DLNA At Work (At Home)

DLNA stands for Digital Living Network Alliance (http://www.dlna.org/). They are a collection of companies with an aim to make home networking and multimedia entertainment interoperable and hassle - free. Among the members are giants like Microsoft and Sony and around 250 others. And I am happy to report this alliance seems to be working. During my so-called "free time" I keep on putting together a home entertainment network. Wrote a bit on that on my Tech Bulletins blog (http://tech.slupik.com/2007/11/digital-home.html). This project is still a work in progress, but from what I have assembled now it looks like the DLNA - compliant devices are really interoperable.

So far I have been able to put together two main components of the system:

• The Infrant ReadyNAS file / streaming server. Depending how you look at it, you may consider the ReadyNAS as a heart of the system. Currently I have it equipped with four 500GB drives, yielding capacity of around 1,5TB (the fourth drive is for redundancy RAID configuration). Infrant also runs two streaming services - a SlimServer to feed music to the Squeezeboxes and an UPnP AV streaming service (this is essentially DLNA- compliant streaming service) to feed videos to various devices and pictures to digital photo frames.
  I have been pretty happy with the ReadyNAS so far. It is simple to set up, the only thing I may complain about is the speed, as it is not the fastest file server I have seen... But just good enough for the home storage.
• The Sony Playstation 3 console. PS3 handles a number of scenarios. Of course it is a game console. It is also by far the best Blue-Ray disc player on the Planet (and one of the cheapest ones), so I use it to play the high - definition movies. And it is DLNA - compliant, so it magically connects using its built-in WiFi to the ReadyNAS server, able to play any movie, picture slideshow or music stored there. With the latest 2.10 firmware from Sony, the PS3 can play movies of any format. MPEG-2 (DVD dumps), MPEG-4, VC-1 (Windows Media) and DivX. With such a broad format support Sony is really delivering what is needed to keep the Playstation 3 as a heart of the living room entertainment system. Just connect it over HDMI to a FullHD TV set and to a sound amlifier and you do not need anything else. People around the world were questioning Sony leadership on the game console market. But I am sure it will outlive the competitors. Nintendo Wii does not have enough processing power to drive a high definition TV set, so its longevity is what should be questioned in fact. And Microsoft bet on the wrong horse, equipping the XBOX 360 with a HD-DVD drive, the format that has just lost the battle for good this month. I agree XBOX has more games and Nintendo is more gaming fun. But if you want to have the best multimedia device for the living room, Sony PS3 has no competition: ultra - performance games, Blue-Ray and a DLNA wireless multimedia hub supporting any file format available. And - I wrote it before, but it is worth repeating - the PS3 is the most standard - compliant device I have ever seen. In terms of ports (CF, SD, USB), in terms of accessories (just about any USB or Bluetooth accessory works - keyboards, trackballs, controllers...) and in terms of file format support (any DVD disc, Blue-Ray, plus MPEG2/4/VC-1/DivX/MP3/WMA media).

Not long ago I was complaining about poor stability of the Nokia N800 Internet tablet, I had fallen in love with before. Yesterday I upgraded the N800 firmware to the 2.2007.50-2 version of the maemo Linux OS2008 and the stability issues are gone. It renders GMail and Google Reader perfectly (and fast!) and plays multimedia from the ReadyNAS server without a glitch. Both music and movies. Have not tried picture slideshows yet, but they should be working too. So Nokia is back to glory and I am happy to report it is DLNA - compliant, at least in my setup.

The last comment today will be about the Denon AVR-4308. It is a monster... Has everything you can dream of... from iPod connectivity to WiFi to DLNA certification (as a music player) to remote operation via Web Browser... Most probably I will not be buying the AVR-4308 for two reasons - it does not fit in my current AV component shelf and I still prefer my audio being powered by Squeezeboxes (the new Duets are sweet...). But it would be really interesting if someone could comment here on the DLNA experience with the Denon receiver. May be when I decide to buy a new furniture for the living room, I will get back to Denon :)

Belkin WiFi Wireless USB Hub

Belkin has been my vendor of choice for years when it comes to USB infrastructure. You may ask what unusual is these days in USB hubs... they are so plain simple... Yes and no. As long as the hub works there is nothing to talk about. But I happened to have a number of USB hubs from other vendors and they were either sporadically freezing, generating a lot of frustration (for example when a long multi-page ADF document scan freezes after finishing some 70% of the work) or they simply did not allow to draw more than 500mA of power per port. Nowadays we have a lot of devices drawing their power from the USB bus. And many of them exceed the official rule of 500mA. I should say kudos to the USB hub manufacturers (like Belkin) or notebook manufacturers (like IBM/Lenovo) who save us on power supplies and unnecessary cords, allowing for current overdraft.

We have heard a lot about UWB (Ultra Wide-Band) and Wireless USB standards. They promise to deliver what USB delivers today, but without wires and over a short distance (consider having all the wireless USB devices on your desk to have them connected). While it sounds nice, I am not so sure this will be very practical... as most devices like flash drives or backup drives or USB CD-ROM's require power. The power is usually taken from the USB hub, but cannot be transmitted without wires, so there is hardly a point to have the devices communicating among themselves without wires, while they still have to be wired for power supply...

With the Networked USB hub Belkin takes a different approach. The hub itself is not wireless. It is a regular hub with five USB ports and a power supply... and an RJ-45 Ethernet socket. It connects over the Ethernet to your home or office Ethernet infrastructure and over the same Ethernet to your computer. Of course some segments of this Ethernet connection can be wireless, using standard WiFi infrastructure (be it 802.11 a, b, g, or n standard). So: on one end there is the USB hub, on the other end there is a computer, and there is just an Ethernet connection between them. To me this means freedom. I always go around the house with my laptop and the hub rests on my desk, being connected to a DVD writer, a printer, a backup HDD drive, a flat bed scanner and an iPod. As long as I am within a reach of my WiFi network, I can use any of these devices. Sync the iPod, print, access the backup drive. All of them use their standard USB drivers, so there is nothing really required to set up apart from the Belkin Network USB Hub Control Center. It behaves very well (even in Vista), allows to connect / disconnect the devices, even allows sharing them between machines on the same Ethernet LAN. The only downside is speed, for example the iPod/iTunes synchronization takes noticeably longer (but I run this over 802.11g network, I believe running similar setup over the 802.11n network would be significantly faster). On the other hand this setup gives a lot of "wireless" freedom and apart from setting the Windows firewall to allow TCP and UDP on port 19540 it is a piece of cake to install and manage.

Microvision SHOW Prototype

I wrote about the Microvision PicoProjector (PicoP) before. Now I am happy to report they are making a good progress. At CES (Consumer Electronic Show) 2008 in Las Vegas Microvision presented the SHOW Prototype, a working product to prove their technology really delivers. The device is about the size of a cigarette pack. This is still too much to be implanted inside a mobile phone, but there are many devices that would benefit having the PicoP built-in.

Notebooks: many notebook users frequently conduct presentations (internal or external) in a group of a few people - be it coworkers or customers. The small meeting rooms usually have walls, but often lack projectors. Personally I would love to have the PicoP built-in my notebook. Yes, I would sacrifice 150 grams of weight to be able to "beam" a PowerPoint slide deck or an Excel Spreadsheet anywhere. Or to show the pictures just acquired from a digital camera to my family and friends.

Spending half of my life with notebook computers it is really tough for me to imagine an electronic device that could not be emulated by a notebook computer. I mean portable DVD players (notebooks play DVDs), game consoles (notebooks let you play games), personal navigation devices (notebooks can navigate when connected to GPS receivers)... but there are reasons these devices still exist. The main reason is devices dedicated to just one task execute thos task well, without the hassles of complicated setup and software issues. So yes... all these devices are good candidates to have the PicoP projectors built-in.

And how the ultimate PicoP application looks like? Well... I can recommend you watching the Cisco Telepresence demonstration. Today the Telepresence is a very high end, very expensive teleconferencing system. In future, thanks to Microvision and others the Telepresence will be built in every mobile phone (should I use the word "phone"?). This is how the personal telecommunication devices will work. Be prepared :)

IPv6 - Is It Coming Or Not?

Today I have got myself involved in a very interesting discussion on the outlook for IPv6 rollout. I have to confess I have been thinking about the IPv6 from time to time, and my views on the iPv6 are even more radical than ever. Contrary to the public belief of IPv4 address space exhaustion, I think we will ride the NAT kludge for a while... and I am 100% certain the migration to IPv6 will take more than the average of current estimates. But let us start from the beginning.

The main difference between IPv4 and IPv6 is the number of hosts that can be addressed on a network. This seems to be obvious, but is not. By number of hosts we should consider the number of publicly available servers, or even aggregation points. For example Google.com counts but my laptop and my cellphone do not, as they are not servers - they are clients. Clients usually sit behind NATs (Network Address Translators), a kludge that allows many client devices on a private network share one common external IPv4 address.

The story of IPv4 address space exhaustion is many years old. I remember a statement from one very knowledgeable network guru in 2003, that we would run out of IPv4 addresses in 3 years. It has been now 5 years since then and we are still nowhere near the exhaustion point.

Why?

• First - NATs are blooming. Every private / corporate / or even access network has NATs. So we have thousands or millions machines sharing a single IP address. We can go with this almost forever...
• Second - with the current generation of Web services, we keep on moving towards a strong client / server / hosted services model. The servers are Google, Yahoo, Facebook and so on... The clients are us (households, even enterprises). Ultimately Google could have just one public IP. Same for Yahoo. The IP switching and routing technologies already in place allow to route all the incoming client requests via a single "server" IP address. I used to have my own email server (occupying one external IPv4 address). Now it is hosted by Google. Same with my web page. If this client / server / hosted services model continues to strengthen (and it does), we may even see a decline in a number of required public IPv4 addresses (OK, this may be an exaggeration, but illustrates well what is happening).

The other clear evidence of no real shortage of IPv4 addresses is the economic one. Look at the price of oil. It keeps on rising, as demand continues to be strong and there is FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) we will shortly run out of oil. Higher oil prices stimulate the research for alternative energy sources and limits consumption. How do economics of IPv4 versus IPv6 look like? So far nothing indicates the shortage. If we were really about to run out of them, there would be big incentives to implement IPv6. But so far Microsoft seems to be the only organization actively promoting IPv6 - it is on by default in Windows Vista and comes equipped with several accompanying tools and mechanisms, like the Teredo tunneling protocol. On the other hand it is available neither on Sony PlayStation3, nor on XBOX / Nintendo gaming platforms. There are no home or small business routers / gateways supporting IPv6. All these evidences show we still have enough time to live with IPv4. If I (or any other consumer or an organization) were to move to IPv6, strong economic incentives should be present. There are none at the moment. The dancing Kames (http://www.kame.net/) are simply not enough. I would either have to pay much more for maintaining my IPv4 address or much less when moving to IPv6 or have other good reason (like new applications, not available in the IPv4 world).

So let us move now to the potentials of the IPv6. It promises every device to be a public host. This means no more hierarchical NATs after NATs, and a completely flat worldwide IPv6 network. What does it bring to the table? And the answer is: Peer to Peer (P2P) connectivity. This is the main differentiator. IPv4, due to its limitations in the public address space and the use of NATs, is very much in line with the current client / server model (public servers and clients behind NATs). On the other hand, P2P allows any device to communicate directly with any other device. Like Your light switch in the US may turn on and off my light bulb in Poland, provided they both have IPv6 addresses. No extra server / service in the middle. Pure Peer to Peer. This is what I mean new applications. When everything is a public host, you suddenly have a completely new playground to invent application scenarios. There are many already waiting (like the mobile VoIP) and many more not yet invented.

And there is more than just enabling Peer To Peer (P2P) communications in IPv6. There is significant support for mobility in IPv6 - concepts of Home Addresses (HA) and Care Of Addresses (CoA), meaning wherever you are, you can always discover a way to your home. And ultimately IPv6 means no more loss of a session while you roam. This makes IPv6 much better suited to support all-IP mobile communications. We may be pretty sure when the new wave of 4th generation (4G) mobile handsets and networks arrive, they will all be IPv6. But do not hold your breath for them in 2008... The world still has not implemented 3G as it should...

But the mobile all-IP P2P, once it comes, will change the world. Finally we will be able to "dial" any other network device directly, without having to consult any "central" authority. Something like dialing a number on a rotary phone versus operator - assisted call, but much much more... BTW, there is a good presentation by Garry Hemminger to follow the subject.

So it all seems bright, looking into the future, but then there is this huge security issue. Are we ready to get rid of our NATs that hide our private hosts from the outside public network and expose every device to the Internet? No way... So while there has been this big promise of IPv6 to free us from NATs, we have quickly realized we need NATs for security reasons. I mean not just pure NATs, but gateways comprising NATs and firewalls. Every household, every company has one or more of them. We feel good and secure behind the firewalls. How would you feel connecting your private computer directly to the public Internet, so it could be pinged and explored by anybody else on the Planet? So while were happy to get rid of those gateways, we would still love to have them. The problem here with IPv6 is the current generation gateways are not IPv6 aware. So to make IPv6 a reality worldwide, we would have to replace those gateways. Millions of them. Unfortunately in my opinion there is no economic driver now to push that replacement. And to push us all up the steep learning curve of IPv6 implementations. The incentives are simply not present yet and the real IPv6/P2P applications are still to come.