Oh don’t worry it will still be painfully slow, and you will feel like you are driving a Chevette with a BMW logo on it. But thats how the marketing works these days, its a typical bait and switch.

But I guess you can see a screenshot to be sure:

The iPhone 4S supports HSPA+ networks up to 16 megabits per second, which is just enough to count as 4G in AT&T’s book as well as that of the FCC (even though HSPA+ is not technically a fourth-generation technology like LTE). When the iPhone 4S first launched in October, 2011, Apple revealed that it was working together with AT&T to make the 4G indicator show up.

Quote Source: http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/07/want-to-pretend-your-iphone-4s-is-4g-just-install-ios-5-1/

Personally, I think I am going to call up AT&T support, and demand a reduction in my monthly fee, if I am paying for 4G service and getting pitiful throughput in my area, which supposedly has `great` coverage. Yet another reason to love AT&T, now with more market speak.

Its just funny, that nothing improves for the throughput but they have reason enough to change the symbol to something that is INVALID.

“According to the latest EBITDA numbers from AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon, the subsidies they have to pay Apple in order to carry the iPhone are drastically reducing their profits. From the Article: ‘”A logical conclusion is that the iPhone is not good for wireless carriers,” says Mike McCormack, an analyst at Nomura Securities. “When we look at the direct and indirect economics that Apple has managed to extract from the carriers, the carrier-level value destruction is quite evident.”‘ So one money sucking leech has attached itself to another money sucking leech?”

I love the last bit about one leech onto another leech

Somehow I have no pitty for the likes of AT&T & telco’s, for years they’ve f’d over customers, now they are getting burned on their bottom line, and they can’t seem to pass it on to consumers as they are being squeezed from both sides.

A few of them have problems creating a route to a controller folder structure (/application/controllers/folder/controller), but really it is the same as creating a custom route to a non ‘folder’ed’ controller, you just have to define the variable in the routing path.

Here is our scenario, I have a URL of http://example.com/account/manage/4123245/jakub

So if we analyze our URI, we have:
account – folder
manage – controller (with only an index class)
4123245 – a numeric value (input)
jakub – a string slug value (just extra input)

From that we need to make sure that codeigniter understands our URI (and it will not by default!).
so we edit our /application/config/routes.php

$route['account/manage/(:num)/(:any)'] 	= "account/manage/index/$1/$2";

Index is the key here, as we need to route to the class (which is the index), the values $1, $2 are just input (1st, 2nd respectively) to show it goes to the index class.

There you have it, no more route issues with folders in your controller structure.

Happy Code Igniting!

Well in a couple of my last projects I’ve ran smack into CSRF protection and how it impacts AJAX (as well as many other things like Paypal payment gateway responses, etc).

If you found this page when searching for Codeigniter CSRF Ajax, then you’re in luck, as here is the easiest way to add CSRF protection to your ajax calls:

$.ajax({
	type: 'POST',
	url: '/action/fetch_more_blog_posts',
	data: {
		type: 'news', limit: limit, offset: offset,
		<?php echo $this->security->get_csrf_token_name(); ?>: '<?php echo $this->security->get_csrf_hash(); ?>' },
	success: function(data) {
		$(data).appendTo('#more-entries');
		$('#older-posts').slideDown();
		offset += limit;
	}
});

The magic really here is the following entry in the data I am sending back to my controller:

<?php echo $this->security->get_csrf_token_name(); ?>: '<?php echo $this->security->get_csrf_hash(); ?>'

The `get_csrf_token_name()` gets you your token name from the security class (first set in your config), and the `get_csrf_hash();` simply outputs the secure hash from the security class. Simple enough.

If you have timeout issues (say your ajax page sits too long, you may increase the token a bit, test for best fit).

Not a single video running 480p or higher will pre-load without me getting a buffering icon in the center of the screen. I have a ‘Network meter’ widget on my Windows 7 desktop, (for giggles) and I watch the traffic sputter up and down, I am able to right click on a youtube video and view the information, and see that transfer speeds are constantly bouncing 0 -> 2500Mbits, up and down, up and down.. sputter sputter sputter…

Ok so right about now you’re thinking, you didn’t configure your modem, your profile isn’t @ 6Mbit, or any other factors that would discount my idea that ATT is throttling Youtube (probly to push a 6Mbit user to U-Verse is my idea — 6Mbit is listed as unsatisfactory for `HD` video… ha!).

Here is what I discovered

I setup a proxy server on my 100Mbit dedicated server (caveat here is it is in a professional hosting center, in New Jersey). I setup my proxy connection in firefox to use my server. The beauty here is, that I saturate my 6Mbit pipe right away! I can view a 1080p video as soon as the page loads, I get no delay, I have YET to run into a buffer pause. I have good non throttled (guaranteed) bandwidth allocation at my hosting facility, so I’m just thinking of routing all my house traffic over VPN to my server.

I want to try this as I am really suspicious that I am having media throttled by ATT.

Has anyone else done these types of tests? What were your outcomes? I am very curious to know, as my experience is NIGHT and DAY!

I max out my youtube experience when I view via my proxy, but it is barely watchable without my proxy (traffic shaping from ATT?).

I will most likely make a video of the comparison if people are interested, I just wasn’t sure if digging more into this is worth my time.

Thanks for reading, curious on your feedback.

I posted this also on dslreports.com:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r26619828-Speed-Problem-Youtube-being-throttled-on-ATT-6Mbit-profiles-

I was always overly anal with these accusations (being an IT person and having some understanding of the underlying infrastructure), I would point out to friends and anyone that brought up the issue that in fact is was just an advertising / business tactic, that the business that supplied ADSL would say, Cable was slow due to ‘hogs’. While Cable would dispute the ADSL company by saying it wasn’t true, and that in fact the hogs were just as bad on the ADSL lines (which they attributed to ‘old telephone wires’ not having the support).

Anyway, jump forward many years and finally someone has written a great article about this ‘bandwidth hog’ myth:

You might recall that back in 2009, we mentioned a piece claiming that the “bandwidth hog,” a term used ceaselessly by industry executives to justify rate hikes, net neutrality infractions, and pretty much everything else — was a myth. The piece was penned by Yankee analyst Benoit Felten and Herman Wagter, who knows a little something about consumption — as he’s the man largely responsible for Amsterdam’s FTTH efforts. The problem wasn’t bandwidth hogs, argued Wagter, the problem was poorly designed networks built by people more interested in cutting corners than offering quality product.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Bandwidth-Hog-is-a-Myth-117230

Enjoy, and leave a comment how you’ve encountered the bandwidth hog in your internet usage. Have you been hit with rate hikes due to ‘bandwidth hogs’?

I’ve jumped a few cars (not many, but certainly over 10 separate occasions), and I’ve never run into this problem. Basically my key dongle (unlock / lock / pop trunk) stopped responding for unlocking all the car doors. I was unable to double click and unlock the car doors on my 2003 Jetta. It was strange, my first instinct was that something got fried / damaged in the jump (later I learned while speaking with a VW tech, that I should never jump my Jetta, simply because I could fry all the electronics — I’m still not sure if that’s really true or not as my local VW dealership techs just want to make money off me for diagnostic hookups).

So I drove around with this problem for a few weeks, and my carpooling friend kept getting annoyed that I would need to open the car from the inside (auto unlock from inside rather). So I did some searching, and found some vague forum posts where people had the same problem. There was one person that fixed it tho, he solved it by getting in the car, then leaning over and LOCKING / UNLOCKING from the passenger panel (see photo).

This caused some kind of ‘passenger / rear door’ locking system reset, as it worked beautifully for me. So if you find yourself with a Jetta (or any other car that exhibits this problem), just get in the car, lean over and lock/unlock the door. What actually happened when I did it was the system made this ‘double click’ lock sound and then I found that the VW Jetta dongle was working as normal (locking / unlock / pop trunk).

Good luck, hope it helps someone avoid that VW Diagnostic $100 charge that they want to always get you in for.

It would be an error of ‘Access Denied’ right after username entry, and all else would proceed as planned. Well I searched about it a bit and found the answer on superuser.com.

PuTTY tries several authentication methods in a row, which might cause these messages:

• GSSAPI (only if your system and the server have it enabled)
• Public key (only if you have a key loaded)
• Password

After receiving the “Access denied” message, hold Ctrl and right-click on the PuTTY window, then select Event log. At the bottom you will see what exactly caused the failure.

http://superuser.com/questions/312197/putty-0-61-why-do-i-see-access-denied-message-after-i-enter-my-login-id

What I’ve had were some issues with XBMC (v 10.0-9), some crashing as well as a constant nagging scrapper issue.
So I decided to find a solution to update to a nightly build (for better or for worse).

Luckily after not too much searching, I found the proper section:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Install_XBMC_on_Apple_TV_2

(Remember you need to have a jailbroken Apple TV2! And XBMC installed with Cydia prior to doing this).

Enjoy!

I keep all my contacts organized on ‘Google Contacts’ and then I’m able to synchronize my iOS devices with my contact list. Its easy to do and just requires some dedicated time to enter everything in.

As I live in the US, I still have many friends (as well as family) in Canada, and that requires me to call ‘international’ (at least what AT&T calls Canada calling…). My skype local setup is quick and easy, and SIRI makes it fun.

I simply setup a phone number for a contact like so:

1. Create new phone entry, call it Skype
2. Enter my skype number (ex: 734-000-1234)
3. I follow that number with a PAUSE character `,` (comma) + a 2 (skype’s 2 means, call a custom number)
4. After that 2, I simply enter a Canadian number (ex: 1519-555-1234)

The final solution looks like:

Skype: 734-000-1234,21519-555-1234

And then once my contact is sync’d to the phone, I say “SIRI call [persons name] on Skype”, and obediently SIRI completes the call, and I don’t have to punch in any long strings of numbers.

Enjoy!