This week, I set out to improve my wireless reception for my home network. The wireless local area network (WLAN) is powered by a Linksys WRT54GS router. This is a pretty standard wireless G router. The WRT54G router series are pretty affordable and if you have an older version of the WRT54G or WRT54GS model, you can even install a third party firmware to enable more features. If you are thinking of getting a new router, then I suggest you purchase the WRT54GL, since this is the only model that makes it easy to install third party firmware.

As always, installing a third party firmware on your Linksys router does void your warranty and Linksys will not support your router if you are running third party firmware. Do not attempt this if you do not want to void your warranty and support!

HyperWRT

Although there are a variety of different third party firmwares, I chose HyperWRT because it features a powerboosting feature and at the same time strives to stay as close as possible to the original Linksys firmware. Once installed HyperWRT looks almost identical to the Linksys interface. The main difference is the Transmit Power option found under Advanced Wireless Settings:

This will effectively boost the range and power of your WLAN. It is best to not boost the signal all the way to 100%, as this will make the router run hotter than normal.

TNC Antennas

Besides firmware changes the other way to boost wireless range is by using a better antenna. The WRT54G routers have TNC connectors to which the antennas connect to. You can purchase a third party antenna from sites like HyperLink Technologies, like this huge Hyper Gain 2.4 GHz 9 dBi Rubber Duck.

If you prefer to have the antennas match your router, then you want the Linksys HGA7T antennas. These replacement antennas are exactly twice as long as the original antennas on the WRT54G router and are rated at 7dBi.

Replacing the original antennas will increase the wireless range and signal strength, depending on your location from the router. These antennas work best when you are located horizontally to the router. If your main objective is to get better wireless reception on a floor directly above from the router, you are better off installing another access point router. In my experience, the HGA7T antennas improved wireless signal by 12% when I setup my laptop one floor above the router. Overall the improvement was not overwhelmingly better, but was an improvement. Like I said these antennas work best when you and the router are on the same floor. I did experience less signal drops though and was able to use my laptop in my upstairs living room where I had been having problems staying connected before.

As for installing the new TNC antennas, all you have to do is squeeze and turn counterclockwise the antenna to remove it. If you are having trouble getting one off, squeeze tighter and pull the plastic bushing (cover) away from the router to get to the actual antenna TNC connector. Once you remove both, slide the original bushings on to the new antennas and connect them. The router will look a bit stranger with the new larger antennas, but hey looks are not what we are after, it’s a better wireless signal that we want.

Corrections:

The original HyperWRT site may no longer be up. You can still find a copy of HyperWRT Thibor, which is the last version of HyperWRT to be worked on: Thibor’s HyperWRT.

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By far the biggest problem with using the Internet is the massive amounts of spam that is clogging up the works. The most common is the spam you get in your email inbox, but increasingly there are tons of junk sites with nothing but useless content. If you run a forum or blog, you have to constantly monitor things due to the comment spam entries you get daily. Of late, I decided to start fighting back. Though I am not sure how effective the FTC is these days, I started to forward any and all spam emails I get to any of my email addresses.

If you get spam email that you think is deceptive, forward it to spam@uce.gov. The FTC uses the spam stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive email.

I found out that Mac OS X has a really handy feature, unique to the 10.4 release. Regardless of the program, if you hold the pointer over a URL link, the operating system shows you a tooltip window with the actual URL that the link is redirecting too. I am not sure this would work for shorturl redirection urls, but it does help quite a bit with many phishing emails.

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My latest hobby project has been restoring a Dell Latitude C600 laptop that was given to me. After upgrading the hard drive, processor, and even installing some missing machine screws for it, it has become a decent machine for accessing the Internet around the house. Usually for fan and temp monitoring I use Speedfan which is an excellent utility. In this case though, I found I8fanGUI, which is made specifically for Dell laptops. If you have Dell laptop, you should check to see if your particular machine is on the supported list.

Note that this software is Use at your own risk and is not supported by Dell. According to Christian’s site, the fan control code is part of the Linux kernel now.

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One of the most often asked questions I see on webmaster forums is about Google Sitemaps. In short, a Google Sitemap is a mechanism that allows Google to index your site with more accuracy. If you do not implement a Google Sitemap, Google will still index your site. So why should you setup a Google Sitemap?

Managing Google’s Bot

The main dilema is that you want Google’s bots to visit your site and index as much as possible, but after that you only need Google to index new content and not just waste bandwidth indexing previous content. The robots.txt file offers only limited options, it can’t tell bots to index only new content, so Google came up with Sitemaps to help webmasters make bots work more efficiently. Google’s Sitemap format makes it easy to tell the search engine bot, what your urls are, when they were last changed, and the frequency with which they change. This way the bot knows what it needs to look at and what it can ignore. This should help reduce crawling and make for more accurate indexing as well.

Sitemap Benefits

For websites that use non-engine friendly urls or sites that are brand new and have put a lot of content, the benefits of using a sitemap is that indexing will be more accurate. If your site is new and has no pagerank, a sitemap will not add your site any quicker than if you did not use a sitemap. The idea is not immediate search engine rankings, the idea is to have correct indexing, so when Google does add your site officially to its databases, all of your pages will be included correctly.

If you use WordPress, Google Sitemap Generator is a Wordpress plugin that can create and manage your Google Sitemap. You can also create your own manually, just reference the Google’s Sitemap protocol.

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Last week I spent most of my time, setting up a laptop with WindowsXP, and it dawned on me to put together a little document on how I optimize Windows. Once Windows is installed and you logon for the first time, I basically do eight steps:

• Run Windows Update
• Disable unneeded services
• Modify the Registry for tuning up performance
• Install Anti-Virus and Spam-blocking programs
• Install Third Party Applications
• Add some final utility programs

The Optimizing WindowsXP page goes into further detail.

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