Nabaztag Fiasco

We have adopted a rabbit this Christmas. A smart rabbit, that is - the Nabaztag. The idea of an electronic pet connected to various online services is cute. I will not go into the deep functional details, as you can watch the presentations on the Nabaztag.Com web site. And unfortunately I cannot tell you more from own experience, as we barely managed to get it running before the my.nabaztag.com site went down this morning "due to overwhelming rabbit registrations". But it definitely seems the rabbits have been a commercial success and most of them found their place under Christmas trees. I can only imagine the frustrations of hundreds (thousands?) of people unpacking their rabbits and then trying to configure them over the web service that stopped working.

It looks like the Nabaztag concept is really great, but then we have two very fundamental flaws in the execution. First is an overloaded server that cannot handle Christmas traffic. But I think (and hope) the company will learn its lessons and the infrastructure will be upgraded to handle the increased traffic. Second flaw is equally bad. The rabbit connects to the Internet via WiFi (it is correctly assumed most gadget households already have WiFi/DSL routers). There is some rather complicated setup procedure, as the rabbit has no keyboard to enter the network password. And in the middle of it you realize it probably does not support WPA encryption. Unfortunately at the very moment your computer is connected to the rabbit "ad-hoc, setup-only network", and not to the Internet, so you cannot check it but after some digging you have the answer: "Nabaztag currently supports WEP encryption standards. Note: the current version of Nabaztag will not be updateable to support the new standards.". Bad... very bad... There is a new, enhanced model, the Nabaztag/tag, you can preorder now, but hey, we have just adopted a rabbit! Should we throw it away because it will not be updateable?

And here comes Linksys to the rescue. A couple of months ago I upgraded the WRT-54G router at the heart of my home network to the new WRV-200. I wanted to write about the WRV-200 for several times. It has many smart features on board. The main reason for my upgrade was the support for VPN connections (I wanted to connect to my home network over VPN from outside), but I found the so-called Range Booster technology to be what I really like. Range Booster is something proprietary, but it does not need anything on the "other"side. This means my old and faithful ThinkPad T41 Centrino notebook now picks the WiFi signals anywhere at home or in the garden, without the need for any external antennas or repeaters. If you have coverage problems - the Range Booster thing is highly recommended (do not confuse this with the Speed Booster, which is different and requires compatible radio card on the other end). As I have just said, the WRV-200 is fully loaded with features, and trying to solve the "not - WPA - upgradeable rabbit" I have found out I could configure several (up to four) wireless networks running simultaneously. Each network can have different SSID, encryption, and each can be assigned to a separate VLAN (virtual network segment, up to five of them). So I created another wireless network, just for the rabbit, gave it 128 bit WEP encryption, set the security so only the rabbit can use it and finally after this long procedure the Nabaztag went all-green (that means it connected to the home server).

I just wonder how many rabbits will be returned, as not everyone has a VLAN router at home and an MSC degree required to set up the thing, no to mention the frustration with overloaded server. Something the Nabaztag creators have twelve months now to think about and get ready for 2007 Christmas...