Link to Apple KB Article on TCP Ports Usage
Extremely helpful when dealing with Open Directory, VPN, and other Apple services on 10.5 Leopard Servers.
Reasonably Priced Wireless Speaker System
In looking at replacement for fully-wired speakers in classrooms, I ws finally able to find some speakers that are under $200, wireless and have good sound quality. These speakers are from Cables Unlimited / Audio Unlimited and seem to be a great little solution. The speakers can use batteries or be plugged-in and wall-mounting is simple (no extra brackets, etc.). There are screw holes on the back of the speakers to rest on the wall. Range is good, quality is fine for a classroom to watch a DVD, listen to language lessons and other activities.
In my tests, the speakers have performed great. I would not say these are top of the line audio for audiophiles, but if the goal is to remove cables and have decent quality, these are fine and much better than tethering a teacher to a specific area of the room to hook up their laptop. The other nice aspect is you can add more speakers to the mix. They sell additional speakers w/o senders for just this purpose.
The ONLY drawback is they only provide 2 channels for communication. Which means, if you had systems in rooms next to each other, you really have to watch which channels you are using so you will not have speakers jumping to the wrong source. This could be an issue when you have multiple classrooms side-by-side. I do wish they would allow more than just the 2 channels, but for $150 is a great deal and they operate as expected with great range.
http://www.cablesunlimited.com/products/Prod_Individual3.aspx?groupcode=I3593
New Life for Linksys WRT300N with DD-WRT
My Linksys WRT300N has been a good router for home but now that I needed a some more routing options, I really needed to decide what to do. I don't need a full-blown router since I am not dishing a routable class C or anything, just a couple of IPs to for servers.
I have known about dd-wrt and openwrt for quite a while, but thought those only supported the ubiquitus Linksys WRT54G models. Linksys has really left the device for dead and not provided an updated firmware version since 2007. So, I gave DD-WRT another look and turns out someone had incorporated a build for the model I had (a Linksys WRT300N version 1.1).
Here is the link to the files needed. I was able to easily upgrade the firmware to the 'mega' build and I am off to the races doing some great stuff recycling the hardware that is more than capable of handling vlans, etc with the right feature-base in the firmware. This is a realy great way to give old Linksys hardware new life. If I didn't go down this road, I would have had to plug in more hardware like ethernet switches and take up more power and make even more of a mess in my garage. Have to thank BrainSlayer and all the others who contribute to DD-WRT. I hope I can help now as well.
DISCLAIMER: You are totally on your own if you want to mess with non-Linksys firmware on your devices. If you hose or brick your router it is ***NOT*** DD-WRT.com's fault (or mine for that matter). If you are great with the way your WRT300N or other Linksys WRT* router works and/or you are not comfortable with messing with the internals of these devices, then don't.