The My Book series of external hard drives from Western Digital have always been pretty popular. With great performance, high quality, and a slick aesthetic, it's hardly a surprise. Western Digital has a pretty strong name in the hard drive market. Lately they have been dipping their toes into the networking market too so seeing a product like the Western Digital My Book Live is a natural fit.

Cisco just recently announced the first Linksys WifFi Router that features the latest 802.11ac technology. Next generation WiFi 802.11ac (also known as 5G wireless) is the hottest new wireless networking trend we’ve been talking about lately and it's exciting to see that Cisco is already jumping into the fray, not wanting to be late to the party.

We’ve already talked a little about the new 802.11ac WiFi networking standard that's rolling out this year. Well we’ve finally got our mitts on the tech to take it for a field test with the new Netgear R6300 Wifi Router. This Dual Band Gigabit router just hit the shelves at Future Shop and promises the world’s fastest WiFi. 

Pogoplug originally started out as a standalone hardware unit where you could plug in external hard drives that you could then access either within the home network or remotely. The premise behind all this is to have cloud storage that is inherently personal and without the residual cost of a monthly subscription. The Pogoplug Mobile has a much smaller footprint and is marketed as the ideal personal cloud unit for your smartphone or tablet.

It seems like just last year that 802.11n networking started proliferating in consumer level products. It's a fairly fast, secure, and reliable standard and a big jump from 802.11g.  Dual-band routers, wireless encryption, and high speed data streaming has become much more common these days. Now theres something new on the WiFi horizon; the fifth generation wireless networking standard, dubbed 802.11ac. 

Western Digital has always had a good reputation for their line of hard drives. In the past few years they’ve been adding a few different product categories to their lineup, including home network media boxes. Just last week they made their big splash with a new lineup of routers, showing that they’re serious about competing aggressively in this category. Since then I’ve been taking their top of the line My Net N900 through its paces to see just how well it really does.

Western Digital is pretty well known for their data storage solutions. They’ve built up a good reputation over the years for a variety of quality Hard Drives and including a great assortment of external drives. Today they’re making a bit of a splash with something new, however. Western Digital just launched a series of networking products - a brand new category for the company to compete in. They’re not doing it lightly either. I had the opportunity to sit down with WD and check out their new offerings. Take it from me, these aren’t just ‘me too’ products. They’re really trying to bring something new to the home networking scene and compete aggressively with some quality innovations.

With Backup Awareness Month in mind, I thought we could take a moment to sit down and discuss the world of network attached storage - NAS for short. They can be really handy for data storage, file sharing, and of course as part of your backup solution.

Previously we took a quick look at the basics of securing your home computer. If you’ve followed that guide you’ve already in pretty good shape with a nice, secure machine but there's always more  you can do. Today we’ll dig into setting up some simple security on your home network. This can not only keep your data safe, but prevent all sorts of unauthorized access, and even prevent neighbours from ‘’borrowing’ your wireless internet access.

It may have been a while since you’ve put any thought into your wireless network so you could be forgiven for not knowing anything about Wireless N. Most of  you might already be familiar with 802.11 B/G which is what most of your wireless networking gear probably uses already.  The successor to that is the N standard which began rolling out a couple of years ago and is what you’ll want to look for in any new WiFi enabled devices you buy. 

Last year Cisco released their Linksys E4200 maximum performance dual-band wireless-N router to rave reviews. It hit the market as one of the best wireless routers you could get in your home with impressive performance and great usability. This year Cisco is following up by launching their Linksys E4200v2 router. It looks pretty much the same as the original E4200 but its definitely worth a closer look at the changes.

If you are a PC gamer, you probably already have your gaming PC hooked up to the internet already. However, in today’s modern households, there are so many devices connecting to your network (and vying for your precious bandwidth), that your gaming PC is probably feeling a little crowded. With top-tier online PC games like Battlefield 3 and Diablo III coming out, perhaps it’s time to upgrade your ancient network. Also, while this article will be from a PC gaming perspective, most of this will be applicable to online console gaming too.



During the flurry of news and updates about iOS 5 and iCloud last week, a lot of folks missed the release of AirPort Utility for iOS. At first you might think this is no big deal, but consider this scenario: You’re upstairs away from your router and all you have handy is your smartphone or tablet and your Internet connection is acting wonky. You want to check your router, but can you? Chances are the answer is, no, no you can’t. Believe me I’ve thought about it and I’ve always wound up going down to my laptop to check something. Now wouldn’t it just be better to be able to check the status of your router, even update or administer it, from any device? Yeah I think so too.

After launching its first Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in Ottawa in July, Rogers uncorked its network in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver today. This is the extent of the rollout for 2011, with the next 21 markets ready to go over the course of 2012. Users on LTE should experience speeds that are double or triple what 3G HSPA offers right now.

You might say I’m a bit of a home networking geek. I think the only thing I haven’t tried is ethernet over power lines on my own home network. Over the years I’ve used gear from Netgear, Dlink, Linksys, and Apple and if I’ve learned one thing from almost ten years of home networking it’s that it really does pay to stick with one brand of gear.