Turbo charge your wireless router!

Here is something some of you may wish and be able to do.

It is possible to take many home wireless routers and greatly increase their signal strength and output, enabling you to get coverage over a much greater area of your house or business.Again I said maybe, because I don't know if your router is supported and some of you have a 'technical impatience' and difficulty following precise exacting directions. That may inhibit you. ;)
But if you are up for some learning and tweaking this is for you.

As with all things technical, there may be things and concepts you don't understand completely or at all. If that is the case you have the greatest reference resource the world has EVER seen - the Internet! Use Google or Bing to look up what you don't know and read, read, and read some more! Read more that the first page of results get as much information as possible.In the caveman days I used to have to go to the encyclopedia, dictionary and then the library.
But you don't have to go anywhere and you now have more information available than has every been to any other generation.

These articles from Lifehacker.com and others describe how to 'flash' your wireless router to dramatically increase wireless broadcast strength and throughput, thereby distance, while at the same time adding reliability and more security.

It seems Tomato is simpler and easier to use, but does not support as many routers. DD-WRT looks like it supports more routers and has a very advanced configuration (which 99% of people will NEVER need). So the choice is yours.

Remember this information is provided with no warranty or grantees. If you mess up you could turn your router into a 'brick'. Of course you could always reset it to the original factory settings most cases though. But if you are afraid of technical challenges and don't want to spend the time fixing a mistake DON'T TRY THIS.

I have a friend who used Tomato and was really shocked at how much more distance he was able to get. He had a Linksys router. I do know of someone else who used Tomato on a netgear too (http://www.myopenrouter.com/blog/entry/10288/Installation-of-Tomato-Firmware-on-NETGEAR-WGR614L/)

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

http://lifehacker.com/344765/turn-your-60-router-into-a-user+friendly-super+router-with-tomato

Tomato's site:http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

DD-WRT's site:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php?title=Installation#Supported_Devices

Well happy tuning and good luck.