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Posts Tagged ‘Linksys’

Johnson Family Road Test

July 24th, 2009

Vacation, digital entertainment and my experience this week. I thought I should write about my families trip and our technology gear experience. We are not frequent long-distant travelers but we wanted to take our digital entertainment along the way. Music, movies, books, etc. It was a big trip for us. We drove 625 miles from our home to Deb’s brother’s home outside Buffalo, New York. 465 miles from near Buffalo, New York to Mystic, Connecticut. And finally, 385 miles from Mystic, to home.

My wife, 5 year old daughter and I traveled with a 1st generation iPod Touch, a 2nd generation iPod Touch, a Sandisk Sansa e280, a portable DVD player, and two MacBooks. The iPods and Sansa were used often while on the 11 hour drive to Buffalo. My wife has become a fan of reading books on her Touch with the Amazon Kindle App for iPhone. Plus her music, of course. Erica’s Sansa was loaded with her music. And my Touch was loaded with podcasts and audio books from LibriVox.org. This routine happens even on short trips. We don’t fight about the radio, only about how loud Erica is singing. Also, Erica will switch back and forth between her music, her DVD player and coloring.

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Michael Johnson Hardware , , , , , , , ,

WiFi over 500 feet

May 31st, 2009

For 31 days now, I’ve been running a wireless distribution system between two Linksys WRT54GL routers over 500 feet apart through a wooded area. I’m using the Tomato Firmware on the WRT54GL’s. So far it’s been rock solid and very stable. It will be interesting to see if the network stays as stable and reliable as the leaves come in and the forest between the two devices thickens.

I’m not going to go through the settings and specifics of this setup.The setup was very easy. All the references and instructions I needed were at PolarCloud.com website.

But I did want to share my experience that it truely is possible to get 802.11g over a great distance. The speed to the internet is not as great from the far end as it is from the head end. Averages 1.4MBps download speed. The ping rate floats between 65ms and 110ms.

It’s been a fun experiment. I’m considering trying it over 802.11n but am not satisfied on what routers to buy that are supported by an open firmware.

Michael Johnson Hardware , , , , , , ,