Geek talk, or, musings from my household IT hat

Here at the house we have a Netgear WNDR3700 wireless router. It was an update from an older Linksys router so that we could access N. Initially it was a great upgrade, N devices had access to a faster and more uncluttered bandwidth. But it also became frustrating, about every three to five weeks the router would lock out external WAN access, we could still access household devices; printers, NAS, each other, TIVO, Wii, etc. But access to the outside world was cut off. A reboot would "fix" it, Linksys was no help.

Somewhere along the process I became aware of DD-WRT, an OpenSource router firmware. After another reboot or two I decided to take the plunge and update the router with the DD-WRT firmware. The process was relatively easy, a few resets, enter in some of the normal data minutia, and voila, it was up and running.

There was a bit of a learning curve, the interface isn't as intuitive as that of Linksys or Netgear. But I must say, as of this morning the router has been stable, up and running for 158 days. To be fair, it should be more, but 158 days ago I did turn it off. Before that it had been running for about three or four months.

OK, for some of you household IT'rs, you're think'n, "I knew that." And for some technophobes you must be thinking, "What language did you just speak?" But maybe out-there somewhere, someplace is another household IT'r with a similar problem. Try a firmware change, it might help.

And now on to perform my household chief cook & bottle washer duties...