A few weeks ago, on the WebWorkerDaily blog, I did a post called "The Home Wi-Fi Reboot: Don't Neglect It." It discussed a problem I was having with my home Wi-Fi network, where I was occasionally getting dropped connections. I solved the problem I had by doing a cycled reboot of my router, access points, computers, and checking all physical connections, followed by a channel change on my router. (Changing channels can get rid of interference problems with other wireless devices.)

I was really interested, though, in several of the reader comments that came in about using open source firmware on a wireless router. Here are the two open source firmware products that readers mentioned to me, and why you want to know about them if you have a home Wi-Fi network. You can get a better wireless signal and improved performance with these, and much more.