Grant's Blog

At the new apartment Jill and I are having a little problem with our wireless network. I have an older D-Link DI-614+ that doesn’t have quite a strong enough signal to provide good networks speeds throughout the apartment. It has worked great for years, but it’s on one end of the apartment and we use our laptops largely on the other end in the living room. There are a number of walls between us and it, so it’s understandable that it’s having some difficulty getting to us.

Our first solution was to get a new G router that would hopefully provide faster speeds. First we tried the Linksys WRT54GS. Then we tried a Netgear WGT624. We went back to the Linksys WRT54GS but added a Linksys WRE54G. All of these have been returned and we are back to using the D-Link. We are now contemplating purchasing an Apple AirPort Extreme. If we still need a network extender we would be able to get an AirPort Express, although that’s an expensive solution.

Here are the shortcomings of each router we tried, and why I will likely never buy one of their products again, especially Linksys:

Linksys WRT54GS
My biggest problem with this router is that its configuration site doesn’t work in Firefox on a Mac. I’m not sure if it works in Firefox at all, but I wasn’t able to try it in Windows. It did work in Camino though, so once I figured that it it made things a bit easier.

However, the second time I tried to set it up (with a new actual router since the first one had already been returned) I wasn’t able to get it on the internet.

Linksys not only doesn’t give any instructions on how to set up its products with a Mac, its user guides crash Preview when they are opened. Luckily I had Acrobat, but most people using OS X don’t bother with Acrobat since they have Preview installed by default.

Netgear WGT624
This router wasn’t the easiest to setup. It mis-diagnosed the type of internet connection I had, it wanted me to manually set up my IP and other network settings. I was able to get it up and running on the internet through the advanced settings. However, once I got that part figured out I had no problems with it. However, it still wasn’t strong enough and didn’t improve the connection speed in the living room.

Linksys WRE54G
This is one of the worst products I’ve purchased in years. Do not buy this network extender. I found a site giving step by step instructions on how to set up a WRE54G. Even though I tried following these instructions I was never able to connect to the extender’s web interface. I even tried to set it up with all three routers at various stages. I was at least expecting it to work with the Linksys WRT54GS but I wasn’t even able to get that working. This was the most frustrating product of the three because it never got working at all.

Where does He find things like this?

Indeed.

My cat was put to sleep yesterday. I’m sad.

I may not get to update today, I’m going to my dads and installing my header into my car (xmas present). I expect to be back tomorrow night, but I won’t guarantee it. This might be a multi-day process. I also need to change my oil, which doesn’t take long and isn’t hard, but another thing on the to-do list while I’m at my dads. Anyways, if you don’t see updates later today, I’m not dead.

I found a series of links that started with RageBoy, then went to Michael “OC” Clarke and finally lead me toBlogger Code. So I went through the effort to found out what mine was and I have added it under my name at the top of the page. If you are unsure of what Blogger Code is it’s very much like Geek Code except instead of describing what sort of geek you are it describes what sort of blogger you are.

I just thought of another problem with A/Vblogging, you can’t link to other documents. No matter what, you have to have some accompanying text to go along with the A/V portion of your blog. Of course the way around this problem is to use Flash or something like it so you can have an interactive A/Vblog, but that takes quite a bit of time to create.

Well, I have avoided putting a link to RageBoy’s blog because every time I click on a link to it I get confused by all of the pictures and such. But I suppose I need to add him, I have been reading though his blog today and it is good stuff. Also Doc Searls and Larry Lessig seem to read him. And the whole point of this blog is so I can be like them, so read RageBoy I will.

READ THIS! It eloquently says what I have been hinting at (or outright saying, albeit poorly) for a few weeks now. The web does not change the types of relationships we have or our fundamental nature. It just brings into focus who we really are. It makes us rethink how we work and how we interact in life. Blogs, ecommerce, DRM, DigID, they all help to bring into focus assumptions we have taken for granted our entire lives. Who am I? Who are you? How do I know you are who you say you are? If I don’t know who you are, how do I conduct business with you? These are issues that have largely been overlooked, and the internet is forcing us to examine them like never before.

It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who sees that the web changes nothing.