Open source comes to rescue, yet again!

I had purchased a Linksys WRT54GS v5 wireless router from the US three years back for my home network that had 2 laptops and 2 desktops. I had hoped to connect all the computers nicely to share the DSL Internet connection as well as bring all the PCs on a local LAN using this single device. But this damn router used to get hung unpredictably and reboot itself quite often. Moreover, whenever the mains used to go off, which is quite often in Pune due to everyday load shedding, the router rebooted repeatedly and had to be cooled down for at least 5 mins. Hence, I could never trust it while doing Skype conference calls with customers or for important downloads. Since it had the latest firmware when I bought it and Linksys support forums didn't help with the problem, I had to live with it for quite a while. I became used to connecting directly to the DSL modem for important network conversations and using this device when I needed Internet access from the laptops. This went on for an year and half when I again checked for firmware upgrades. Linksys had one and I upgraded my router to the latest firmware. But no luck. I decided to throw away this device and get a new one. Somehow I never got around to buying a new one, probably because my laptop usage at home had gone down significantly.

Recently, I came across DD-WRT, an open-source firmware for a lot of wireless routers, that had received some excellent reviews. So, I decided to give it a try. This past Saturday morning, I flashed the router with DD-WRT using this excellent tutorial. I'm happy now that most of the problems with the router are resolved except one: the router freezes completely if I don't have any network traffic for sometime (for e.g. a lunch break). This problem is easily resolved by power-cycling the router. Hope this problem gets resolved in the next release of the firmware.

Update 30th July 2009: DD-WRT has an FAQ that already talks about steps to solve the freezing problem. After doing those changes to the config, my router has been stable as a rock for last week through all the Skype calls, download sessions and shared DSL accesses. I'm very happy!

Third Chimpanzee

Jared Diamond's The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee is a wonderful book, throws excellent light on many aspects of human life that most of us either don't understand or take for granted: who would guess that the ability to speak and formulate a language would make the humans the conquerors of all continents despite their obvious weaknesses against the nature and beasts?

The book covers a lot of interesting topics: evolution of homo sapiens, spread of humans outside Africa into Europe and far away lands, how and why languages and art came into existence, destructive abilities of humans causing extermination of not only other species and nature but of its own tribe. It has quite a few interesting tidbits on quirky habits of many animals, such as the art displayed by the bowerbird in building its nest to attract mates, and many extinct species of birds, mammals and other animals who would have been fantastic to look at today.

It finally makes a very poignant point about why we should all be worried about conservation and that we haven't lost it all if we decide to act now.