Marlboroman82 from bf2s.com
LifeHacker
Of all the great DIY projects at this year's Maker Faire, the one project that really caught my eye involved converting a regular old $60 router into a powerful, highly configurable $600 router. The router has an interesting history, but all you really need to know is that the special sauce lies in embedding Linux in your router. I found this project especially attractive because: 1) It's easy, and 2) it's totally free.

So when I got the chance, I dove into converting my own router. After a relatively simple firmware upgrade, you can boost your wireless signal, prioritize what programs get your precious bandwidth, and do lots of other simple or potentially much more complicated things to improve your computing experience. Today I'm going to walk you through upgrading your router's firmware to the powerful open source DD-WRT firmware.

The instructions are fairly simple you just need to figure out which router you have. I know they support several different brands but linksys seems to be the most widely used model and the one I use for this.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php?title=Installation

One thing to remember after all this is that you may run into some issues with your ISP. I had to do a couple of hard resets on my modem before it would recognize the router. I believe this is more of an exception because of the modem I have. If your still having problem once you get the firmware up and running on your router you may have to contact your ISP to make sure that you have the correct settings. If you do manage to brick your router fallow the link to below for some tips on how to fix this problem.

http://wrt-wiki.bsr-clan.de/index.php?title=Recover_from_a_Bad_Flash

Lifehacker has some pretty easy to fallow tutorials on how to change the strength of your signal and prioritize bandwidth. Check it out.

http://lifehacker.com/software/router/hack-attack-turn-your-60-router-into-a-600-router-178132.php


I will update this later and give some more info on what all you can do with this. Also set up some simple to fallow walk through guides.


I haven't tried this myself, but it should greatly improve your range(Yes how far you can go with your laptop from your router) and speed on a wireless connection the router that you do this on. As said before, it is free to do assuming you already have the router and should greatly increase the resale value what with Linux running on it. Looking at the charts, it seems it will even let you overclock the routers processor speed.

The list of proven compatible routers can be found here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices

Original thread can be found here: http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?id=84339