Looking forward to getting some new content published as I have been working on a variety of things with Office365, SharePoint 2013, the SPServices library from our good friends at codeplex. Over the holiday I had some time to go through a box of ever collecting IT gear, routers, wifi switches, cables and all the mess, since one of my resolutions for the year was to get our spaces better organized and clean out the clutter. I found that I had a 3 Linksys WRT610N wifi routers that were still functional but for some reason or another I hadn't needed them.
After a bit of searching I found that I could convert them to wifi repeaters with out any type of hardwired connection between them, SWEET MOTHER OF ALL THINGS AWESOME, I can now fully cover my home from front to back and top to bottom with wifi access, even our chicken coop could get setup for a webcam! HELL YEAH! I can watch youTube videos in the garage or access a how to series in order to build something or even for a bit of home security using web cams, obviously I have a few ideas of what to do with this new found freedom! So how to do it?
First I downloaded a wifi analyzer tool for my smart phone the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and did a quick site survey where I walked around and noted the best spots to setup my access points in order to spread the signal out correctly.
You will then need to load up the dd-wrt firmware onto your router and then reconfigure a few things and you will be good to go. Excellent instructions are posted here on the dd-wrt wiki for the Linksys routers I have, but they are very similar for all models.
In our home we have 3 Google Chromecasts connected to TVs on each of the 3 levels of our home, each of our kids has their own Amazon Kindle Fire, plus I have 2 tablets and my wife has 1, we have 1 shared workstation for the kids to use, and then another Ubuntu Linux system for the littles to use, as well as a couple of laptops for work and projects, and lastly our cell phones use wifi at the house, so we have lots of devices consuming data on a regular basis, plus we have teen aged kids so I wanted to do my best to limit their time and usage of the internet during normal hours and I work from home doing consulting work.
This solution worked perfectly for me and I now have a greater control range over who gets access to what and when, the kids only connect to 1 of the access points, which has time limits, access restrictions, and filtering enabled, the rest of the network allows me to have the best signal possible wherever I am in the house or around the property.
A couple of pro tips:
--Make sure to do the 30-30-30 reset on your routers, this ensures you start with the best possible chance of getting these things to work properly.
--Once you have them configured go into the administration panel and backup the router, save it somewhere accessible as you will most likely be needing it.
Have fun with this one!
