you mis-enter a domain, will direct you to a commercial search page of their own.  OpenDNS does not direct you to a commercial page.

OpenDNS also warns when entering dangerous sites.

Finally, if you set up an account (you don't have to), even a free one, you can further admin your domain-name service - you can read up on it if you want on their site,  OpenDNS.com.

Two of the primary IP addresses for their DNS servers are:

208.67.220.220
208.67.222.222

Free Network Discovery Tool

Network admin? Check out this free tool from Script Logic:


From their site:

sl360™ Free Network Monitoring and Network Management Suite of Tools

Offered as a free solution, the ScriptLogic sl360 Tool Suite consolidates dozens of network management and network monitoring tools into a single, integrated interface. The tool suite includes Cisco configuration management, server and application monitoring, open source and third party integration, a robust encrypted credential store, the ability to save and flow results between tools, deep network discovery (with network mapping) and syslog server capabilities. All of these tools compliment the extensive real-time monitoring provided by the sl360 Dashboard.

The Internet Storm Center

ISC History and Overview

The ISC was created in 2001 following the successful detection, analysis, and widespread warning of the Li0n worm. Today, the ISC provides a free analysis and warning service to thousands of Internet users and organizations, and is actively working with Internet Service Providers to fight back against the most malicious attackers.

When you are wondering if it's just your connection that's running slow or  your website that's having problems, find out if there's a crisis out there:  Click for The Internet Storm Center