Batboard

I've used a LAN style Linksys router in the past with okay results. Finally made it back to good ole cable internet, so I figured I'd bite the bullet and get my laptop setup for wireless.

The thing I remember the most about the LAN router that I had was that about once a week you'd have to unplug it to reset it because once the IP was reassigned, it wouldn't know what to do (DHCP issue I guess).

I'm in the same boat here as we do not have a dedicated IP like we did in Spain (only good thing about the internet there).

Let me know guys... I have a WRT54GS 2.4 GHz router sitting right here. As long as I get the good word, I'll open it up. The other choice of router did not have LAN ports, so that's why I bought this one (have 3 other PCs that will be connected via CAT5).

I use the WRT54GS as home and it works flawlessly. It's only extremely rare that I have to reset it for any reason. Once I got the cable modem set up the Linksys was simply a case of set it and forget it...



It sits as you see it in the stairwell going to my basement, that and the 6db gain remoted antennas and I cover my house, my garage and all the way back to my property line. You could probably in fact sit in the road in front of my house and use my router... but I wouldn't recommend that.

you'll be fine. and the WRT54GS are easily upgradable too, for firmware issues also. I would say that the problem you were probably had happening was isolated and DHCP related, and i don't think you will have the same with the WRT.

Another vote for the WRT, good unit, i had one here and never had a problem with it. Recently my ISP offered me a free upgrade to a business class router and it has a built in 802.11G access point, so i ended up selling the Linksys to a neighbor that bought a new laptop. I can sit in my driveway with my laptop and it will show him in the network list, using the stock antennas and sitting on his desk two houses over.

Related somewhat to the topic, I am amazed at the number of
my neighbors whose systems run wide open and unprotected
all day and night. From our upstairs machine I can hit three other
systems besides my own, but I've fixed mine so others can't
get into it. If I ever get the enegy I'll run a CAT45 cable down
to the router and be off the air completely but until then the
wireless card works fine.

I guess the average button pusher has no idea about how far
the signal can travel, or even that others might be able to connect
to his LAN.

I see that all the time here. The DSL ISP is Frontiernet, good service, but they started providing the Speedstream 6250 to everyone that wanted wireless networking for their laptop or second computer, etc. The default settings it ships with has the modems serial number for the SSID, and no WEP or WPA enabled.

99% of those units in service here in town are open, if a person wanted to they could walk from one end of town to the other with a wireless device and have an internet connection most of the time.

Just last week i had a guy call me, he was having trouble with file sharing, and couldn't figure out why he couldn't send a file from his laptop to his desktop because it kept saying he didn't have permission. I stopped by to check it out and it turned out his laptop was connected to his neighbors wireless instead of his and the desktop he was trying to move files to, the shared folder, was actually his neighbors computer!

Of course it only took a few minutes to straighten it all out in his laptop wireless settings, and then i changed the SSID to something he would know is his, and turned on WPA since it was open. With everyone's modem having an SSID that is the modems serial number it's hard to remember which one is yours when you have 3-4 to choose from listed, versus a nickname or something else.

One of the networks i see listed on my laptop when on the second story of my home has an SSID of "gateway to porn", wonder what they use the internet for.. lol

Some day i should take my yagi and find out which direction and which house it is.

kb0nly wrote: One of the networks i see listed on my laptop when on the second story of my home has an SSID of "gateway to porn", wonder what they use the internet for.. lol

Some day i should take my yagi and find out which direction and which house it is.

...if u were l33t u wud jown @ cantenna!

As a matter of fact i do have some cantenna's...

I made them to show a guy how easy it is to make something for increasing his range between two buildings, a garage and his house. Although instead of an N connector like most of them use i made mine with a chassis mount BNC connector since i had a few in the parts bin.

Amazing what a pringles can and a hank of wire can do in a pinch. Glue the lid on and paint the whole thing with a few coats of clear and it's fairly weatherproof and will last a while also.

I came across a nice fiberglass encased yagi a while back though, it does better than the cantenna's as far as front to back ratio so that it's easier to work with relatively strong signals when trying to pinpoint their direction.

Maybe a better reflector.. I was thinking of using a cantenna with a discarded DirecTv dish, saw this setup on a website and they did some fairly extensive range testing with a pair of them.

kb0nly wrote:Maybe a better reflector.. I was thinking of using a cantenna with a discarded DirecTv dish, saw this setup on a website and they did some fairly extensive range testing with a pair of them.

I saw that, and IIRC they had a range of like 2-3 miles line of site with a stock wireless router. Pretty nifty stuff... kinda useless... but nifty all together.

Turn that $100 router into a $600 router

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/rout ... 5c#pgimage

Have phun