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April 04, 2005
Onward! Ever onward!
We thought we were pushing the boundaries of Toad science with that Linksys WRT54GX SRX wireless router, but no, we’ve been assailed by tales of far superior feats of Wi-Fi derring-do.
We’ve scarcely been able to sleep, for instance, since one reader, Bryan, informed us that he had taken drastic measures to improve the performance of his Netgear WGT624 router, when he discovered that factors like triple-brick walls seriously impaired its range and speeds.
Bryan took this as a personal affront. He bought himself an external antenna, clambered up on the roof, and started learning an awful lot about connectors, transmission shadows and line loss.
A mere $200 and eight hours later, Bryan can now take his laptop to the coffee shop 200m down the street, and log in to his home network.
We suspect that this was no innocent sharing of information. A challenge has clearly been issued. The nearest coffee shop to the Bleeding Edge cave is somewhat more than 200m away, but we have no intention of being defeated by the piddling constraints of geography, particularly when we have the inspiration of a couple of kids like these.
We’re off to buy ourselves an antenna. Expect further reports.
Posted by cw at April 4, 2005 11:14 AM
Comments
Go man go. I'm slap bang in the middle of Hampton Steet and a dozen cafes to while away in. The ultimate would be the cute little beech cafe next to Hampton yacht club. The best of luck. I feel one hell of a competition coming on. This story has got legs.
Posted by: Dickie Chateau at April 6, 2005 08:43 AM
Dammit, I have just spent 3 hours of my precious (read unbillable to clients) time talking to Netgear, vainly trying to get my Netgear MR314 wireless router to talk to my D-link 302G ADSL modem. To achieve what, a theoretical 11 mbps transmission once the whole thing actually works? In order to actually communicate with the 2 PCs, which have the audacity to be separated by 1 floor (timber) and 9 metres, the router and modem live on herself's bed-side table, which doesn't exactly endear me to her in the bourdoir!
Bleeding Edge (The Age, Mar 31) has inspired me! The MR314 is to be consigned to the obsolete IT hardware box and I am off in seach of speed!
This then raises a further issue. The piddling actually achieved speed which Optus call their "512 kbps broad-band". In reality, it will not test the Linksys WRT54GX one iota but a new toy beckons.
Bleeding Edge raises the issue of nefarious performance claims in his article.
Why is it that so-called ADSL broadband purveyors can hide behind technology skirts when it comes to advertised vs achievable speeds? If my friendly Shell service station dribbled a millilitre less Optimax than the litre that I paid for, the ACCC and the wrath of the Gods would fall on them. Yet internet service providers seem immune from truth in advertising requirements of the Trade Practices Act and then happily bill be for 512 kbps while generally delivering about 60% of that.
I'd like to suggest that the ACCC should require adjustment of the monthly charge by the ratio of claimed vs actual speed as randomly sampled by the ACCC. Perhaps the adjustment should include a penalty to inspire the ISPs and their bandwidth supplier to work on the problem for example achieve 60% of 512 kbps, then bill 50%....
Food for thought!
Cheers...
Pete
Posted by: Peter Rand at April 8, 2005 12:56 PM