Novatel NovaDrive cloud-based unlimited storage preview

Hold onto your hats, it seems Novatel, maker of some of the finest 3G / WiFi devices has decided to stretch its legs from connectivity into the realm of data storage. Not only is the cloud-based storage accessible through their software for Windows or Apple, but they're thoughfully built a nice mobile site so your cellphone can get in on the fun. Other notables include the ability to mail files to your file server, easy online collaboration for a team, and you can even send folks links to files who don't have access to your server and track when and if they download it. NovaDrive also touts "unlimited" storage -- though, we'd bet they'll drop the fair use hammer quick if you go too wild -- for roughly $50 a year for the personal version and $150 for the team fileserver version. Not too shabby if online storage is your thing, and even if it isn't, Novadrive has a 30-day demo that won't cost you one red cent, so feel feel to give it a whirl.

Netgear 3G Mobile Broadband Wireless Router unboxing and impressions

by Darren Murph

Originally announced at CES this year, Netgear's 3G Mobile Broadband Wireless Router just recently started making its way into stores. Essentially, the MBR624GU enables your USB WWAN stick to become an internet source for multiple computers, handhelds or any other device that understands WiFi. You simply plug your USB WWAN modem into the rear of the unit (or into the bundled USB dongle), fire it up, and connect via WiFi or Ethernet. Sounds good in theory, right? Follow us past the break for a few impressions on how this admittedly promising device performed in the real world.

Gallery: Netgear 3G Mobile Broadband Wireless Router unboxing

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Frankly, there isn't a whole lot to say for Netgear's WWAN router, and that's a good thing. Cradlepoint is largely credited with starting this fad, but with devices like the MiFi making themselves known, the demand for these boxes is sure to slow. For folks who already own a USB WWAN stick -- or would rather more than five simultaneous users have access to their connection -- it's hard to go wrong with the MBR624GU.

By and large, the unit looks exactly like the rest of Netgear's routers. It's compact, lightweight and ought to travel well. Speaking of, Netgear assures us that a cigarette adapter is on the horizon, but for now, your best bet for using this whilst cruising is to snag a power inverter and use the conventional AC adapter. We used an admittedly overpowered 350W DC to AC Power Inverter from Radio Shack to power the router and our laptop in the car, and we never had any issues maintaining a connection on the go.

Setup was an absolute breeze. We simply plugged in our Sprint U727 EV-DO USB modem, nailed the "on" button, and within seconds a connection was live. The first time you connect via WiFi (at least through a PC), you'll be prompted to establish a router name, password, etc., and a few minutes later you're locked in and ready to roll. As for speed, you won't see a boost by using this over a direct USB connection, but it's the flexibility here that sells it. We connected three laptops and two phones at once, and while simultaneously downloading was obviously sluggish, it worked.

In the end, there's little else to say other than the device simply functions as it's supposed to. Connections are easy to establish and maintain, and there are even a foursome of Ethernet sockets for those who'd prefer to jack in directly. There's also a dedicated WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) button and a power on / off button that enables you to keep it plugged in but powered down when it's not needed. Our only real gripe is the omission of a WAN Ethernet jack, which would theoretically allow the device to double as a standard WLAN router. As it stands, you'll only be distributing WWAN signals over this, and unless you're locked into a USB stick for the better part of two years, the $100 asking price might be a bit much. 'Course, we'd probably feel differently if the MiFi didn't exist or if this thing had some sort of dual purpose, but as it stands, you'll need an awfully compelling reason to drop a Benjamin here in order to distribute your WWAN signals.

.http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/28/netgear-3g-mobile-broadband-wireless-router-unboxing-and-impress/.

How-To: Measure your bandwidth with SNMP

Considered upgrading your DSL/Cable modem connection lately? Been wondering just how much of that high speed Internet connection you've been using? (Or if one of your kids or housemates is eating up all the bandwidth with BitTorrent again.) Today we'll show you how to use some handy free tools to keep an eye on your precious bandwidth. Hey, it just might save you from having to bleach your eyes if you walk in after Bob's download finishes.

For today's How-To, you'll need:

• Router, firewall or switch that supports SNMP
• Linux (or any *nix box, we're using Ubuntu for today)
  

If you're not familiar with SNMP, never fear, Engadget's here. It's a handy protocol used to collect device information over a network connection. Seriously, you don't need to fully understand it for today's How-To.

Today we'll be setting up a free utility called MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) to help keep an eye on how much bandwidth we're using. It can run on Windows or Linux (or other *nix operating systems). We'll set it up under Ubuntu Linux to collect data at five minute intervals and draw some pretty graphs.

First, we'll need to configure SNMP on whatever firewall, router or network switch you have. (Managed switches support it, but el cheapo hubs won't.) It's not hard, all you need to do is turn on SNMP if there's an option, and configure the SNMP strings.

A SNMP string acts as a simple login for SNMP queries. If you have the right string, you can connect. The read only string is usually set by default to public. Most home network routers actually support SNMP, but you may have to do some hunting to find out how to turn it on. (To get SNMP on the WRT54G, you might want to check out the WiFi-Box firmware.)

For today's How-To you only need to set up a read only string. We suggest changing the read/write string to something no-one will ever guess. (Read / Write access can be used to alter the configuration of a device)

If you followed How-To: Build your own Network Firewall and have a Devil-Linux firewall, then edit /etc/snmpd.conf and add the following:
syslocation "home"
syscontact you@yourdomain
rocommunity public

Don't forget to run save-config when you're done! Once the config it saved, snmpd will start up automatically at boot. For now, start up the snmp deamon by hand. Run the following as root.
/etc/init.d/snmpd start

Once you've managed to activate SNMP on your network device, head over to your *nix box. We'll walk you through setting everything up under Ubuntu Linux today.

Open up Synaptic and search for mrtg. Install it, along with the contrib package. While you're in there, install a copy of Apache web server. (No, it doesn't really matter which version. Um, we like Apache2. yeah.)

When it's done, pull up a shell and run the following command to set up MRTG.
cfgmaker --global 'WorkDir:/var/www/mrtg' \
--global 'Options[_]: bits,growright' \
--output /etc/mrtg.cfg \
public@192.168.1.1

The workdir is where all the data will get stored, the options make things pretty, the output sets the location of the config file, and public is the read only snmp community string you set up. 192.168.1.1 is the ip address on the lan side of the router/firewall/switch you're monitoring. If want to run cfgmaker as a regular user, store the config in your home directory.

If your crazy long command succeeded, you should have a spiffy new config file for MRTG to play with. To get it collecting data every five minutes (plenty for the graphs that MRTG makes) run the following command (as whatever user you want to run MRTG as):
crontab -e
This will edit your crontab. Here you can schedule commands to run at regular intervals. Put the following on one line of the crontab:
0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * env LANG=C /usr/bin/mrtg /etc/mrtg.cfg --logging /var/log/mrtg.log

Save the file and MRTG will be set to collect data every five minutes. Nice, eh? The env C line is a fix for running MRTG under Ubuntu. It might not be neccesary for your machine, but we needed it.

Once it runs a few times, point your web browser at the machine you're running mrtg on. http://localhost/mrtg if you're on your Linux box. There you'll find a collection of images and html pages. You might want to view these or build an index page with links to the images for each interface you want to keep an eye on.

Troubleshooting suggestions:
Permissions are a big part of the game. As long as the user that's running MRTG can read the config file and has write access to the /var/www/mrtg directory, you should be golden. You may wish to create a user just for MRTG and keep everything in its home directory. Then you can point Apache at that directory. Check out the documentation at the MRTG homepage for more.

Good luck, and remember, this will only tell you how much traffic you've got pumping in an out -- it won't prioritize your network traffic over the others' using the pipe. We find the easiest way to take care of that is using MRTG to find the bandwidth hogs, and then walking over to their machines and unplugging them. Enjoy!