The Tech + Photo Blog

Tech companies get way too involved in their own little world. Or, rather, I might say (without ruffling any feathers) engineers at tech companies. I think that a big reason why otherwise awesome technology is not adopted or widely used is because the back end is far too transparent to the end user. Most people have enough complexity in their lives. I personally know some programmers who slaved for the product, ate pizza for two weeks straight and peed in a bottle under their desk. These guys go through a lot, but that doesn’t mean the users should have to suffer the same fate to create a firewall access rule!

For example, Joe Bob User wants to give his employee access to a file on his server while the employee is at home. What Joe Bob should not have to know is that he is adding a new user account with WAN to LAN access through a VPN tunnel with a network address translation of a virtual IP on the same physical subnet as the protected network resource. I probably lost 95% of the general population in that last sentence, hell I even lost myself! Most network security appliances are far more convoluted even that that, and therein lies the problem.

What Joe Bob should have to do is drag a photo/avatar/name of a user over to a group that represents users with unlimited access to a resource (server, IP, file folder) and be done with it. The new user authenticates with user credentials and a VPN tunnel is created for them. All the user has to know is their login credentials (possibly two-factor) and that they are on a secure connection to what they want. All Joe Bob has to know is that the user can connect to the files he needs and other people can’t. Done.

This does not mean that the geeks are left out either. They love to tinker, love to know what is going on behind the scenes. And that can still be done without making things difficult. We can still show these types the logs, the statistics, the rule matrices, the advanced configurations, but do it with graphical interfaces that make sense of this information. I don’t care how geeky a person is, no one likes hunting through a 500 page guide full of error codes and messages to find out what is going on with their network.

Apple, as much as I sometimes loathe the cult-like club of a company, have done well in this regard; hiding all the technical junk from users in an effort to bring a simple, integrated experience. For tech geeks, myself included, that like to know what is going on behind the scene, this can be a turn-off. But for most of the world, simplicity (and by association, ease of use) is a very important element, and one that Apple captures. The end result, is that we should give customers an experience that takes the backend out of the picture, that takes the complexity of how a solution is built and hides it well, behind smoke screens, turning gears and ultimately, that shiny, glossy interface that gives them a sense of control with simplicity.

Simplicity such as this requires engineers… but it also requires direction that thinks outside of engineering conventions.

-PL

Popularity: 26% [?]

After 879 cups of coffee and a few too many sleepless nights, I am very proud to announce that the SonicWALL Secure Wireless Networking: Integrated Solutions Guide is published and now available on Amazon.com and in the “Networking” section of book retail stores everywhere.

All of the content in this wireless series of blogs is a teaser for the above book. A title which I’ve had the privilege of working on, along with some great writers and developers including Khai Tran, Joe Levy, Dave Parry, Jeremy Pollock, Susan Weigand, and countless others.

Today we’ll take a look at the difference between “coverage” and “bandwidth”. In other words, just because you have an access point covering a relatively small area does not guarantee access for as many people as you can fit into said small area. Conference room surfers and wireless Starbucks denizens beware!

Poor Placement for Bandwidth

In terms of wireless, “coverage” does not just refer to the physical area covered by an RF signal; coverage also refers to available bandwidth in that area. The figure below illustrates the site survey results of a typical small office where physical coverage is excellent, yet bandwidth constraints are often an issue.

Location A – Cubicles
These access points are well placed. One is in the corner, using a 90-degree antenna, and one is a ceiling-mounted unit with a standard omnidirectional antenna. Because most users in this area are hard-wired in cubicles, wireless demand is generally not very high, so using a single access point for a large area is an acceptable solution in terms of bandwidth.

Location B – Conference rooms
This access point is not well placed. Even though the single, ceiling-mounted omnidirectional access point offers decent physical coverage, this access point serves several conference rooms. Combined, these rooms are designed to hold over 150 users at any given time. Because of the high user density, and the fact that most of the users in this location are often using wireless, having a single access point installed here is a poor design choice.

Optimal Device Placement for Coverage and Bandwidth

A better choice for the conference room area would be to dedicate a single access point to each large conference room, using a lower transmit power to keep the signal within that room. The smaller conference rooms could be served at a ratio of one access point for every two conference rooms, depending on user density. Figure 19 illustrates optimal placement of access points serving the conference room areas and unmanned front entry.

Location A – Conference rooms
These two access points are well placed, lowering the signal strength (to limit reach) and splitting up the duty of covering conference rooms among multiple access points. Because of the high user density, and the fact that most of the users in this location are often utilizing wireless, having multiple access points in place is a good idea.

Location B – Front office / lobby
Wireless coverage is limited in this area since the front office is more open to the public than other areas of the office. If this company is using Virtual Access Points (VAPs) and has set up an SSID for guest login and Web access, then coverage in this area is more appropriate.

Overlapping Channels in High Traffic Areas

There are often situations where multiple access points must be set up in a confined area. College campuses are a good example of this necessity, where user density demands more bandwidth. More bandwidth demands higher access point density.

In these situations, a key limitation of 802.11b/g networks becomes apparent in that there are only three discrete channels to choose from.

Although 802.11b/g technology makes use of eleven (11) channels, only three (3) of those channels are “non-overlapping”. Think of this like you would an AM/FM radio. When you manually tune between radio stations, you hear two things. 1.) a bunch of fuzz, and 2.) both radio stations fighting to be heard through your speakers. The situation is just as bad for wireless networking. Because of this, most deployments stick with channels 1, 6, and 11, as they don’t interfere with each other.

When access points are placed very close together it results in overlapping channels and degradation in client stability and signal quality. Client wireless hardware is easily confused when it sees two access points of the same SSID, operating on the same channel. The result is that they tend to jump back and forth, causing momentary connection drops. Or worse, in a constant tug-of-war, the client simply refuses to connect to either access point.

SonicPoints and integrated wireless security appliances offer the following advanced solutions for the overlapping channels problem:
802.11 data rate – Adjust the minimum data rate at which the SonicPoint will send data to clients. Setting a minimum data rate of 24mbps, for example, will cause clients with an 11mbps connection to be ignored.

Transmit power – Adjust the power (dB) rate at which the SonicPoint transmits. As discussed earlier, you can experiment with this during the site survey, with the goal of providing a good balance of signal and bandwidth coverage. Areas that require more bandwidth can be serviced with multiple SonicPoints set to lower power settings.

Beacon intervals – Set a shorter beacon interval for your SSID/BSSID beacon (less time between beacons). This can help speed up handoffs between access points when users are mobile and when clients are initially connecting.

Channel selection – Although selecting AutoChannel will usually provide adequate performance for most situations, a deployment with many access points in close proximity to each other might warrant manual channel selection. Channels 1, 6, and 11 are the non-overlapping channels in the 2.4GHz range, and should be used for access points in close quarters. Manual channel selection adds a bit more complexity in subinterface and provisioning because you will need to carefully plan out and provision three distinct SonicPoint groups, one for each channel.

Getting into the nitty gritty, in reference to the illustration above, the management of these SonicPoints could use a global profile, but would require three separate groups—one for each wireless channel. These access point groups should be on separate physical interfaces in order for the channel assignments to be split while maintaining a group-based deployment.

That’s where things get a bit complicated. Especially in large-scale deployments. You’re on your own there.

Till next time…

-PL

Popularity: 27% [?]

Oh, the crappy airline seat. It’s almost an oxymoron in its own right. I mean, aren’t they all crappy?

Well, yes. And no.

I’m talking about the seat where the back does not recline, the tray table is stuck in-between the seats, the seat in front of you has no storage room underneath, the seat across the isle is not a seat but… a rank bathroom. Well, you get the idea.

Anyway, if you’re a guy or gal who is consistently flys in coach, you want to be as picky as I am about where exactly in coach you are sitting. Heck, even if you fly first class, not all seats are made alike.

Well, I came across this nifty Website called Seat Guru that helps solve this problem. The site shows you the cabin layout of almost any plane on almost any airline, along with color-coded seats, and notes on why each location might be good or bad. Pretty friggin helpful!

Also, what good would that information be if it were out of date? Well a large portion of the site is driven by frequent flyer feedback, so it stays relatively up to date. At least, i’s always been correct for me.

The website is http://www.seatguru.com/, it’s free and, given that you have to pay for peanuts and wine nowadays, it’s wicked helpful for making you feel like you are getting the most out of your coach seat.

Well, off to Raleigh for me this weekend. Glorious. How about you?

-PL

Popularity: 47% [?]

All of the content in this wireless series is just a teaser for the book I’ve been working on along with some great writers and developers. The book is titled “SonicWALL Secure Wireless Networking: Integrated Solutions Guide”, link coming as soon as it’s up. The book should show up in stores later this summer.

I told ya I’d get more of these out. This article continues the series on wireless networking. Today we’ll take a look at some common 802.11 interference issues. Although the content here applies to a large commercial deployment, these techniques can also be used in home or home office setups.

These days, finding an environment with no Radio Frequency (RF) interference or noise is fairly implausible. Only if you are setting up an office in a secluded redwood grove you can count on RF interference to be a non-issue. Well… even then, the redwood trees might just be among those fitted with high-gain cellular antennas, an all-too-common occurrence today. Regardless, you should expect to deal with some level of signal interference in your deployment.
The illustration in this article shows three common RF interference types. Let’s discuss what they are and how all three can be addressed.

Radio Frequency Interference

Location A – Rogue access points or wireless test lab:
Problem – Wireless product test labs and other (valid) rogue access points are problems in many WiFi deployments. Even if the access points in question are using different SSID nomenclature, channel overlapping is almost sure to be a bandwidth buster for legitimate wireless users.
Solution – Either eliminate all rogue access points, or force their owners to use a set channel that does not overlap with your distributed wireless solution. For dedicated wireless test labs, or areas that must be secluded from RF noise, convert that specific area into a Faraday cage, blocking a significant amount of wireless signals from entering or leaving the room.

The Faraday Cage was developed by 19th century inventor Michael Faraday. It demonstrates that a room built of a conductive material will shield its contents from electric or static electric currents. This effect also exists for wireless radio transmissions, although to a lesser extent.

Location B – Spectrum noise for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz
Problem – Your phone system is partially wireless and uses the 2.4GHz spectrum. Whenever someone in the office takes a call on this phone, wireless connection speed is reduced in the surrounding area, and to top it off, callers often complain of white noise during their conversation.
Solution – Give VoIP a try. VoIP will work in tandem with your wireless network, instead of against it. Another option is to try a phone that uses a different spectrum, or to go completely wired for your phone service. For more on SonicWALL VoIP implementation and capabilities, refer to the Configuring VoIP SonicOS feature module available at: http://www.sonicwall.com/us/support

Location C – Off-network access points
Problem – Your neighbors need wireless, too! Unfortunately, the walls that separate you are made of drywall (refer to Table 2 on page 29 for more information on physical barriers). The result is that their wireless signals plus your wireless signals equals client confusion and RF noise. Wireless clients in this area may have trouble connecting or keeping a connection if your channels overlap with those of your neighbors.
Solution – Overpowering your neighbors with high-gain antennas is an option, but not a particularly neighborly one. Instead, you could simply use a different channel for wireless access points bordering this wall and ensure that your neighbors do the same. Performance in some dual-channel wireless devices may take a hit, but it is better than dropped connections—or unhappy neighbors.

Popularity: 47% [?]

Because taking a photograph is essentially a matter of capturing light, the night photograph is not always an easy thing to accomplish. Nevertheless there is a profound public interest in capturing photographic images at night. This article is geared towards the night scene or landscape and helps you “bend the rules” of photography a bit in order to take great nighttime photographs.

Recommended Equipment
Before attempting a night photo shoot, make sure you have these items packed:

• Digital or film camera with manual aperture and shutter speed capability
• Solid tripod
• Bright Flashlight
• Low ISO film (digital users can set their ISO to a low setting)
• Auxiliary light such as an off camera flash (optional)
• Cable release or remote trigger for your camera’s shutter (optional)

Find Your Scene
Find the night scene you want to capture and set up your tripod. Be sure to tighten your tripod’s camera mount snugly.

Part of finding the right scene also includes looking for dynamic lighting, interesting shapes, textures, and juxtapositions, anything that seems to have a special meaning at nighttime. Keep in mind, objects that are not particularly special during the day can become beautiful subjects after the sun sets.

Correct White Balance and ISO
The most common white-balance and ISO combination for night landscape photography is Tungsten/Indoor at ISO 200. Shooting with ISO 200 or lower is a good idea because it offers the best fidelity for your photograph, although it does force longer shutter speeds (another reason to invest in a good tripod). Try to avoid using the daylight white balance setting for night scenes as it will often capture skewed colors that are too yellow.

Set your Aperture
Pick an appropriate Aperture (f-stop) setting. For long night exposures (30 seconds or more) it is often recommended to use a bigger number (smaller opening) aperture such as f16 or f22 in order to capture crisp detail in the foreground and background. If your camera does not offer long exposure (at least 30 seconds), you should try using an aperture setting of f2.8 or 5.6 in order to capture enough light for a properly exposed photograph. Keep in mind that with smaller number apertures, focus will start to become a major issue. You might want to keep a flashlight handy to aide yourself in focusing at night!

Meter for Light and Select Shutter Speed
Lighting conditions can be so tricky at night, they tend to trick your light meter too! If you are shooting in an area with sparse artificial lighting (street lamps, neon signs, car headlights), you will often find your light meter overexposes the photograph. As a starting point, try picking a shutter speed that is 2-3 stops faster (underexposed) from what your meter reading tells you. Shutter speeds for night scenes can range anywhere from 15 seconds to several minutes.

An exception to the “2-3 stops under” rule is when you are shooting under completely natural light such as moonlight. If there are no artificial lights to be found, you can often trust your meter reading for good exposure.

Focusing at Night
Focusing at night can be difficult because built in autofocus systems cannot do their job without light. If you can’t get a good manual or auto focus lock on your subject, try pointing that flashlight (bet you’re glad you brought it now) at the center of where your camera’s focus point is. Now hold the shutter button half-way down, but not enough to take a picture. This will help obtain a good focus lock. After you’ve focused once for a scene, switch to manual focus if possible and your camera will not have to hunt for focus each time you take an exposure.

If you are photographing a landscape where the objects are mostly far away from your lens, try using a small aperture (say, f22), and focusing manually to infinity (as far out as you can focus). This technique often gives good results in situations where it is otherwise difficult to focus.

Getting Creative
If you have the optional off-camera flash (or other light source) available, try using it to light parts of your scene. Fire the flash from different angles or even paint the scene with a flashlight while the exposure is going. Since night exposures tend to be many seconds (or minutes) long, you should have ample time to create your own dynamic lighting.

In the shot above, I used a single flash and simply snuck across the middle of the frame (while still exposing) to fire the flash again with a different gel. Most of the time in long exposure night shots, there won’t even be sufficient light for the camera to record an image of you walking across the frame. Ooooh, you’re the phantom photographer!

Well, have fun at it… till next time!

-PL

Popularity: 60% [?]

The photographer’s trick bag can run pretty deep with gizmos and optical sorcery, but this one is downright intuitive. You may not be throwing away your VR lens in favor of the “$1 Image Stabilizer”, but perhaps it’s a good thing to throw in your gear bag for emergencies. From experience, I’m thinking something like: monopod gets force-checked by TSA, falls off baggage cart and is run over by a 200,000lb pound plane.

Even if you don’t think that could happen to you, check out the video from my fellow Eagle Scout…

$1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera - Lose The Tripod - Watch the top videos of the week here

Popularity: 64% [?]

This is a good one. And apparently it’s pretty damned common too.

I installed Office 2007 recently, and all of a sudden Microsoft seems to think that I want to send Email in French.

At first I was a little puzzled as I read the first sentence in my email (post-spell check). Why on earth would Outlook suggest I say something like “Wyat iso gong on hère”? Now, I can’t be sure — a French speaker could help me better — but I think Outlook just changed my fairly standard “let’s do lunch” email into some statement about me taking a young stag to court (see below, you be the judge).

At least it left my name alone!

Clicking around a bit in Outlook Express, and eventually looking into the spell checking menu, I found that the only drop down for Language dictionaries was “French (France)”. Nice.

Microsoft are indeed aware of a problem where, upon installing Office 2007, Outlook Express “forgets” how to spell check in English (and Spanish, and German).

Apparently, this has to do with the fact that Outlook, the little leach of a program it is, using Microsoft Word for all of it’s word processing. That includes spell check. When Microsoft updated the spell check modules for English, Spanish and German, well, they didn’t bother to make sure poor little Outlook Express could read any of these dictionaries.

How to Fix It?

There are a few options:

1. If you still have the old Microsoft Office CDs (as in you upgraded from a previous version) , you can go back and install just the spell checking features from the old Microsoft Office suite. Outlook Express should pick those up and it’ll be able to understand English.
2. You can download a third party spell checking plugin such as Spell Checker for OE.
3. Upgrade to (and pay for) Outlook 2007

That’s about it. I’m going for the second of three. Let me know how your’s works out.
-PL

Popularity: 47% [?]

New technology is becoming more adept at solving other technology-related problems, but we should learn that it will never be able to solve all of our human-related problems. In fact, relying solely on technology, often makes things worse. A great example of technology gone completely berserk and useless is Ethanol fuel. So today, I’d take a quick look at this superhero fuel and the country that is backing it…

Yes, here comes team America trying to solve the “alternative fuel” puzzle by pushing corn-based ethanol as a cleaner burning, homegrown alternative. Ethanol is a natural food substance which provides a renewable energy source and helps decrease our dependency on foreign oil while stimulating domestic economic growth at the same time.

WHAT?

Well now, let not my opinionated banter sway you. Read up on some of the wondrous facts made available by our government on behalf of ethanol fuel. The following are the top 3 reasons why we should use corn-based ethanol to power our vehicles:^[1]

Boosting Agriculture

Because it is made primarily from corn and other agricultural products, ethanol increases demand for these crops, increases the prices farmers receive for these crops, and brings economic development opportunity to the rural areas where the ethanol is made.

Let me give you another little tidbit of information here. American farmers already can’t produce enough corn to meet demand in the domestic market. Yes people, we use over half of our corn production to feed livestock and other forms of meat. Yes, it’s a completely inefficient use of energy in and of itself. That’s a whole different rant, and it’s a tangent I don’t want to go into here so keep reading…

Yup. American’s corn farmer’s can’t produce enough corn to feed the appetite of their fellow countrymen, countrywomen, and bovines yet we are burning it to make gas.I’ll give them one thing here. Ethanol does increase demand for corn, which in turn increases the price of corn. Nice. So I’m paying more for corn because you want to create some illusion that your mammoth V-8 SUV is environmentally friendly? OK, just a few little problems with that…

First, the inefficient distillation process used to create ethanol produces waste from what used to be a great deal of usable food and takes more energy to create than the energy it will provide to an ethanol-powered vehicle.^[2]

Second, ethanol isn’t always cleaner burning than gasoline.^[4]

Economic Stimulation

Ethanol production will generate an additional $19.6 million in household income annually.

Wonderful. Give America a minor shot of adrenaline right where it counts, in the thyroid. Or is it the buttox? At any rate, that doesn’t really matter. Really, do you know how irrelevant $19.6 million is to the American economy as a whole? Dwight Freeney, one of the top paid NFL players, was given a salary of over $30 million last year. Sure, he’s overpaid. But that’s not the point. The point is, a paltry 20 mil is nothing to a country whose national debt increases by 1.69 billion per day.^[3]

Folks, let me also remind you that this is one of the purported TOP 3 REASONS why we should buy into ethanol.

Cleaner Air

Ethanol blends are likely to reduce carbon monoxide emissions in vehicles by between 10% - 30%, depending upon the combustion technology.

First, that HUGE percentage range given is really disconcerting on its own. Second, carbon monoxide emissions have already been reduced over 70% simply by creating improved engine and catalytic-based control technologies.^[4] Many gas burning cars, such as the Hyundai Elantra and Volkswagon Jetta (PZEV versions) are certified as partial-zero-emissions vehicles. Gas can generally burn as clean as ethanol, so please remind me why we are wasting a potential food source if there are currently gas burning cars that are already cleaner than ethanol burning cars?^[5]

Do I really need to close this out with some comment on how terrible of an idea Ethanol is? On how appalling it is that we are investing billions of dollars on a fuel that, even if every last kernel of domestic corn available was used, would put a roughly 10% dent in our gasoline needs?^[7] There is no hope of replacing any remarkable portion of our energy needs with Ethanol.

Let’s start discussing other avenues. Perhaps ones filled with bicycles and pedestrians instead of cars powered by Orville Redenbacher.

-PL

Sources:

[1] According to the American Coalition for Ethanol - http://www.ethanol.org/index.php?id=34&parentid=8
[2]Roger Segelken, Cornell University - http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/01/8.23.01/Pimentel-ethanol.html
[3]According to the national debt clock - http://brillig.com/debt_clock/
[4] Statistic from Clean Car Campaign - http://www.cleancarcampaign.org/emissions.shtml
[5]CBC News - http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2007/03/30/ethanol-emissions.html
[7]University of Minnesota - http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/Ethanol_fuel_presents_a_cornundrum.html

Popularity: 43% [?]

Early 20th century inventor Guglielmo Marconi sure thought he had a grip on wireless security, stating in an interview with Time Magazine that “Ordinary wireless waves spray their messages… the beam system directs them, gaining privacy…”

That was in 1927.

Today there are terms, algorythms, standards, and acronyms galore; wireless network security seems like endless string of these things.

I’m currently co-authoring a book on wireless security that is due out in the next several months. To help tout its awesomeness, I think it’s about time for some geeky wireless security goodness. To kick things off, here’s a little primer from me on wireless standards.

The Evolution of Wireless Standards and Technology

The basis of secure wireless has its roots in a technology known as spread spectrum. This technology was primarily developed and used by the U.S. Navy for secure wireless radio transmissions. The idea then was the same as it is today, that is to spread wireless traffic over a large area so that:

1. It appears as RF noise to anyone who is not looking for it and
2. Is less susceptible to signal jamming
3. Can be secured and sent in privacy using random keys or codes

Years after its initial development and use as a government tool, spread spectrum became declassified and thus publicly available. The spread spectrum Radio Frequency (RF) space eventually became standardized in 1997 through the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standards organization. Even after the standard is introduced, there still exists a fundamental flaw in that wireless traffic is treated the same as LAN traffic. This treatment mis-steps on the fact that, unlike wired LAN, wireless transmissions are susceptible to interception by those who are listening.

Although the spread spectrum basis for 802.11 wireless makes traffic look like white noise to those who aren’t looking, the problem is that many people are looking. The tools for wireless sniffing are not only very advanced and relatively simple to operate, they are available in force and by the plethora.

After the IEEE standardization of wireless spectrum, the 802.11a/b standard is presented as the first ratification for commercial and personal use. Along with the a/b standard comes the first encryption mechanism, Wired Equivalency Protection (WEP). Because the realization comes relatively quickly this new spread spectrum adaptation isn’t sufficiently secure on its own, WEP is seen as a quick fix and almost immediately proved to be inherently flawed at its most basic level. The weakness has to do mostly with the Initilization Vector (IV) key and its susceptibility of being quickly cracked.

The fix to WEP’s problems comes in two phases, the first of which is Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). The new WPA security implements a Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) to dynamically change keys, making it statistically impossible to recover a key through the methods used in previous WEP attacks. In addition to key enhancements, the WPA standard also implements stronger packet protection through the Michael algorithm, making it more difficult to forge wireless packets. The algorithm does its job well, however the result is that it will bring the network to a momentary halt if it detects forged packet attempts. So essentially, instead of a network security breach, we ended up with a self-imposed wireless Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Nice going Michael.

Although it is more secure than the standard it replaces, WPA is meant only as a temporary upgrade to the existing WEP infrastructure.

Today, with WPA2 and the 802.11i wireless security standard comes an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) derived security mechanism called Counter Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code (CCMP). Yeah, don’t try and memorize that one. Although CCMP is the actual algorithm used, this type of wireless security is usually referred to simply as “AES”, possibly because that last term is just such a mouthful.

Completely different from the old WEP and WPA-TKIP standards, the new AES encryption is implemented as a block cipher. The new authentication technology is also completely extensible, allowing interface with virtually any backend authentication method.

It is important to note that, unlike 802.11a/b/g/n, 802.11i is a set of changing standards for wireless security that can be applied to the former. When 802.11i is mentioned in this book, and others, it is usually referring to the latest Wi-Fi security standards of the time.

As part of the newest 802.11i standard, separation of wired and wireless networks is also achieved. Wireless LANs (WLANs) are treated as a separate entity from the LAN, with security options tailored to the specific needs of the wireless medium. The movement from thinking about WLANs as just another network, to thinking about them as a compartmentalized part of the network puzzle is finally being fully realized. Now that the necessity for separate treatment is recognized by the standards organization, such changes need to be echoed just the same in your network security plan.

-PL

Popularity: 44% [?]

Ilford Galerie Classic Pearl Resin Coated Inkjet Paper, 13″ x 19″, 25 SheetsNot terrible…

3out of 5

…but not great either.

Having been a user of Ilford RC and other photographic paper for traditional printing, I decided to give their digital media a try. This stuff is certainly better than Ilford’s “Classic Gloss”, but it still has slight problems soaking ink up in the areas of heaviest application. Even with all of the profiles from Ilford installed, and using the settings they recommend, shadow detail is not great. The ink tends to float on top of the paper rather than being soaked up and sealed.

On the bright side, as long as the profiles are installed and used (and you follow their adjustment recommendations) color rendering is very good, at least on par with the professional Canon paper I normally use. Keep in mind you do have to follow the Ilford recommended manual adjustments or else Reds and Magentas are over-represented. This, however, is generally a trait with Canon printers on any media.
Note that this paper was tested using a Canon Pro 9000. Results may differ on other printers.

I really hate to have to write this review because I LOVE Ilford traditional photographic paper. It’s the only thing I use in the dark room. I’ll try this media again if they decide to reformat their paper line, but they had better get it right next time.

Pros: Bright, Professional Weight

Cons: Slow to soak up ink, shadow detail suffers, must manually adjust color values.

Bottom Line: For now, I am sticking with Epson and Canon papers. I may continue to use this paper in non-critical large format applications, but I’d never use it for smaller work. At least, not until Ilford gets a clue and irons out some of the wrinkles in their process (profiles, ink absorption).

Popularity: 43% [?]