[Gllug] Which architecture?

[general_email at technicalbloke.com]

Minty wrote:
> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Peter Corlett <abuse at cabal.org.uk> wrote:
>   
>> RealPlayer has never been a requirement for iPlayer. It was required
>> for "Listen Again" of the radio service, but that's now been
>> integrated into iPlayer.
>>     
>
> Although for me, on MacOS 10.5, FF 3.0.10 listening to the pete tong
> "listen again", if I opt for the "Lower Bandwidth version" within (the
> otherwise entirely flash based) iplayer, it is delivered via
> realplayer, with a flash app above it to display a pretty picture.
> Flash is used for the higher bitrate streams and video.  Although I
> occassionally/randomly get the realplayer version firing up even when
> not requested.  Best guess being it thinks I'm on a low-bandwidth
> connection.  Which is most likely caused by a crappy netgear wireless
> base station randomly having a strop.
>
> Speaking of which - what is considered the best (not insanely
> expensive) wireless router these days?  Something that doesn't suck
> and require rebooting every day.  I'm willing to pay a bit - the Apple
> Airports seem to be the best I've seen for "just plug & work", which
> vexes a bit.  I don't need anything particularly fancy, but solid
> signal strength & built in adsl modem thingy would be a win.
>   
Arg don't get the Airport! That way madness lies if you don't run an
exclusively Apple network. I must have installed over 100 various
domestic wifi routers in the last year or two and the one that I've
started recommending for general good value and reliability (for normal
domestic workloads) is the Netgear WGR-614 series. They're cheap as
chips, reasonably powerful (for 802.11g) and very stable (v9). Fingers
crossed I've never had one fail yet, they're like Land Rovers - not
fast, not flashy but they'll chug along til the end of time. Naturally
heavy bit-torrent utterly muffs up your web browsing but that's the case
with all domestic routers. If you want regular BT & flawless
surfing/streaming you'll need a REAL router.

Overall domestic routers are much of a muchness and my impressions are a
bit subjective but I'd be tempted to give Belkin (seem unreliable) and
D-link(firmware seems flaky) a miss and I don't think I'll ever buy
another Linksys as they seem to like spontaneously bricking themselves.

Roger.
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