Home wireless networks are, generally speaking, pretty reliable but there are always some ‘tweaks’ you can do to squeeze more performance or stability out of it. I came across a good guide on Microsoft’s site which offers easy to do steps.

Of course, the most obvious (moving the router to a central location) is the most effective, but there are some other steps which are just as easy. If your performance is ’spotty’ you may want to consider changing the frequency your router works on as your neighbor’s routers are probably on the same frequency as yours (lets face it, few people ever change the default frequency).

Anyhow, this is good guide to review to take a look and implement the easy stuff.

One thing which has always made me scratch my head is that wireless access points always seem to be more expensive than wireless routers. The range on an access point doesn’t seem to be much of difference, so why not use a wireless router as an access point?

I set this up at work and it was a breeze. Basically all you have to do is plug the router directly into your computer, open the router’s control panel (something like http://192.168.1.1) and tell the router to use DHCP to obtain it’s address.

That’s pretty much it. Of course you will want to apply the appropriate wireless security. If anything gets misconfigured, just reset the router (using the tiny reset button) and start again.