Dustin's Tech Talk

Having the opportunity to live in Pavlodar for a few months, I’ve made a short list of some tech “must haves” for all those planning a trip to Kaz:

Wireless Networking

This is a hard one unless you know for sure if you’ll have high speed internet available (if so, sometime’s the modem provided will include a wireless router). We brought one this second trip but did not need it, so it’s a gamble taking up precious luggage space. We really enjoyed being able to move around the apartment with our notebooks and iPhones and still be connected vs. tethered to the wall with a 2 ft cable.

Side Bar: On our first trip to Kazakhstan, dial-up internet was our only option. If you have multiple devices that need internet like us, you can setup an ad-hoc network on one laptop and share the internet to the others via wireless.

Here are the steps we used on a Windows 7 machine:

1. Open Network and Sharing Center
2. Click Set up a new connection or network
3. Scroll to the bottom and click Set up a wireless ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network and click Next
4. Click Next after information screen
5. Create a Network name (anything easy – not like there will be many wireless networks around your apartment!)
6. If using Windows XP or older, just select WEP for Security to keep things simple. Otherwise WPA-Personal will do fine.
7. Create a Security key in the last field (when you hover over it will tell you how long it needs to be)
8. Click the box Save this network and click Next to complete set up

Now under your wireless connections, you should have the new network highlighted with Waiting for users. Other devices can now see the new wireless network and connect.

You must ensure that you are sharing your internet connection. Right-click on your current internet connection and select properties. Under the Sharing tab, click the box next to Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection, and select the correct connection in the drop down. You will get a prompt but can simply click OK.

Skype Calling Plan

We didn’t discover this beauty until our second trip! At $2.99 a month, we are able to load our Skype iPhone app (via wireless network) and call back to the U.S. for free; unlimited minutes! The call quality is excellent (even on slow connections like dial-up – around 16 kbps?) and you’re able to punch in numbers from your address book right from the app. I’d like to say the app may have some quality of service built in that it will take precedence over other internet traffic at the same time to ensure good call quality (we have not taken steps to make this happen).

USB Dial-up modem

You never know what kind of internet you’ll be able to get while in Kaz! We had both our laptop/netbook over here and it was really easy to simply plug in the USB cable and go, especially since our netbook did not have a built in modem…

USB Flash Drive

There were many times this thing came in handy! We used this to move files between our notebooks (when networking was missing or inconvenient), trade documents/pictures with our in-country team and bring photos for printing at the photo store. MUST HAVE!

USB Hard Drive

Before coming to Kaz, we downloaded/copied a bunch of movies and TV shows to our small USB hard drive (250G). While you may have one channel in English that repeats the same content over and over; we found this to be an invaluable source of entertainment. Interestingly, the TV shows are more popular because they are in shorter increments (30min) and its fun to keep up with the series like back home. Also great to backup your photos and videos. Pack this baby in your carry-on!

Kindle

If you love to read, this is a life-saver. While we don’t actually have the full Kindle device, we have the app for our iPhones and use it everyday. ENSURE you buy/sync all your books before coming to Kaz; Whispernet is not available on some networks (the Sprint network that allows your books to sync wirelessly to your device). This will save a lot on luggage weight as well (even the book Apples are From Kazakhstan is available on Kindle).

Internet Proxy

On the dial-up connections, we found that certain web sites are filtered out and not accessible from Kaz (like Blogger!!). We found two workarounds for this:

1. We were able to VPN back to my work and use the internet connection from the office. Note: you must ensure the VPN policy does not have split-tunneling enabled (where you can access work resources and use separate internet connection same time). If unsure, you may need to check with your network team back home.

2. Use a free Internet proxy website. When the VPN was unavailable, we used sites like http://internetproxy.net/ and punched in the address from there. We’re basically just bouncing off an ‘approved’ site to get to a filtered one…

Irtysh Hotel

If you’re in Pavlodar, the Irtysh Hotel can be another option for high speed internet. The lobby provides free high speed internet even if you’re not a guest. The internet connection isn’t that great, but a lot faster than dial-up! The hotel used to even serve a great lunch at the bar in the lobby with an English menu but we found out yesterday that went away; only beverage service now (too bad, the Borsch and Double-Taste Chicken was excellent!!!). There is one catch… the hotel requires a VPN connection to access their internet (via free access card at front desk). This means you can not use another VPN connection from your device at the same time (like back to work). So this is great for casual surfing but if you require a VPN to work, this will not do.

SIM Cards/In-Country Cell Phone

We have not ventured out and tackled this one yet. While it would be handy to have a cell phone (out and about and need to call our translator for a taxi?), we were able to endure just fine without one. Email, Skype and international phone cards were enough for us. If you talk back home a lot, phone cards back in the states calling INTO Kaz are much cheaper! You can get calling cards to Kaz for as low as 2 cents/min. Another couple bought a SIM card locally and used inside their cell from home, but they said they hardly used it. We have not looked into getting a mobile card for the internet from the local provider.