Upgrade Your Wireless Router…

When I got my first laptop back in 2003, I got a wireless router to go with it. This allowed me to surf the internet from the comfort of the couch in front of the TV. It was a far simpler time back then: TVs weren’t high definition, cellphones were for calling people, and Superbowl halftime shows weren’t on a 7 second delay.

Since that time, I’ve gone through a number of wireless routers. Each of them worked well at first, but then slowly needed to be unplugged, reset, and tossed out as time went on. After my last router went kaput, I decided to take a different approach.

Enter Tomato

I had heard mentions of a firmware for certain routers called Tomato. Firmware is somewhere between software and hardware. Software is computer coding that allows users to interact such as surfing the internet with an internet browser or typing a document on a word processor. Firmware is different in that it is computer programming that tells the hardware what its function is. Firmware generally allows minimal user interaction and most people would never know it exists.

In the case of the router I purchased, the Linksys WRT54GL, the original firmware was written by the Linksys company (or Cisco, it’s owner). The downside is that it was not well written and contained a number bugs which would cause it to crash. However, the upside was that the firmware was made using a modified version of the Linux open source operating system. If you have read my previous post on open source software, you will know that anyone can take and modify the code and do with it as they please.

The creator of Tomato did exactly that, he created great firmware that replaced the problematic Linksys default firmware.

One of the goals, it seems, was to create a stable environment where you didn’t need to reset your router on a weekly basis. I just checked and my Tomato router has been going non-stop for 46 days. I actually know that we had a power outage that was the reason the router reset 46 days ago. Before that, it had been running since about May, when the power was out from a thunderstorm.

In addition to making Tomato extremely stable, they also added functionality that wasn’t available in the default Linksys firmware:

• Power boost – If you needed a little more range on your router so you could use your laptop in your yard, garage, or basement, you can tweak the power output. The only drawback is it causes extra wear and tear on the router and might make it conk out prematurely.
• Mesh network – If you buy more than one Tomato router, you can have them cooperate and work together. This has worked out really well for me. In our house, we have our internet connection hooked to a router that serves the media center PC and provides wireless for our bedroom and the living room/kitchen. We have another router in our office which has a network printer and a network hard drive attached to it. Having those items upstairs in the living room would have been an eyesore and running wires from upstairs to downstairs would have been unsightly and a hassle. Additionally, adding a second router in this manner would alleviate the need for the power boost suggestion above, extending your router’s lifetime.
• Quality of Service – This one is complicated, but it basically allows you to prioritize various uses of your internet. This comes in handy if you have multiple users on your network using a lot of bandwidth. Services such as Vonage (an internet based landline system) would have top priority since they would need to have a stable connection. Email and basic web browsing would be in second place since it isn’t very bandwidth intensive but is fairly high priority for most users. Downloading music and movies would be given lowest priority since these could be done at night when no one is using the internet.

The other alternative: DD-WRT

DD-WRT is much like Tomato in that it is an open source alternative firmware. I recently started experimenting with it and it has many more versions with various features and has support for FAR more routers than Tomato. I know that if you have to pick between DD-WRT and Tomato, you probably aren’t going to go wrong. I like the spartan design of the Tomato interface. However, DD-WRT has some features that are required for a project I’m working on (creating a WiFi Hotspot for a local coffee shop, more on that later).

You can go to the DD-WRT hardware page to see if your current router can use the DD-WRT firmware and also get instructions on installing the firmware. If you need help figuring out if your router can use Tomato or DD-WRT or if you are having trouble getting your router set up properly, you can contact The Digitante by heading to the About page and sending an email or you can simply click on the Google Voice widget in the right side column to call me for free.

Security

We didn’t talk about security settings for your router, regardless of whether you use Tomato, DD-WRT, or the firmware that came with your wireless router. Next week, I will have a full post dedicated to the security of your home wireless network including common questions on the various encryption schemes and why you even need security on your router at all. Look for that next week and as usual, Friday Night Links will pop up sometime tomorrow evening.