Wireless Woes

Spent most of today on a clients premises, we’ve ripped a large batch of CDs which we loaded onto a NAS drive. Since then two things have happened, the NAS is installed and the client found some more CDs he wanted ripped. So we ripped the CDs and delivered the digital files, ready to copy them into their music library.

Client has a laptop, connected via a wireless network to his router. The NAS is hard wired to the router. Here’s your question - you have 20GB of data files to load to the NAS. How long will it take?

Gee did I get the answer wrong. The answer turned out to be four hours. Very, very slow and a strain to make small talk all afternoon. At the back of my mind was the question, why? Well, the biggest problem is transmission over the network. The PC has to read the data, get it across the network to the drive; which writes the chunk of the MP3 file to its disk, then returns a message to say send the next chunk of data. Just looking at raw network data rates is misleading, far too optimistic. And a solemn warning for anyone planning to load music files across wireless connections.

Invest in a bit of cable.

CD Ripping - Neighbours

CD ripping was on hold yesterday. The weather was good so I reluctantly turned my attention to garden chores I’ve been neglecting. I hardly noticed the sound of my mobile ringing.

Then I could hardly hear who was calling, the noise at the other end was so loud. Not helped by one of the neighbours here arriving and switching on their radio. We ended up having a phone conversation by shouts, a couple of miles closer and we wouldn’t have needed the phones.

So just a small, personal, plea. Sound carries in the summer and as much as I like the Beach Boys turn it down.

CD Ripping - Neighbours

CD ripping was on hold yesterday. The weather was good so I reluctantly turned my attention to garden chores I’ve been neglecting. I hardly noticed the sound of my mobile ringing.

Then I could hardly hear who was calling, the noise at the other end was so loud. Not helped by one of the neighbours here arriving and switching on their radio. We ended up having a phone conversation by shouts, a couple of miles closer and we wouldn’t have needed the phones.

So just a small, personal, plea. Sound carries in the summer and as much as I like the Beach Boys turn it down.