So I saw a deal yesterday for a wireless router. I already have one, but of course I read the comments about the deal. Everyone was talking about DD-WRT and Tomato, and not knowing what it was definitely sparked my interest.
Ends up, DD-WRT and Tomato are types of firmware that you replace your factory firmware with for your wireless router. Been around for years but I just didn't know. The firmware that comes with your router most likely sucks, so some tech wizards decided to create their own. I was learning all of this after sitting down at Chick-fil-a, which was my dinner after going to a Photoshop workshop at the Lincoln Park Apple Store. I was trying to score an iPhone 5 (didn't happen), and saw the different workshops they had, so I signed up. The workshop was interesting, nothing too crazy that I didn't know before, but nice to get a chance to play around with CS6 and learn a few tricks here and there. The bad: the workshop is done at a table in the main store, so it was super loud and hard to hear the girl talking.
Ok, back to the router thingy. So I learn about flashing my router with this new firmware, and of course I'm going to waste 2 hours of my life to try it. I get home, and get started. I read all the information, and believe me, there are TONS. The instructions tell you to read pages upon pages, check hardware compatibility, etc. The reason is that if you screw this up, your router is rendered useless (bricked). So that did scare me a bit. Usually when I try stuff like this, I screw it up then spend hours trying to fix it. I proceeded with caution, and installed DD-WRT on my Cisco Linksys WRT310N v2.0. It's an older router, poor reviews due to the overheating of the unit (although mine's never had an issue, probably because I have it mounted on the wall instead of laying flat on the ground).
End result? I got it installed, but can't really take advantage of the firmware. Basically, what you're doing by installing this is adding the ability to customize your router settings more than you could with the plain ol' Cisco software. I could increase the range of my router by increasing the power output. The danger with that is you can easily overheat your router. I can't really use this because my place isn't very big and I don't need range outside of my unit. The other big advantage is overclocking your router, but apparently mine can't do that. So if you need more range out of your router, then it might be worth trying. If not, probably not worth the trouble. I still want to try and tweak the settings to see if I can get some extra performance.
Then this got me thinking, do I need to upgrade my wireless router? The new ones all have simultaneous dual-band, which mine is 2.4Ghz only (and when I say new, I mean anything after like 2010, because my router is old, stop judging). You would want to if you drop connections all the time (because if you live in an apartment complex, there are so many devices using that frequency that it gets congested). Me personally, yes I live in a large apartment complex, but I rarely drop connections and my speeds are decent. So for now, no upgrade. Then I started thinking about gigabit ethernet ports. My router has four. But then I realized that this is only really for people who have a home network that has multiple devices plugged in (not WiFi) that want to transfer files between those devices. Again, not needed. For now, I'll stick with my setup and keep on keepin on. Although, I do want to check my network cables to see what Category type they are, I have an urge to rewire my room so I can have my work laptop and my home computer plugged in so I can have higher transfer between the two when moving files. See photo of my current setup here:
My Home Setup
I spent about a day hiding wires, but I think I can do better. That will be my next project, which I'll keep you updated on. Koreanvent your router game.
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