you might might remember that
the snowdeal show ®
required us to move into a large 3-floor ( well, 4 floors actually,
if you consider the basement ) victorian which was built in 1890.
naturally, getting a solid wireless connection throughout the house
has been a top priority.
initially the access point and cable modem were placed on the third
floor since that's where my home office is setup and where comcast
dropped the "data" cable. an initial site survey showed that the
signal strength was great on the third floor ( 4 bars on a mac),
passable ( 2 bars ) with holes on the first floor, and nonexistant
in the basement. given this data, i was initially just going to
repurpose my aging
linksys BEFW11S4
and slap on some
range extending antenna's
, but after some additional thought, i decided to just upgrade my
ap to a
linksys wrt54g
and take advantage of
firmware hacks
to turn up the power to and get a little better coverage.
while there were a few close contenders, i ended up going with
sveasoft's
firmware
. after you load the software on the ap, you're presented with an
admin screen that looks deceptively like the stock screen, but with
a
boatload of new
features
, including the ability to
turn up the transmit power.
. you won't be able to turn the ap into a 200mw monster, but i've
found you can increase the transmit power by 40 percent over the
factory settings and get a reliable 50 mw signal.
with a little more power, i could get getter signal on the first
floor, with the ap on the third floor but i still wasn't getting
anything in the basement. rf signal propagation is a mystery to me
and i've found that theory is worthless in real world settings, so
the next logical step was to unplug the ap and start moving it
around. i had a hunch that if i centered the ap in the first floor
floorboards ( via access in the basement ) at about the middle of
the house that i'd get good coverage across all 4 floors. and
indeed, after a little empirical testing i had great coverage
everywhere, thanks to one well-placed ap and the community behind
sveasofts
. although the firmware is gpl'd, for $20 you can subscribe to get
a full year of firmware upgrades and priority support. while this
is a slightly controversial approach to subsidizing open source
code developement, it seems like a terrific bargain to me.
“"it is hard to be brave," said piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're only a Very Small Animal." rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said: "it is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in the adventure before us."”
the complete tales & poems of winnie the poohthis site chronicles the continuing adventures of my son, odin, who was unexpectedly born on the fourth of july at 25 weeks gestation, weighing 1 pound 7 ounces.
he's quite a fighter and you can always send him a postcard to the most current address listed here if you're inspired by his adventures. see the postcard project/google maps mashup to see a map of the postcards.
if you're new, you can browse the archives to catch up. and don't forget to watch a few movies that i made while we were in the neonatal intensive care unit. or if you want the abridged version and you can find a copy, you can read about his adventures in the november 2005 issue of parents magazine.
daddytypes
/
blogging baby
/
rebeldad
/
thingamababy
/
The Continuing Adventures of Super-Preemie
/
dooce
/
look snazzy and support the site at the same time by buying some snowdeal schwag!
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Eric C. Snowdeal III
.
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