ISPs have a long way to go still, but Free.fr is on top

This article describes what ISPs should be like and encourages you to write to your current ISP to encourage them to improve.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/the-coolest-isp-in-the-world.ars

How to make a WIFI repeater using a Linksys router

I use a WRT54GL as a router for my Flow internet feed. It is flashed with DD-WRT. It gives excellent to good wireless coverage throughout the inside of my house. It is placed at the center of the house and the walls are plastered bricks with a skeleton of H beams. The reception outside is not great as expected but still available. My house is a rectangular shape with the long side being west-east. I was able to see my wireless network from a window in a house that is over 500feet (about 153m according to Google Maps) away from me using a laptop with wifi and also on a Nokia e66. There is a line of sight from the room with the access point in my house to the other house. The reception was very weak and the connection dropped frequently but was still there.

The output on the access point is the default 70mW in DD-WRT. Using a WRT54G router also flashed with DD-WRT, I made a repeater following the instructions on the DD-wrt site (http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge). Initially I could not get the repeater to do it's job and I had the encryption on for the wifi network. I turned encryption off and it worked and then when encrytion was turned on it was still working. Each time the wireless network was modified I had to join/link the repeater to the wireless network. I did all the testing at my home, close to the first access point, so in order to know if the repeater was doing it's job I used a laptop that was cabled into one of the repeater's ethernet jacks. The repeater has a static IP address so it is easier to work with. I did have the problem of buttons not working when chenging settings in DD-WRT with Firefox(3.5) and when I used Internet Explorer(8) the buttons worked. The reason why I made it a Repeater Bridge and not a plain Repeater is because I want the machines that see the repeater to be on the same subnet, so it can share files and resources as a regular network. I can see computers in either house in the other on the network. In the stats of the repeater it reports 8-14% reception of the first acces point. It does fluctuate regularly between these values, I can only guess it is because of environmental differences or cars and people in the area. I now get excellent reception all around the house with the repeater.

 In order to set up the repeater I just have to plug it in and once it sees the first network it will 'boost' it automatically. I only plug it in when I need it as I do not want my network seen or causing interference needlessly. The first router is the DHCP server and it serves IPs in the normal manner through the repeater. I use the repeater with a Nokia 5800 for wifi internet but the ethernet ports are also available for connecting a computer like normal. The network allows for roaming now, so if I decide to go from one house to the other while using wifi, when one access point gets too weak and if the other access point is giving a strong enough signal for the device to pick up, it will switch automatically. A couple packets may be dropped during the switch but applications can usually recover easily. Take a look at the DD-WRT site (http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeating_Mode_Comparisons) for a comparison of the different available modes.

The wireless throughput is theoretically halved but I cannot tell the difference from the repeater or the first access point as my internet connection is nowhere close to the maximum wireless throughput. Big files will not be transferred wirelessly so this limitation is not a problem.

Don't Buy Into the Illusion of Batching : Discovery News

Don't Buy Into the Illusion of Batching : Discovery News

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Fix a Scratched CD

Here is what WIRED.COM has to say about it 

Nathan "Flutebox" Lee and Beardyman @ Google, London, VERY COOL MUSIC