Increasing performance for OpenVPN on WinXP

We use OpenVPN for all of our remote clients. While our pings times have been normal, I just noticed that our throughput was suffering on a lot of system (300-400KB/sec on a 10MB link). After much troubleshooting and searching, I came across this page. After adjusting the TcpWindowSize, Tcp1323Opts & SackOpts on WinXP clients...I was able to boost my performance to an acceptable level. During testing, I was able to max out around 1.5MB/sec. If you save the following text to a file, give it a .reg extension, run it & reboot. You may see similar improvements...

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]
"Tcp1323Opts"=dword:00000001
"TcpWindowSize"=dword:0003ebc0
"SackOpts"=dword:00000001

Make your Windows Mobile phone a WiFi access point

I occasionally have the need to tether my laptop to my mobile phone to access the internet, but not often enough the justify the $45/month that Sprint wants to charge me. Because my Palm Treo 800 has WiFI built-in, I'm able to get around this restriction with WMWiFIRouter. I'm currently using the trial version, but plan to purchse the full version (20 euro, approx $26.50). I would highly recommend for any WinMo users that want to use their device as a WiFi access point.

Full list of features is here.

http://www.wmwifirouter.com/

Scalix 11.4.3

Scalix 11.4.3 is out! No new features, but numerous bug fixes. I will be upgrading our server tonight and will post if I have any issues. Already upgraded some Outlook users without problems.

We were not able to upgrade any of our Outlook users from 11.4.1, because they would often have email disappear from their inbox. We have been waiting for to be fixed since the release of 11.4.2. (Bug 15024 [Defect] Email missing when smartcache enabled)

They also may have fixed the issue where the Smartcache Manager continues to run even when Outlook closes, causing issues on the next Outlook start. (Bug 18671 [Defect] SXCACHEMGR.EXE sometimes doesn't shut down)

Release Notes: http://downloads.scalix.com/.community/11.4.3/RELEASE_NOTES.html

I'm expecting the Activesync beta to be released any day now...I hope!

Sprint Airave Follow-Up

I posted last month about setting up my Sprint Airave and wanted to write again about my experiences. For those of you just tuning in, the Airave is a Femtocell device that acts as a mini cell tower and communicates with Sprint over a broadband connection.

Since setting it up, I have had a very good experience and have a very happy Wife. My only issue was that a few calls lost the Airave signal as I walked towards the edge of my coverage. Since my regular tower signal is a bit sketchy, when I failed over to the real tower it dropped the call. Once I re-initiated the call closer to the Airave, things were all good. This isn't really an issue with the Airave and more with my local coverage, but thought I should note this.

It appears AT&T is following suit and may offer their own femtocell in the near future: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090107-femtocells-from-att-for-home.html