Category: Hardware

With Openreach set to stop supplying and replacing broken ECI and Huawei modems in March, we though it worth taking a quick peak at a low cost alternative.

The moves back in 2014 that saw a rush as people scrambled to buy what they thought were the best vacuum cleaners when the EU imposed power consumption limits looks set to be repeated for networked devices.

It took around four or five years with the original ADSL roll-outs for buying your own ADSL hardware to become easy and it may be that this is about to take place with FTTC five years after its roll-out started.

The launch of the Amazon Fire TV adds another streaming IPTV device to the increasing range available, and while the Fire may not have BBC iPlayer it does look to be less locked down and open to customisation compared to other devices.

The Raspberry Pi appeared to be purchased by males of a certain age as a toy to play with, but ease of use of the Google Chromecast USB stick suggests it may actually get used more as a media player on the big TV.

The recent weather has played havoc with many aspects of life, but either that all important Internet access has continued, or people have realised their true priorities when the weather is really out to get you.

The problems of getting broadband to more rural areas is never easy, but it seems even fairly small point to point wireless masts can have problems receiving planning approval.

The problems with the EE Brightbox that potentially allow someone to access limited personal information, or reconfigure the broadband hardware are now mainstream as the BBC highlights the issue.

Solwise has announced two new wireless access points which are designed to fit a standard wall box, and avoid the clutter of leads everywhere.

An interesting little bug has surfaced that affects people using the Huawei modems on a FTTC based service, where some UDP packets are cached and can cause problems with VoIP and VPN based services.