Windows Vista users are always looking for performance improvement due to its sluggish performance. Normally people add RAM to improve performance which is pretty costlier and there might be problem for upgrade, If there is no slot available it is not possible to upgrade.

Here is a solution to improve performance in Windows Vista called ReadyBoost. Virtual memory is also available with Windows Vista where it use Harddrive as additional RAM. The performance will be sluggish since it is using rotating device. But Microsoft added a new feature called Windows ReadyBoost, which uses Flash memory as RAM. All of us know that Flash memory is pretty faster than other rotating medium.

I will explain how to install ReadyBoost in your Windows Vista PC or laptop.

Step 1)

Plug the USB pendrive or Flash memory in high speed USB port of your PC or Laptop.

Step 2)

AutoPlay program will start. Click on the “Speed up my system” menu.

Step 3)

A program will start. Click the tab named “ReadyBoost” and select appropriately like in the figure below.

Your ReadyBoost is working now.

Flashget

Some of you might be familiar with flashget. Its the coolest download manager every to be created. Recently they have added torrent support also and now Flashget is irresistible. I myself am a flashget user for the last 10 years.

Utorrent

Its the most popular torrent client. It is very small in size (~1mb) and has got all the necessary features. Recently utorrent released their webUI using which users can control their torrent downloads remotely. Its a very cool application and Id suggest that you give this a try before you decide upon your torrent client.

BitLord

A popular tool that has a built-in torrent search engine…you may never need to use a torrent search web site ever again with this product. BitLord is also very light weight. Whenever you download using bitlord, other applications might feel a shortage of bandwidth.

Azureus

Azureus is a java based client and hence it works fine on both Linux and Windows. Its the most extensive Torrent client available and you need to be a real expert to take full advantage of its features. Its a bit heavy to operate and takes time to load or close.

A tracker is a server that aids in communication between peers who download files off the torrent network. For a client to download files from the torrent network, its necessary that it connect to a tracker first. Without a tracker the client cannot initiate the download.

The tracker provides the client with information regarding the peers who has pieces of the file its trying to download. Once a client gets the information it will contact the peers directly and then download pieces from it. The client contacts the server periodically updating its status and getting information about new clients.

Trackers are of two types, public tracker and private tracker. Anyone can connect to a public tracker and get information regarding the files it tracks. But private trackers are password protected. Private torrents are used to maintain the quality of clients. Some private trackers are invitation only. Some have upload ratio that needs to be maintained by the client to be able to be a member.

Downloading files off the torrent network is a 2 step process. First you have to download the index file for the file you want to download. Then you feed the index file to the client and the client starts the original download.

Most of the time people download the index file and says that they downloaded the file, it was very fast and couldn’t open the file.

The index file or the torrent file contains information regarding the servers that track the original file that we want to download. Those servers are called trackers and they track the users who has got particular files. Our download client contacts the server to get a list of the users with the file and then connects directly to the users and downloads the files.

Some advanced technologies are now eliminating the need for centralised trackers. DHT is a technology in which peers communicate with each other propagating the data needed about the availability of the files with out a tracker.

To be start off with this post series today I am going to explain what is bluetooth and its usage? What are its predecessors? I guess you people at-least heard the word `bluetooth` before. In the modern world of communication, all are having mobile phones sometimes the mobile phones are equipped with bluetooth connectivity, WiFi connectivity etc. Anyway It is simply a wireless protocol capable for sending data’s with other devices. The devices may be either a laptop, mobile phone, PDA or whatever device that are equipped with a bluetooth chip. The bluetooth are used for short distance communication normally works in the frequency 2.4GHz.

There are mainly 3 bluetooth device class which are classified according to the range it cover. Class 1 cover upto 100 meters, Class 2 cover upto 10 meters, Class 3 cover upto 1 meters. The other classification is based on the firmware the chip carry. It may either be Version 1.2(1Mbits/sec), Version 2.0 with EDR (enhance data rate, 3 Mbits/sec) and Wimedia alliance which is proposed to be bandwidth between 53 - 450 Mbits/sec.

One of the main predecessor for bluetooth is WiBree, which comes with ultra low power chip with a bit rate of 1Mbits/sec. It is proposed and developed by Nokia recently. The WiBree research are still going on.

This is gonna an important topic What VOIP can do with WiFi mesh? I can say this is the topic which might be useful for saving your expense in local calls. If your city is already WiFi enabled just think of the situation where you don’t need to pay phone bills for local calls? I know you will be interested. If your city is WiFi enabled this dream can be setup without enough cost. But this is heavily dependent on your network. There are couple of requirements that need to be satisfied.

1) WiFi mesh
2) SIP server
3) SIP clients

Another main requirement is your bandwidth and its reliability. Make your WiFi mesh reliable for voice handling. Any packet loss in voice handling may disrupt its quality of service(QoS). Another major factor is its latency. IPERF is a measurement tool to find the QoS. This tool measures mainly node to node throughput, latencies, jitter, packet loss etc. If the QoS achieves certain level, we can deploy Voice solution with the existing WiFi mesh network. SIP server may be open source asterisk solutions or some Hardware capable to accept SIP protocols.

Now a days high end phones are equipped with WiFi chip. So we can install a SIP based application and use it in the existing mesh network for local voice call. I am planning to setup a asterisk based solution in one of our mesh network for testing purpose so that I can analyze the reliability.

I hope you have understood the basics of torrents from the previous post. If you have not, wait for the coming posts. For the time being lets stop bull shitting and do some practical stuff. Lets install a torrent client.

A torrent client is a like a download manager for torrents. But slightly different in the way it operates and downloads the files. A torrent client uses the bit torrent protocol to download the file. The best torrent client I have ever used is flashget.

Download Flashget from here

Flashget was a normal download manager. Its only recently that they added the bit torrent protocol also to it. Right now its the best download manager available with loads of features.

Download and install the program. We will cover how to download a file from the torrent network in the next post.

Sharing is a social activity and hence its there on the internet also. Some forms of sharing files are considered illegal, but lets not discuss about that. Suppose you need a file, it may be a movie, mp3 or some software. Lets take for example, the latest Micheal Moore documentary. Its almost certain that many people already have it on their computers.

Torrents are a means for them to share the file so that others on the internet also can download it. Now whats so special about it ? We all can download files from a server, whats the difference when we are using torrents ?

When you are downloading the Micheal Moore documentary from a server, the entire 700MB is served from the same server. When 1000 people download the file, 700 X 1000 MB gets transferred from the server. 700 GB is a lot of data transfer. And many server admins might not like the idea since it will cost them a lot.

Torrents distribute the downloading process. If I am downloading a file using the torrent network, Im not downloading the file from a single server. Instead I am download various parts of the file from different users on the internet. My download client will rejoin the pieces when all pieces are downloaded.

Considering the previous example, if the same file is distributed using a torrent network the total usage on the server is drastically reduced. Every downloader acts as a server also distributing the pieces he downloads to other new downloaders. So when 1000 people have downloaded the file, we have 1000 servers for the same file.

Torrents reduce the load on the server. It improves the availability of  the file since many people will be having the same file and is sharing it. So even if some of the servers go down, we will still be able to download the file from other servers/downloaders.

Many of you might this is a simple topic. Yes it is a simple topic, but still there are many who are unaware of the world of file sharing. The inspiration to write this post is a junior of mine. She wanted some files and I said they are in the torrent network. But She didn’t know what torrents were and had no idea how to download files using the torrent network.

I decided to teach her and it took me 2 hours of gmail chat. The topics for this post series is based on the questions she had about the whole concept of torrent based file sharing. We will discuss the following areas in the post series.

Torrents and File Sharing - Introduction
The Client - Flashget
The Process has got 2 steps
What is a tracker
Some other clients
Torrent Indexing sites
Remote Control your download

The image shows the mesh layout on a google map. The nodes are numbered from 1 to 3. Node 3, which is in green color is powered up right now and the other two nodes are not powered. The nodes are setup in an apartment complex and provides wifi to 15 homes.

This shows the usage pattern and nodes that had problems in the recent past. 2 Nodes listed there were not powered and is marked in red to mean that they need attention.

Shows the network diagram and how the nodes are connected.

Shows the list of users who have connected to the mesh recently.