WiFi has hit my neighborhood
Prior to leaving the San Francisco Bay Area, I made my regular pilgramage to the evil Frys. I finally decided what it was I wanted to buy: an improved WiFi antenna for my Linksys unit, a couple of 802.11g WiFi cards for my various laptops that don’t have WiFi built in (at $20 a piece, can’t complain), and a CAT5 tester. The latter I got because I’ve got a bad CAT5 run in my house and I’ve been meaning to troubleshoot it for a while now.
I was hoping that by using the improved antennas, the access point down in my guest room might reach up to my office. Turns out, they don’t, or at least that’s what it seems like. On the other hand, when I scanned for networks, I noticed one of my neighbors recently picked up a Linksys WRT54GS. And guess what, they left it wide open with the default password, so I could easily connect and wreak havoc on their access point. But I am a good neighbor, so I won’t do that. Makes me feel a little bit better about using WEP, not broadcasting my SSID on my access points, and using something other than the default admin password.
Meanwhile, now that I have changed the channel my access point is using so that it did not conflict with my neighbor’s access point, I now have good signal up in my office, which means I can disable the access point functionality in the IX66. One access point is always better than two, or one with a repeater.
