Requirements

MSVBM50.exe available from Microsoft.
The WallWatcher library files.
The WallWatcher app.
A router with DD-WRT or similar that allows remote logging.

Installing & Configuring

Download and install the VB runtime files from Microsoft first. If you can’t find the download link, check out the following screenshot of the download page.

Next, create a new folder called WallWatcher and extract the contents of both of the zip files you downloaded into the root of that folder. Run setup.exe when you’re done. If the coloured boxes on the right at the bottom of the page are all blue, click install to continue. If some have errors, make sure you check the box that says install and register library files (OCX). Windows 7 users should have no issues though.

You now should now find an icon on your desktop.

Next up, log in to your router to configure that side of things. On the security tab, find the section labelled Log Management, and enable it at a high level. Under the options section, enable each setting too. Save and apply the settings.

Then, under the Services menu, scroll down to System Log and click to Enable. In the box labelled Remote Server, enter the IP address of your Windows machine.

If you don’t know your IP address, the easiest way to find out is to open a command prompt, and type ipconfig. With default DD-WRT addressing, you should see 192.168.1.??? (not 1). Copy and paste that number, then hit Apply.

Back to WallWatcher. Open it up and check the box for auto-select. It should be able to figure out what your router is automatically. If you want to enter the details manually, IP Tables is the setting for a generic DD-WRT flashed router, and the LAN address will be your router (192.168.1.1 by default), with 514 as the port number.

Next, click over to the Logging tab and ensure the Convert IP Addrs to URL’s is enabled, along with OK to use NetBios 137. This will ensure you can at least see some meaningful URLs in the log instead of the actual IP address of the website.

Click OK and you’ll be taken to the log. You should see a bunch of messages coming onscreen right now showing your entire traffic breakdown on the network. Since it can be a bit overwhelming, I found it better to go back to the Options->Logging screen and disabling everything except outbound traffic.

I had problems fully identifying URLs from the IP because I’m running DD-WRT as a sub-router in my network. If you’re having issues too, make sure that port 137 is open and forwarding correctly on your main router, as this is used to look up the URLs.

Conclusion

Using this method to watch everything going on on your network is guaranteed to make you quite paranoid. The fact that so many packets go whizzing in and out from all over the place might seem alarming, but the truth is that by loading just one website you are likely making many requests to many different IPs in order to pull in external resources such as images, javascripts, and advertising banners. It’s a good way to see if someone else is on the network as it shows originating IP too.

But now what?  Do you want to get your own back and figure out who they actually are? Stay tuned – in a few weeks time I’ll be looking at some downright dirty tools that can show you exactly what they’re looking at, and even grab some website logins they might be using. We also covered great portable network analysis tools last year.

In the meantime, if you’ve seen something that worries you or a strange originating IP address you didn’t know was active on your network, why not ask for help in the MakeUseOf support community right here?

With a total of 360 votes, responses were divided as follows: 35% use 6-10 open-source programs per week; 21% use 1-5 open-source programs weekly; 19% use 11-20 open-source programs; 11% use 21-50 open-source programs per week; while a staggering 11% use 50+ open-source programs per week; just 2% of readers use no open-source programs at all.

Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.

It looks like most MakeUseOf readers have 6-10 favourite open source programs which get used on a weekly basis, but an elite number of users use quite a few open-source programs per week.

This week’s poll question is: Do You Have An Always-On Internet Connection?

It seems for a lot of games these days, users are expected to have a reliable always-on internet connection in order to play the game. We’re wondering just how many people would be inconvenienced by this attitude: Have you got a reliable always-on internet connection? Or do you use a sporadic connection? Is your internet unreliable?

What do you think about these gaming companies expecting you to have always-on internet connections in order to play their games? Does it affect you? Are there games you know you won’t buy because you just can’t play them using your internet connection? Let us know!

Gamzer is here to make playing low-bandwidth games quick and easy with 4 games available from their free service. They offer Pool, Chess, Checkers and Gladiator. All 4 of these games are played against the computer or another real person. We have covered websites that feature online pool and chess before, and Gamezer hopes to take your attention away and keep all your online gaming focused on their service that offers both, plus checkers and Gladiator.

Allow me to preface this with a little explanation of why someone would be interested in low-bandwidth games. Some Internet service providers don’t offer an unlimited plan, so users have to pay for the service based on how much data they actually use. By using a service like Gamezer they are able to still have fun playing online games, but aren’t forced into using a massive amount of data and racking up a huge bill.

Another reason someone may be particularly interested in low-bandwidth games is because they have a very slow Internet connection. If your Internet connection is slow, waiting for a high resolution 3D game to stream can take forever, and that is frustrating.

Registration

To begin playing games on Gamezer you have to register, which is a snap. Simply go to the main page and click the “play now” button or the link for whichever of the 4 games you would like to play. You will then be taken to the page where you can log in or register a new account. The link to register is on the right side of the page.

After clicking on the register button you will taken to a screen to enter in your information such as your email address, language, password, and of course a “CAPTCHA” to make sure you are human.

Finding A Game

After you complete the registration process, your next goal will be to play some games. This process is easy enough, but it is not nearly as streamlined as it could be. Once you click the game you want to play you are taken to a screen to choose a lobby. You’ll want to look for one that has less than 130 people, since that is their maximum. If you choose “National Rooms” you can play with only people from your country.

Once in a lobby you can click “new game” to start a game against a computer opponent, or you can browse the area on the left side of the screen and invite another person to play. I find it kind of odd that there is no option for quickly being matched against another real live opponent who is looking to play. This can make finding a game a little more challenging than is necessary. That said, it never took me more than a couple of minutes to find a game, even if it isn’t the most streamlined process.

To actually invite a user, simply click the little arrow next to their name and wait for their response.

Quality Of Games

Gamezer’s bread and butter is definitively their pool game. That is where most of the players are, and that is the game with the best quality. The game doesn’t look great graphically, but that’s acceptable because of the nature of a low-bandwidth service such as this. The lower graphics allow the game to stream quickly, and without using much data.

The physics are good, and the balls move like you would expect them to. The chess and checkers games are also good, the Gladiator game however, not so much. It’s basically a 2D fighter, where you hack your sword at your opponent until one of you is longer standing. I played one full game of Gladiator, and decided my time was better spent playing one of the three other offerings on the site. However, being able to play an action based game such as this, while keeping your data usage low will certainly benefit many people.

Other Features

Gamezer features a very nice leader board so you can see how the best players in the world are doing. This is one area where Gamezer really beats out a lot of similar services. Most services of this type don’t keep track of your records or stats, so the games never seem to have any real sense of consequence. Being able to keep track of your performances keeps Gamezer competitive with other browser based gaming services.

Major Flaw

Gamezer has one flaw that really hurt me. I think this image speaks for itself.

As an avid Google Chrome user this upset me a great deal, and it pained me to have to dig out Firefox to check out the games. Hopefully the folks at Gamezer add support for Chrome down the line.

Conclusion

If you are in a situation where you need to play games while using as little data as possible, I think Gamezer just might be the service for you.

What free browser-based gaming services do you use? Have you used Gamezer before? What is your opinion? Let us know in the comments below.

While many people set up their mobile phone – such as rooting an Android, for example – to allow for tethering and accessing the cellular data network with a PC, it is a practice that is generally frowned upon by the mobile providers. However, there are times when you’re just desperate for Internet access, and you need the larger screen that your laptop offers.

In previous articles, I’ve described how you can tether your rooted Android phone to your laptop, and Dave described how you can tether a jailbroken iPhone in much the same way. My preferred method of tethering is using the awesome Wireless tether app that I mentioned recently.

Installing The Emulator

Once you have that tether enabled, and you’ve got your Wireless data Internet connection activated on your phone, the following guide will help you to conserve bandwidth so that you won’t draw too much attention to yourself while surfing.

The first step is to install a mobile phone emulator – a few options include using the Android developer SDK that has an emulator tool, or you can install the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit from Sun which includes a good emulator as well. The simplest solution is to install the MicroEmulator program to your PC.

You will need Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on your system (if you don’t already). When you launch the MicroEmulator, it won’t look like anything at all special at first. It basically looks like a cellphone with a mobile screen. First, make sure you’ve enabled Internet access by clicking on “Options” and then make sure “MIDlet Network Access” is checked.

The beauty of this emulator is that it’ll run most mobile browsers like Bolt or Opera Mini. As far as I know, Opera Mini is just about the easiest to install – all you have to do is download the JAD and JAR files at the Opera download page. Save them somewhere you’ll remember, preferably in the “devices” folder in the MicroEmulator application directory. Then, you can load up the Opera Mini browser inside the emulator by clicking on File and then “Open MIDlet File…”

You will see “Opera Mini” appear on the main screen under the list of devices. To launch the mobile browser, just select it and click “Start”. The Opera Mini browser will launch just like you’re running it on your own mobile device – along with the streamlined bandwidth that you’d be using if you were actually using your phone.

While this is pretty cool – it isn’t good enough. The whole point of using your computer or laptop is to take advantage of the large screen, right? Let’s resize the display window to a wider display. In MicroEmulator, you do this by clicking on Options and “Select Device…”

Select “Resizable device” and then click on “Add…“  You’ll see a list of devices to choose from. Click the mobile browser you’ve installed, and then type in the size of the window that you would like.

Once you launch Opera Mini again, it’ll now be in a larger window with the size parameters you set.  Make sure to go into the Opera Mini browser settings and enable “Fullscreen” mode and enable “Load images” and set “Image quality” to medium for an optimal browsing experience. Just because you’re browsing over a mobile network with your laptop doesn’t mean you can enjoy it a little!

Now, when you launch any page that has a mobile version, you’ll notice that the site “senses” you’re using a WAP connection and will serve up the mobile version of the page – cutting down your overall bandwidth significantly. Here’s the main page of MUO displayed through this Opera Mini browser running on my laptop.

Clicking on one of the articles, the page loaded in just seconds, used only about 300 KB to fully load the page.

Loading it in a regular browser consumes over 1.5MB of bandwidth.  You can imagine how the data consumption can pile up over time if you don’t use a mobile browser to take care of your Internet needs while you’re on the road.

I am not encouraging anyone to break the terms and rules of their contract, however there are a lot of people that specifically sign contracts that allow tethering, but usage is on a metered basis. The method described above will allow you the convenience of using the nice widescreen of your laptop, while maintaining a lower data usage that won’t break your bank account.

So, give the MicroEmulator with Opera Mini a try and see if it opens up your world to new, mobile possibilities. Do you find that using a mobile browser is too limiting? Are there other mobile browsers that work well with MicroEmulator? Share your own experiences in the comments section below.

Still, ports are important. As the interface between your computer and everything else, your ports determine what you can do, and how quickly you can do it. Try buying an old keyboard with a USB 1.1 port at a yard sale and transferring some MP3 files through it. It will feel like it’s taking years.

Now Apple and Intel have released an entirely new port called Thunderbolt. What does it do, and what does it mean for modern and future computers?

Hey, You Look Familiar

One of the strangest elements of the new Thunderbolt port is the fact that it technically doesn’t use a new port at all. It instead uses a mini-DisplayPort connection, the proprietary video port Apple has used for years.

The idea of adapting a video port for I/O seems odd at first, but it makes perfect sense for Thunderbolt because, unlike USB 3.0, Thunderbolt is meant to do more than just transfer data. The use of mini-DisplayPort also means there is already a (small) install base of compatible devices on the market, which will make the growing pains felt by all new technologies easier to tolerate.

Breakneck Speed, Courtesy of Intel

Although Thunderbolt debuted on Apple computers, the engineers at Cupertino were not responsible for its creation. The technology was actually researched by Intel, which was working on the project under the code name Light Peak. Intel’s goal – which they met – was the creation of an all-purpose port capable of transferring data at speeds of 10 Gbps per channel – and Thunderbolt has two channels.

Initially, Intel thought this would require fiber optic cables for devices rather than copper ones, which is why the project had the code name of Light Peak. After much testing however, Intel found that they could achieve 10 Gbit/s even with copper wire (which is less expensive), resulting in the birth of Thunderbolt.

Just to give you some perspective, here are the current maximum transfer rates of other popular connections.

• USB 2.0: 480 Mbit/s
• USB 3.0: 5 Gbit/s
• Firewire 800: 800 Mbit/s
• eSATA: 6 Gbit/s

Thunderbolt has them all beat, and by no small margin.

One Port To Rule Them All

There is more to Thunderbolt than the transfer speeds, however. What’s also exciting about Thunderbolt is the fact that it supports both the PCI Express and DisplayPort protocol. What does this mean? It means that almost any peripheral imaginable could be hooked up via Thunderbolt including not only storage drives and data devices but also external video cards and even Ethernet.  With the proper adapter, Thunderbolt should be able to connect with virtually every peripheral on the market today without causing degradation in performance.

It gets better. Apple Thunderbolt supports daisy-chain connections, which means that the single Thunderbolt port on a MacBook could theoretically support numerous devices including displays, storage devices and more. The maximum number of devices supported on a chain is seven, and up to two of those devices can be high-resolution DisplayPort monitors.

Conclusion

Honestly, there’s nothing bad that can be said about Thunderbolt. It’s an amazing I/O technology that absolutely crushes every other port out at the moment. Apple’s inclusion of the port on its new MacBooks and iMacs gives these products a definite advantage over similar computers that lack the new technology.

Of course, Intel didn’t just develop Thunderbolt for Apple. As is always the case with new tech, it will take time for Thunderbolt to trickle through the market. It looks like that this new port is relatively expensive to implement relative to USB 3.0. What remains to be seen is how that impacts adoption. FireWire was superior to USB for some time, but FireWire lost that battle because it cost more to implement than USB, among other reasons.

The future’s always difficult to predict, but Thunderbolt should make new high-speed peripherals possible. It will be interesting to see what comes to market.

That’s not the case with Virtual Router. Virtual Router essentially turns any Windows 7 (or Windows 2008 R2) computer into a WiFi hotspot using Windows 7′s Wireless Hosted Network (Virtual WiFi) technology. It’s really simple to set up and it works well, so if you’re looking for a way to create a secure wireless hotspot using your laptop, you’re in luck.

What Is Virtual Router?

Virtual Router is a free, open source software based router for PCs running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

Using Virtual Router, you will be able to wirelessly share any Internet connection, whether it’s WiFi, LAN, cable modem, cellular, or even dial-up, with any WiFi-enabled device, like laptops, smartphones, netbooks, iPods, iPads, wireless printers, etc. These devices will connect to Virtual Router just like any other access point, and the connection will be secured using WPA2 encryption, which is considered the most secure type of wireless security.

Virtual Router can be used anywhere. It’s completely free, has no ads, and it does not track your web traffic. As I just mentioned, the wireless network created or shared with the program uses WPA2 encryption, which cannot be turned off. This feature is actually built into Windows 7 and 2008 R2′s wireless hosted network API to ensure maximum security.

How Does It Work?

As I mentioned earlier, Virtual Router “makes use of” Windows 7′s Wireless Hosted Network aka Virtual WiFi technology”. Okay, so what’s that?

Since 2002, Microsoft has been looking for a way to virtualize the WiFi adapter, turning a single piece of hardware and radio into virtually unlimited adapters. Years later, all that research worked its way into Windows 7′s networking capabilities.

In essence, Virtual WiFi works very similarly to how virtualization works for operating systems. There is a transparent sharing of limited hardware resources to many operating systems. Virtual WiFi, therefore, is a software layer that abstracts the wireless LAN card hardware into multiple virtual adapters. The result is an operating system that acts like you have multiple WLAN adapters working independently, even though you only have one.

How Do I Use Virtual Router?

Using the application is extremely simple. Just head over to Virtual Router’s homepage and click the Download button off to the right. Download, install, and run the application to start using it.

When you open Virtual Router up, you’ll see the first and only window you’ll need to start broadcasting a wireless signal.

You can change the network’s SSID to whatever you’d like it to read when users locate the connection on their devices, and you can set the password to anything you like, as long as it’s at least 8 digits.

Then all you have to do is select which connection you would like to share from the drop-down menu (Local Area Connection or Wireless Network Connection) and click the Start Virtual Router button to start your connection.

Now you should be able to see your newly created connection on your WiFi devices. Just type in the password you set and you will officially be connected to the Internet.

For such a simple program, Virtual Router really comes in handy at times. I was very impressed with how easy it was to use and how well it worked. What do you think of this application?

Image Credit: Macs Peter