My Wireless Home

I’ve always dreamed of wiring my home with LAN. I’ve attempted it once in my previous residence. I criss-crossed my house with metres of UTP cables and bought a tiny D-link six-port switch. Alas, lightning took my D-link switch before I succeeded in creating my own home network. No other attempt has ever tried, due to lack of interest. I tried the first attempt to gain more knowledge about networking, but I got the experience first from my previous job instead. So the home network just didn’t cut it.

Now, there’s a new frontier for my knowledge-seeking curiosity. The relatively new – to me, at least – wireless LAN. The office doesn’t employ it much, apart from the occasional ad-hoc network we use just to transfer one or two files – a job that’s easily taken over by the ubiquitous USB flash disks. So, when my family opted for an always on, relatively faster, and cheap Internet connection that is cable connection, a new window of opportunity opens before me.

I bought my Linksys WRT54GL wireless broadband router from Bhinneka.com – don’t ask, I hate looking around, not in Jakarta’s hellish traffic nowadays – exactly two weeks ago. I considered several alternatives: SMC WBR-14G and Asus (this one’s quite interesting with it’s built in USB port for no-hassle print-sharing). After reading various reviews on various blogs and websites, this review by Rafe Needleman of C|Net practically decided the Linksys for me. This article on Lifehacker about hacking its firmware had me drooling over the router.

The installation itself was out-of-the-box easy. The manual and config-wizard software helped much. Unfortunately for me, there were some problems with my connection, which made my installation a bit prolonged. Wait for my full review of the router in another post. In the meantime, you can follow Kuy’s very clear & helpful guide on how to install a wireless router on your cable connection. The result? I now can officially surf the web while I’m doing my business in the toilet! How banal!

Lessons learned:

• Want a hassle-free wireless router installation with your home cable connection? Only buy those routers with MAC cloning/spoofing feature!
• Remember this order of set-up and power-up sequence religiously: cable modem – wireless router – PC.
• Configure your wireless security immediately and securely. Otherwise your neighbours will enjoy free Internet connection, courtesy of you!