DO YOU HAVE LAGGY WIFI???
DO YOU HAVE EXTRA COMPUTER FANS???
If you answered “YES” to any of the above questions, you meet the qualifications to build your very own
SuperRouter ™
This router has its TX Rate increased with DD-WRT, resulting in great ping times and impressive range. Fans were added for cooling. Naturally we’re not using this in the competition, but it’s great for testing outdoors where range has been a problem in the past.
Edit: this post is intended for humor/entertainment and should not be taken seriously as any equipment recommendations or an indication that this equipment is actually in use at Team 3309. Just pretend April Fool’s came early this year Good luck at your competitions!
Over clocking with ping, maybe they neglected to state that they upped the output milli-wattage though, not sure on the legality of that either, odd that the firmware would have no warnings though (I use it for the repeater function on an older router, but the setting is there with no warnings about damage either)?
Not sure I would be keen on cutting into a 130 dollar router either, would probably rather do that with a G router that has external antennas and put some parabolic reflectors on them.
“Overclocking” will mess up data timing (based on the system clock, right?) causing instant and complete loss of any communication.
If they modified the router for more power, I wouldn’t want to be the one to give the FCC the evidence on a public forum. Might want to check the dollar amounts on the NAL (fine) for doing such things. Lots of zeros in that number.
You are likely violating FCC laws by doing so, FYI. The router is tested & certified at the settings as shipped; modifying it invalidates that certification.
{edit} It’s also quite common to burn things out after a while on these routers by maxing the TX power. Just because the setting is there buried in firmware doesn’t mean the hardware can actually handle it.
{edit again} I see Don already pointed out the FCC angle but it doesn’t hurt to repeat it. He’s not kidding about lots of digits in the dollar amount if you’re caught & fined.
Post #5 on this thread was not accurate information and was posted by another team member who didn’t understand the gist of this thread. This is all done in jest so should be considered a “joke”
Just to clarify-this was a project embarked on for fun, not for actual use in the competition or in any real-world applications.
This router has provided poor performance overall in our testing (which happens primarily outdoors) and as it’s worth only $29.99 we decided to embark on some experimenting with DD-WRT
We increased the Tx Power which did improve ping times but reliability is not perfect. As we are not using this router for any actual applications (replaced with a couple of WRT54G’s, completely stock, which work very well) FCC violations shouldn’t be relevant and we’ll make sure to keep this thing out of production environments.
I hope somebody got a few chuckles out of this Perhaps we should have waited until April Fools!
sigh.
If you modify a type-accepted device you have voided (as in nullified, removed) its type acceptance.
Allowing a non-type accepted device to emit Radio Energy* outside a screen room is cause for FCC action (in the USA). It does not matter if you use the equipment or not.
Will they catch you? Unlikely.
Will they fine you if they do catch you? Probably not
Is the potential fine above $100,000? Yes.
Your call.
(Specifically, energy above a certain level, which is measured as a field strength at a certain distance. A microwatt from an 802.11 device exceeds this threshold, that’s well over 1/1000 of normal power)
I’m just trying to tell you that you’re breaking the law, and you should stop.
This intriques me as I attached a photo of the Overclocking frequencies for my router. I have toyed with it in the past and I never noticed any communication issues.
Going to bump it up from 228 to 252 mhz for a few minutes and see if I notice a lot of dropped packets.
Edit: Didn’t seem to notice any performance difference.
Thinking about it, I can’t imagine they’d base the data on the clock without compensating for a frequency change that’s done in software.
For the most part. This has more to do with voiding type acceptance than with interference. Also enforcement actions are usually based on complaints they receive.
The NJ State Police also don’t stop you for doing 67 in a 65, but that doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t.
Good luck at your competitions!