131–140 of 150 posts
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Maybe they should just ship with the alternative firmware installed if the open source is doing a better job?
I've read (but haven't personally confirmed) that Netgear used skinned OpenWRT on some of their routers (like the wndr3700v1)
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I do the same, because my building is so crowded the connection drops all the time, even if I am sitting next to the router. :(
Switch to 5 GHz. You'll need a new router and WiFi adapters, but they're available. You won't have quite the range, but even business locations with dozens of 2.4 GHz networks (e.g. Physician office buildings) will have 1-2 5GHz networks total, and most off the shelf consumer laptops don't support it right now so adoption will take a while.
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I am the owner of an ASUS RT-N16. I purchased it when my Linksys WRT-54G died after 4 years. It really is a fantastic wifi router for the reasons you list. However, if you live in an apartment complex you might find the 2.4GHz spectrum very crowded. Especially if there are others with 2.4GHz 802.11n, which uses more channels than 802.11b/g. This might make it worthwhile to purchase a 5 Ghz 802.11n router.
I, too, switched to the RT-N16 after my WRT54GL died unceremoniously one day. The RT-N16 is a pretty good router but I want to caution any one who, like me, was awestruck by its 128MB RAM without considering NVRAM. The short version is that, depending on your usage, you may run out of NVRAM before RAM and may lose your settings. For reference see [1] and [2]. [1] http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Asus_RT-N16#Curre…
I have 32MB NVRAM to play with and that has served me well enough, but I see plenty of consumer-routers which can be "upgraded to dd-wrt" but which doesn't even have enough NVRAM to do an ipkg update.
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You might be shocked by the power bill for running one of those older beasts 24/7.
Idle power consumption, measured at the plug by a watt meter: Dell Optiplex (1.4GHz Pentium III): 32W ($5.76/month @ $0.25/KWh) Mac Mini (1.25GHz G4): 17W ($3.06/month @ $0.25/KWh) Even if a WRT54G uses zero watts, you're still talking about a year before you even recover the $50 cost of one, and in any event ~$50/year is not a very expensive hobby.
I live in what I believe to be a relatively high electrical cost area and I pulled up my bill online for 2/13/2013 to 3/14/2013 and I'm paying 13 cents per KWh solely for energy although by the time I add on the substantial fixed monthly meter fee, the state low income assistance tax, 100% energy for tomorrow (in theory, all my KWh come from the local windfarm instead of from coal, in practice its probably merely a greenwashing scam) I'm writing a check (well, paying online) for about 17 cents per KWh, other words the number of KHw divided by the debit to my bank account. So the optiplex would cost me a whopping $4.04 per month lets call it a buck a week. Do I get a buck a week of fun out of my homemade firewall/PBX/other things? Yes.
If I did my math right, this is equivalent to about 4 minutes of labor at my current family income, other words spending time on detailed monthly accounting is more expensive than just paying for it outta the slush fund.
I don't have a wifi network installed merely to roast my brain with microwatts of RF. It exists solely as background infrastructure for a small herd of apple idevices and android phones/tablets all of which are value engineered to be disposable after a year or two. If I had no wifi devices I probably wouldn't have a wifi router. In other words if I wanted to save money in the category of "tablets", I'd look first at not replacing it every year or two. Just the capital/depreciation cost of only one wifi connected idevice is about an order of magnitude more than I'll pay for the electricity to run my home router/PBX/Buncha-other things. Electricity is so cheap its not even a rounding error in total systems cost, and optimizing for the wrong value is always a fail.
Another interesting anecdote is a couple decades ago I was taught as a pretty crude consumer product engineering estimate "a watt for a year is about a buck" but via inflation etc its now about $1.50. Apparently folks in less civilized areas are paying around $2 for a watt for a year. So something that runs 24 hours a day and costs $8 at walmart like a 5 watt clock radio alarm clock uses its own cost in electricity in a bit more than a year. This is also the genesis of trying to save money on wall warts, if a wall wart costs $2.50 and uses $5 of electricity per year, a more efficient switcher that costs $10 and uses only $1 of electricity per year pays for itself rather quickly.
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Switch to 5 GHz. You'll need a new router and WiFi adapters, but they're available. You won't have quite the range, but even business locations with dozens of 2.4 GHz networks (e.g. Physician office buildings) will have 1-2 5GHz networks total, and most off the shelf consumer laptops don't support it right now so adoption will take a while.
This works until "everyone" takes your advice and switches to 5ghz.
Just buy Draytek. Playtime is over. Pricy but mine lasted 7 years before I replaced it with another Draytek (for dual WAN support). Bomb proof and great VPN support out of the box. I bridge my parent's network to mine over VPN, and the Linux servers at either end provide failover DNS, mail etc. So useful, especially for remote support.
> Just buy Draytek. Playtime is over. I went to their website (draytek.us) and got this: > Database connection error (2): Could not connect to MySQL.
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According to http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Asus_RT-N16 there is support for dd-wrt, apparently since late 2010. You understand that Barrier Breaker is pre-release, right?
Yes, I understand Barrier Breaker is pre-release. That is precisely why, when NelsonMinar suggested the RT-N16 runs OpenWrt "really well," I asked if he was sure. I am uninterested in dd-wrt, which is why I didn't mention it.
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If possible increase the transmit output milliwatts, to "shout over" the other signals on the same channel. Increase the beacon period of your router/AP to the fastest it will go, usually 20 microseconds. I think this is the best solution of anything you could try. Maybe play around with the DTIM interval but I'm not sure what a good number for that is; too low supposedly drains batteries of wireless devices and too…
I actually design wireless devices for a living and in my opinion, this is mostly bad advice. The best bet it to switch to 5GHz, but that isn't practical for use with mobile devices. Option B is to turn off the higher speed modes like 802.11n. Just try to stick with 11g. If you are still having connection problems, maybe switch down to 11b, but that will be real slow even when it works. If you use an access point wit…
You say "switch to 5GHz, but that isn't practical for use with mobile devices" -- is the reasoning that the 5GHz signal doesn't penetrate the walls enough as you walk around with the device?
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Idle power consumption, measured at the plug by a watt meter: Dell Optiplex (1.4GHz Pentium III): 32W ($5.76/month @ $0.25/KWh) Mac Mini (1.25GHz G4): 17W ($3.06/month @ $0.25/KWh) Even if a WRT54G uses zero watts, you're still talking about a year before you even recover the $50 cost of one, and in any event ~$50/year is not a very expensive hobby.
That is an extremely high cost of electricity. I live in what I believe to be a relatively high electrical cost area and I pulled up my bill online for 2/13/2013 to 3/14/2013 and I'm paying 13 cents per KWh solely for energy although by the time I add on the substantial fixed monthly meter fee, the state low income assistance tax, 100% energy for tomorrow (in theory, all my KWh come from the local windfarm instead of…