Unable to find any waves (or anything that even resembled a wave) yesterday I gave up dreams of surfing [1] and decided to have a network administrator day. When I rebuilt one of our guest room closets I wired it to be a house server closet which included a print server and printer. While my heart was in the right place the location and setup presented several issues. First the guest room closet is not as centrally located as you might hope so the wireless signal was pretty pathetic at the edges of the house [2]. Second, while my goal was to hide the printer it turns out there is a reason people don’t put printers in closets — it makes them really hard to get at. Third, it was always weird to tell guests “sure, put your things in the closet, you know, by the servers and printers.” Fourth, despite being on the latest and greatest Linksys firmware my wireless router would drop randomly which turns out to be remarkably annoying. I think it might have something to do with the fact that the closet was at a constant 1000 degrees due to all the hardware.

I have a standard XP machine acting as a print server and for some reason my machine cannot see the server on the network [3]. I like having an actual machine running as a print server because it can serve the print drivers as well making it much easier for anybody to print on your network. In order to print my sister’s save the date invitations I moved the printer to a place where I could connect directly to the printer and wouldn’t have to spool large Illustrator files through the server. This meant my wife no longer had a network printer which resulted in many “sys admin” tickets filed in the form of loud sighs when hauling her laptop across the house in search of the printer. This actually is one of the more effective ways to file sys admin requests and I am considering integrating it into our coming release of Demand Management.

Given all these issues I decided it was time for a sys admin day, complete with backing up all our machines, defragging drives, and solving my network woes. My first attempt was to install Sveasoft’s Talisman firmware on my Linksys router which allows you to boost your transmission power above the FCC approved 28mw. I also hoped it might improve the router issues but at the same time recognized I would only be heating the closet to higher temperatures. The funny part is the complete lack of information on impacts or recommendations on TX power settings. With Talisman you can crank it to 250mw and some sites claim this will burn out your router. Others claim having a wireless network at all will cause instantaneous tumor growth all over your body so cranking up the TX power will also expose your neighbors to your cancer waves. Taking the TX power to 84mw did seem to improve the signal strength but not as much or as far as I needed. I’ll get back to you in a decade on the cancer thing, although I’m probably not a good control group. With this failure I had to move on to plan b.

I decided the best location for the router was on top of the Armoire [4] in the living room. I filter my phone line as it enters the house meaning you don’t need those annoying DSL filters on all the phone lines but it also means I need to run a twisted pair off the phone panel anywhere I want to put the router. So after a few new holes drilled through the house, some work with a drywall saw [5], and careful threading with a wire hanger I installed a new DSL jack in the living room. I managed to scrounge an old wireless card from one of our old laptops. Knowing Jul wouldn’t be excited about a printer in the living room, I hooked the card up to the print server meaning it no longer had to be next to the router.

The network has been up for a day now so the lower temp and/or Talisman seem to be doing the trick. I have a good wireless signal in every room in the house and I am reading the paper on the couch right now so I think the location works. I still have to plug in to print because my machine can’t see the print server and my print server occasionally shuts down for no apparent reason but I think enough went well for me to declare victory over network administrator day.

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[1] The waves are looking like they will pick up Monday presenting a conflict with that work thing I have to do during the week.

[2] Most notably the signal sucks on the couch in the sun room where I read the paper on Sunday morning. I find the paper always causes me to need to explore all sorts of things online.

[3] I hate windows networking. Who the heck knows what a Workgroup is? A domain? Microsoft documentation offers helpful explanations like “Workgroups are a grouping mechanism you might use with a home network.” Great, thanks. That was helpful. Perhaps you could also give me a link to Apple’s website?

[4] You have to be married nesting to know what an Armoire is

[5] This is one of the most useful tools I own. Kevin Richau bought it for me when he was over at my house helping me overcome my fear of pounding large holes in drywall.