Interference can be caused from many things in your home or office, but they all result in one thing: your wireless network doesn’t seem to provide its expected range. Check the specifications of your wireless router first to make sure that you have realistic expectations from the device. If you are exceeding the maximum range of your device, you may need to...

A common tool that network and system admins make use of is the “ping” command which is a very simple and effective way to verify a machine is available on the network (firewall rules depending of course). So if you find yourself having to ping multiple machines at once, a very useful tool is Nirsoft’s PingInfoView. PingInfoView is a small...

Whenever you depend on a wireless connection for your internet, the signal strength can vary depending on the room you are in. A lot of this is due to factors you cannot control, such as wiring inside wall and construction materials used. For a simple fix to this, check out the Linksys Powerline Network Kit. All you do is just plug one of these boxes into the...

You’ve heard of interesting ways concerning how to extend the range of a wi-fi router. Some involve using a small dish instead of a traditional stick-style antenna, others involve aluminum foil, and yet others involve creating DIY antennas with a coil. But is there anything you can simply buy pre-built that will do the job right the first time? Yes....

If you ever have a need to track down and analyze network traffic, a tool you need to have is Wireshark. This tool is actively developed by industry professionals around the world and has an impressive list of features. Network analysis tools are essential for tracking down less than obvious internet traffic issues and can assist with malware diagnosis, so the...

In the context of this article I’m referring to consumer grade home internet routers, as in the type that typically have one WAN or "Internet" port and four LAN ports. It’s quite difficult to pin down what specifically causes a router to fail. For example, if you have a dead router, hand it to an electrical engineer and asked him or...

Usually when one has a network connectivity issue, the first reaction is to blame the router. When the router checks out, the next blame is pinned on the internet modem. After that, the blame is pinned on the network card itself. Wrong. You should have checked the network cable first. And if that checks out, then you check the other stuff. Years ago a LAN...

At right is a screen shot of the Wikipedia page List of social networking websites. Said honestly I had absolutely no idea there were this many. Yeah, I knew there were quite a few but not so much that you had to press "Page Down" five times to read thru it… …when reading the web page on a 1680×1050 monitor… …with the...

The following assumes that your wireless networking card has been properly detected by Ubuntu and all you want to do is connect to your network at this point. I have an older Dell Inspiron 6000 and the Intel PROset wireless detects with no problem whatsoever. Other from-OEM wireless cards should also detect properly as well. If you have a USB-based wireless...

More than a few PCMech readers truly don’t care about MySpace mainly due the reason they don’t see a purpose in using it. I shall give you a 3 things you can do on MySpace that are easier compared to using other services. Before I do, the thing to remember about that site is that it is a social tool. If you approach it as such it can work out quite...

If you are in the market for router, consider going open source. In case you are wondering how a hardware device can be open source, it is actually quite simple. While the physical device may not be modified (easily at least), the firmware can be which allows for open source developers to essentially control how the device works. Netgear has recently released an...

Situation: Your internet connection dies and you’re not sure whether it’s your computer, router, cabling, reception (i.e. wireless), modem or ISP’s fault. If your broadband connection dies for whatever reason, you can use a simple 1-2-3 method which 99% of the time works in reestablishing your connection. After turning OFF everything, you turn...

This is a guest post authored by Monte Russel. VPN (Virtual Personal Network) is very convent way to connect while you are away from your normal network. This is a network protocol that builds a private path or tunnel from your computer to the network you want to connect to. A lot of companies utilize this protocol for their employees to connect to the business...

If you have ever noticed, almost all current network cards support 10/100/1000 ethernet, but very few routers actually support the /1000. The last /1000 is actually called gigabit networking, allowing you to transfer 1 gigabit per second – which is the same as 1000 megabits per second or 125 megabytes per second – over your network. This increase...

The battle to protect your computer and network against treats is essentially never ending. While there are a lot of simple and effective things you can do, another trick to add to your arsenal is keeping tabs on your network and the connected devices. A simple (and free) utility to help you with this is RogueScanner. RogueScanner scours your network for...