Repeat... repeat... repeat...

This post is a repeat. That doesn't mean I have written this before but refers instead to something that those who are more tech savvy can only think about with a twitchy eye.

Exactly one week ago, we finally got our internet upgraded out here at my Mom's farm homestead. We were using a usb internet stick from a cell phone company. Now I totally hate those things and did everything I could to talk interested people out of purchasing those when I did my prison time at the AT&T call center (cell phone division, customer service via Alorica), but it was a bit faster than our other option of dial-up (and satellite is too expensive with all the usage restrictions they pile on you). We now have wireless internet, actual wireless internet (not talking about wireless home network) that is kinda like a totally landlocked satellite connection (tower on our house gets a signal from a tower in a town 5 miles away). It's not quite up to what I consider high speed but is still a hella lot better for being dsl's clumsy little brother.

My biggest gripe with it is that I am stuck with a NAT 3 rating when I go online with my PS3 which means online gaming is petty much suckier than a dockside whore. And there is no way to fix it through router reconfiguration cause I have wasted several hours trying. I have not however attempted plugging directly into the system yet since that means moving the PS3 into a different room & I am lazy, but I did attempt wiring directly into one of the wireless routers which theoretically should have given me a NAT 2 rating and still failed to satisfy {insert lame boyfriend joke here}. While disappointing {add a 3rd bad sexual pun} I do have enough toys to keep my happy {enough sucky jokes because 2 is company, 3's a crowd, 4 is too many, & 5's not allowed}.

Now time to address the repetition alluded to earlier. Our internet is piped into the house in a room upstairs. That room is kinda like an entertainment room mostly for my nephews (it's actually my old bedroom) and has directv, a PS2, a Wii, and a computer (tower version). Wiring up the computer to a wireless router (small room, short cable) was simple. Picking up a wireless signal was no trouble for my laptop & PS3 down the hall in my bedroom either. My Mom's computer downstairs is where the trouble began. It is easily within range of the wireless router IF we lived in a more modern (i.e. cheaper built) house. Instead we live in an old farm house built when they made walls by cutting an entire tree into a long rectangle and stacked & mortared them together to make walls before bricking them in to add some polish to the design. While that means that this house will lose its roof several times over before any walls will fall down, it also means that a wireless signal gets kicked in the shin and laughed at for trying to do anything. So the problematic side effect is that I can't get enough of a signal to Mom's computer.

So although I was already using a Belkin N wireless router, there are a few more powerful options that might broadcast stronger, faster, and able to leap multistory building 2 out of 3 attempts. So a couple of trips to Radio Shack buying and then returning the best routers they carried (screw you Netgear) with unsatisfying results, I decided that using a repeater was going to be the best option (see, told you this would be about repeating). Of course no place actually sells those locally, but the max range Netgear (I still hate you Netgear) has a repeater funtion built into it. That was great because otherwise I was going to have to flash software (DD-WRT) to my other Belkin G wireless router to get it to do that and I didn't really want to run the risk of bricking the damn thing if I screwed up a step during that process.

So basically after hours of feeling like Netgear's products would work just as well whole as when smashed into bits from a hammer, I did several more hours of troubleshooting research to discover that wireless repeaters are a pipe dream for a home network due to the lack of standards wireless routers use. The best chance you have is to use the exact same brand and model of routers throughout your entire network, and even then it is still going to be iffy. Hell, even different models of the same type of brand will fail more often than not so using devices manufactured by different companies had me screwed before I even started.

At that point I was ready to flash dd-wrt to my old G router but as luck would have it, the version of the model I have is not compatible with that program (although several other versions of my model actually are, grrrr). Now the Netgear was compatible with that program and although it already did have a setup for wireless repeating (which wouldn't work for me), dd-wrt would work. But that also meant that I would not be able to return it to regain my money and there was a chance I could break it by forcing new firmware into it's spiteful guts.

Last chance I had was to run a cable from the upstairs to the downstairs (which is frowned on in this household) and in order to be clearance from the household boss to do that I had to find a way to get the G router to work as a wired repeater and have it stashed out of sight under a cabinet in the room next to Mom's computer. It took a few different configurations in the router settings (I don't even remember what they are after trying so many different ones on multiple routers) but finally victory was mine, and it only took 5 days to grasp it.

(Afterthoughts)
1) Screw Netgear, 2) If you manage to setup a wireless repeater, immediately go buy a lottery ticket, 3) Screw Netgear.