How to Connect Two Wireless Routers Together

If you wish to extend the range of Wifi signal in your home network, you can purchase an additional wireless router and connect it to your existing router with an Ethernet cable.

The setup is pretty easy, inexpensive and the best part is that your two routers need not have to be from the same manufacturer so, for example, you can easily connect your Linksys (Cisco) router to a router from say Netgear or Belkin.  For instance, I am using a 30m long Ethernet cable to connect my two routers – one is a Linksys WRT 160N (N based) and other one is a WRH54G (G based) and the setup works just perfect.

How to Connect One Router to Another

For this example, let’s assume that you have an OLD_ROUTER and a NEW_ROUTER.

Step 1: Make sure your old router is working.

Step 1a: Connect the Broadband modem to your OLD_ROUTER’s Internet (WAN) port. Then connect the computer to one of the four available ports on your router through an Ethernet cable.

Step 1b: Make sure that the Internet connection is working on your computer and on your wireless devices.

Step 2: Configure your new router

Most routers have an IP address of 192.168.1.1 so before you connect them, you need to ensure that they have been assigned two different IP addresses.

Step 2a: Shut down your OLD_ROUTER and the modem. Also unplug the Ethernet cable from the computer.

Step 2b. Plug the Ethernet cable into any of the numbered ports of NEW_ROUTER and connect the other end to your computer. Switch on the NEW_ROUTER.

Step 2c. Access the web dashboard of NEW_ROUTER (192.168.1.1) and change the local IP address to something like 192.168.2.1 so that there’s no conflict with the old router. Save the changes.

Step 2d. Test the SSID name of the new router and make sure it’s different from the old router. Also make sure that SSID broadcast is turned on. Save the changes.

Step 3: Connect the two routers

Step 3a. Connect the modem to the Internet Port of the OLD_ROUTER.

Step 3b. Connect one of the number ports of OLD_ROUTER to your computer.

Step 3c. Connect another free port on the OLD_ROUTER to the Internet Port of your NEW_ROUTER using an Ethernet or LAN cable.

Important Points to remember

1. It is suggested that the length of the LAN cable connecting the two routers should not exceed 100m and that you should avoid having any joints in the cable. LAN cables are pretty cheap – I got a Cat5e cable for 25¢/m.

2. If you have a compatible router, I suggest upgrading the firmware to DD-WRT as that will slightly boost the wireless signal plus you’ll get access to tons of other settings in your router.

3. If you have enabled Wi-Fi security in your previous router, use the same settings in your new router as well.

4. It is important that you assign different SSIDs to the two routers else the same network name will appear twice in your wireless network connections window.

5. If you don’t remember the username of your router, try these combinations – root + admin, admin + admin, admin + password or admin (as username) and no password.

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YouTube Video Not Available in Your Country? You Can Still Watch It!

No, this is not about Internet censorship in countries like China or Pakistan where ISPs frequently block access to sites like YouTube following Government orders.

YouTube Videos Blocked

You could be staying in a country like US, UK or India but may not be able to watch every video on YouTube - that's because the content owners have allowed access to that video only from certain countries or geographic regions.

If your computer's IP address falls outside that geographic region, YouTube will display an error saying "This video is not available in your country" - this message has nothing to do with censorship, it's the owner of the video clip who could be limiting access.

YouTube Filters in Action

For instance, this video clip (Armor For Sleep - Hold The Door), uploaded to YouTube by Warner Brothers, is probably not available outside US. Similarly, this BBC clip (Stop Calling it a Honeymoon) on YouTube can only be watched from UK.

BBC has mentioned the reason behind region filtering on their official BBC Channel - "Because of the way that the BBC is funded in the UK through the license fee, we cannot make videos available outside of the UK". Similarly the Olympic Games channel on YouTube (youtube.com/beijing2008) is blocked in countries like US because NBC has a deal to stream Olympic Games Live in those countries.

How to bypass YouTube Region Filtering ?

YouTube uses your computer IP address to determine your physical location / country. In order to bypass these country-specific restrictions on YouTube, try this trick:

If the URL of the YouTube video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEwD36Dk1jw - just replace the /watch?v= part with /v so your new URL becomes http://www.youtube.com/v/yEwD36Dk1jw

The other trick is that you type the YouTube video URL inside Google Translate and use this a free Google Proxy Server. Read some more ways to access blocked websites.

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Get Temporary Email Addresses with Hotmail

A temporary email address could come handy in situations where you don’t want to share your primary email address because of the risk of spam.

Now there are quite a few services on the web, Mailinator and 10MinuteMail for example, that have long offered temporary email addresses for free but with certain limitations.

For example, these services provide receive-only inboxes so you can’t send email to someone using your temporary address. Second, these addresses auto-expire after a certain time and then you may have to generate a new one. Finally, we don’t have much of a clue about the companies that run these services and their privacy policies.

If you have been looking for a more reliable temporary email service but without any limitations, it’s time to log in to your old Hotmail account at mail.live.com.

Microsoft has added a new feature in Windows Live Hotmail that will let you create aliases for your main email address and the good part is that all these aliases can be managed though the same Inbox. Google Apps also supports email aliases but not Gmail.

I really like the way they have implemented aliases in Hotmail (see the video above). All incoming email for an alias gets stored in a separate folder, outside your main Inbox, and if you are getting too much spam for an alias, simply delete it from your account.

You may associate up to five different aliases with your Hotmail account.

Technically, this is quite similar to creating a new Gmail account that auto-forwards to your main Inbox and then you set up a filter for routing those messages. However, for people who aren’t that technically inclined, Hotmail’s approach is a winner.

http://www.labnol.org/internet/temporary-email/18632/

Clean Up the Right-Click Menu in Windows

The context menu in Windows, the thing that pops-ups when you right-click anywhere on your desktop or inside Windows Explorer, is often misused by software vendors. They keep adding useless options to that menu without asking and the more programs you install on your machine, the more confusing your context menu will become (see example).

Fortunately, there are several free utilities that you may use to clean up your Windows Context Menu by removing all the unnecessary entries that you no longer need.

The most popular option is ShellExView, a tool that scans your Windows registry and displays a comprehensive list of every single shell extension that’s installed in your Windows. Sort this list by “Type” and focus on items that have “Context Menu” as the Type. You can disable any of the items you no longer use with a simple click.

A problem with ShellExView is that is too geeky a tool for most average PC users. Another good option is Context Menu Editor – this program was written for older versions of Windows but it works just fine on Windows 7.

With Context Menu Editor, you can easily remove links to any of the programs – like WinZip, your Virus Scanner, etc. - from the Window Context Menu. The only downside is that these changes are permanent and you can’t add the removed items back into the menu.

My next recommendation is FileMenu Tools – it lets you remove items from the context menu but if you change your mind later, you can always re-enable them. Open the program, switch to the “Commands of other Applications” tab and prune all the useless stuff. The same tool can also be used for de-cluttering the SendTo menu.

Both Context Menu Editor and FileMenu Tools make changes to your Windows registry and you therefore need to run them as administrator else they won’t be able to save your changes.

How to Test your Eyes Online

They say that you should get your eyes checked every two years but if haven’t had the chance to see a doctor all this time, you can test your vision on your computer as well.

Of course these self eye tests are no substitute for visiting your doctor but if you follow the steps well, you may get some idea about how good (or bad) your vision is.

The Snellen Eye Chart

Most of us are familiar with the Snellen Chart that is made of rows of alphabets of different sizes – you read these letters from a distance, usually twenty feet, and the smallest row that you can recognize accurately indicates whether you have normal vision or not.

The various eye testing tools that are available online make use of the same Snellen chart.

Test your Eyesight Online

You should start with University at Buffalo's IVAC tool. Use a physical ruler to measure the length of the line on the screen (the length will vary depending on your screen resolution). Also measure the distance of your eyes from the computer screen. Now read the row of letters on the screen and press ‘smaller’ to display more rows in decreasing sizes.

While performing the test, you need to cover one eye and when you have read all the characters from top-to-bottom, read them again but cover the other eye this time. When you can no longer read the letters, stop!

Another Flash based eye testing tool is hosted on thinkquest.org – this can work accurately only with computer monitors that are either 15”, 17” or 19” in size. Stand four feet from the screen and then follow the on-screen instructions. When the characters are no longer readable, hit the stop button and it will display your visual acuity.

Finally, if you are looking for more DIY solution, try this. Open the Snellen Chart image on your computer screen and measure the size of the big letter E using a ruler. Multiply that number by 2.838 and stand that far from the screen while taking the test. Now try reading the different letters, top to bottom, to check your vision.