Digital Diversion

Home networking took a great leap forward with the proliferation of Wi-Fi networking products and have improved generation-to-generation in terms of bandwidth, range and quality of service. While it’s hard to argue with the attractiveness of networking without wires, I found Wi-Fi alone to be insufficient for my needs. 

My circumstances may differ from yours, but I have to assume that I am not alone.  I live on a hill so my house is tall (four levels) and wide, making coverage at an adequate bandwidth a challenge.  My 802.11g wireless router is co-located with my broadband modem next to my home theater on the third level.  Unfortunately, this setup doesn’t provide a strong enough signal to either my office computers (second level) or TiVo (fourth level).  Looking forward to the day when I can distribute video within the home (an HD stream can consume >10 Mbps), I wanted as much bandwidth as possible.  While 802.11n promises better range and bandwidth than my current solution, of the 15 or so devices I have networked within my house, only one currently has .11n built-in.  Of the remainder, only two are capable of being upgraded to 802.11n.  So simply upgrading my router wasn’t going to entirely solve my problem.  What I really needed was a way to extend my existing 802.11g network to wired and wireless devices without the cost and hassle of pulling CAT5 cable throughout the house.  The networking companies make range extenders, but I gave up on this option after wrestling with a wireless repeater for a few days; unfortunately after almost 10 years in the market, ease of configuration of wireless networking devices remains a challenge for most consumers.

My solution?  (continue reading…)