* Rather than my usual rant about our roads, I am addressing the subject of private clubs on Oak Island this week. I have ambivalent feelings about them - in general I am opposed to limited or restricted access to any area, but on the other hand we need to realize that the new beachers (see below) coming to the island will require services such as sanitary facilities and changing areas. If private clubs can provide these services without requiring any expenditure on the part of the town, I think that is a good thing.
But I am very opposed to closing or limiting road access. No private club should be able to close an existing road, even if they own all the property on that road. We don't want gated communities here.
But we need to recognize that the new bridge is just the start of a major change to the nature of the island. With Midway Road being straightened and extended to 17, and Rt. 140 completed, there is the potential to see our island strain to a major influx of day beachers. The pressure to provide services and the pressure from commercial developers will be overwhelming if the Town is not prepared for it. We need to plan now, with the goal of keeping Oak Island as it is - a residential community.
* Wireless networking is getting to be, quite frankly, a big pain in the butt. I think it was a natural outgrowth of DSL or Road Runner-type high speed access and cheaply available routers. Now just about every router you buy has wireless built-in, and I know of people who are in effect their own wireless hotspots without even knowing it! They just take the router out of the box and turn it on. Wireless is enabled by default. Even if they just bought the router to access multiple wired PCs or to get the firewall protection, they got a wireless network.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that the default wireless network name (SSID) is usually either "default", "Linksys", "Netgear" or other common manufacturer's default name, and they are almost always on the default channel 6 (of a total of 11 channels). If you go into a subdivision or into a populous area such as the low end of Howe Street in Southport, a wireless sniffer will show more than one network, perhaps a half-dozen, all interfering with each other.
So the situation is bad enough.
But now there is another aspect to the problem. People are finding that the effective range of their wireless networks is not sufficient, even in their own homes, so they are seeking ways of extending that. So now you see wireless extension devices becoming popular. There are basically two types - better antennas, and wireless extender boxes.
The better antennas are just that - better external antennas that you can attach to your router which work like a bigger TV antenna back in the old days when people had antennas. They in effect shape the signal, so that more of the power is focused in one direction. The extenders are retransmitters - you place the extender at the outside range of your router, and it receives and retransmits the signals (both ways). An extender can almost double the effective range of your router, but at a cost. There is a fairly severe performance penalty, and worse you are doubling the amount of wireless radio traffic.
So both of these approaches to extending wireless can result in more interference; in the case of the better antennas you might be beaming a stronger signal to interfere with a neighbor. In the case of the extenders, you are not only doubling the range of your network, but you are doubling the amount of interfering radio traffic.
The next generation of routers, currently called Pre-N, also claim better range and higher performance. But real-world tests of Pre-N units does not uphold the manufacturer's claims.
The right answer is to put wired networking in - in other words, run CAT5 networking wiring when you can. If building new, putting in wired networking before the sheetrock goes up is the right way to go.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)