Success at Last

More on the blog post title shortly.  First I need to reply to yesterday’s blog post comments.

Debby it’s summer in the UK which means it’s winter here in Perth.  We have experienced several days of storms and rainfall with some localized flooding.  The farmers in the wheat belt will be delighted as it means there will be a bumper harvest this year.  I don’t believe those in the UK complaining about the heat are being wimps.  People acclimatise to their regional conditions building and living accordingly.  Here in Australia we’ve had locals wearing beanies and gloves whilst point out the frost on the ground.  Actually it’s morning dew   UK is experiencing an unusual heatwave and the public isn’t used to it.  Moreover the infrastructure hasn’t been built to handle it.   The same would happen here if it started to snow.

Jennie the cynic in me believes the UK government decision to open up is a philosophical one.  The government believes the economy is now of greater importance than the health of the public.  Provided the number of COVID cases don’t overwhelm the NHS they will continue with this approach.   England hasn’t reached the internationally recognised minimum fully vaccinated rate of 80%. so in my opinion the government have taken a risk and gone early!  Best of luck with the sale.

Ade we have decided to replace the existing brick pavers with concrete for three major reasons.  The first is ants.  The entire sub surface of Australia is alive with a multitude of ants, termites, etc.  Somewhere under our existing driveway there is at least one large ants nest.  No matter how much I try to poison them, the ants keep coming up through the cracks between the pavers bring the ground with them.  Perth is built on sand.  The ants bring up the sand which then washes down the driveway into the drains blocking them.  The gaps in the pavers created by the ants eventually start to fill with weeds.  Ants can’t burrow through concrete.

Lisa thank you for the information regarding carbon tablets.  I already rattle from all the tablets prescribed by my doctor, but will bear your comment in mind should the need arise.  I did wonder how you’d come upon the information and then recalled I’d heard your nickname was “squeaker”?  I was too much a gentleman to ask David why, when drinking his beer at Braunston!  

Now to my success.

Prior to leaving for life on a narrowboat a decade ago we had an internet router.  A Cisco Linksys WRT610N dual band wireless and ethernet router.  It was a good router (I’d done my research) and I intended to use it on our return to Australia.  That didn’t happen because our youngest son bought me a more modern router as a present prior to leaving the UK.

Three days ago I was looking at the old router thinking “what can I do with that?”

Original Router

I thought “wouldn’t it be nice if I could wirelessly connect the two routers together having one at either end of the house thus extending the range of our wireless network”.  Easier said than done!  It didn’t take long for me to realise the firmware (operating system) on the old Linksys didn’t have the functionality to do what I wanted.  However I could achieve it if I replaced the firmware with something more modern.  The DD-WRT website has an extensive range of alternative router firmware and I was eventually able to identify a suitable replacement.  The Linksys was then “flashed” with the appropriate DD-WRT firmware. 

 

It was then a matter if configuring the DD-WRT firmware to act as a wireless repeater.  Writing that last sentence was easy.  The actual configuration has taken several days, as I attempted to identify and implement the settings.  Along the way I discovered the DD-WRT firmware was very “picky” about the web browser being used.  It didn’t like Firefox or Opera and I was eventually forced to use Chrome.

It’s now completed and I have the Linksys in the front room wirelessly connected to the main router at the rear of the house.  Did I need to do this?  Well no! The wireless coverage from the main router is excellent throughout the house.  I just wanted to see if I could.