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The nerve center of my home network

My wireless router/modem was fried by a lightning strike a couple of weeks ago, just as I was about to set off for my vacation in Siem Reap. What a bummer that was, it definitely put a downer in my holiday mood . Since I got back from the trip, I had been surviving on a modem/router borrowed from a friend.

The wireless router/modem I had was a all-in-one device. Basically a modem, router, switch and wireless AP combo. I was thinking of replacing it with a similar device. But when I was doing some research through the internet forums, I keep seeing this specific model of wireless router being recommended, the Linksys WRT54GL. Wanting to try something new, I went ahead and got myself a WRT54GL and an ADSL modem to go with it.

What’s so special about the WRT54GL? Well, it is one of a few wireless router out there that is running on open-source firmware. With the firmware being open-source, this also means that there are 3rd party firmwares being developed for it. Most notably DD-WRT and Tomato. I chose to flashed mine with the Tomato firmware. It’s much more user friendly than DD-WRT and besides, Tomato sounds funkier, hehe.

One of the feature of the Tomato firmware is it’s QoS (Quality of Service) capability. It really works as advertised. I have configured the QoS to give priority to web surfing so although I’m doing some heavy downloading in the background (downloading some “good stuff”, of course), I have no lag when surfing the web or watching videos on Youtube.

I’m glad my home network is back to it’s original state. In fact, it’s even better now with the WRT54GL. Maybe the lightning strike is a hidden blessing after all.