One of the more obscure things floating around the Internet is a little piece of software called DD-WRT. It's a free, linux-based firmware package designed to replace the watered-down crap that comes installed on most mass-consumer retail wireless routers.
I've been meaning to tinker with this stuff for a while now, but just found myself with a few free minutes to try it out. I have an old Linksys router (the WRT54G, v3) that was hit by lightning about a year ago and toasted one of the hardwire ports. Rather than pitch things like this, I tend to keep them for experiments just like this one.
You flash the firmware using the router's own web-based utility, simply uploading the new firmware, followed by performing a hard reset on the router. After that, the sky is the limit.
It took me all of 20 minutes (including time spent reading the wiki) to set this spare box up as a wireless repeater bridge. So now my little clunker is fit for duty out in my garage, and I have a nice strong wi-fi signal throughout my property (and probably half the neighborhood) if I need it. Better yet, I can plug in some ethernet-based devices if I want so I can stream audio and video across my lot into my man cave, and without the hassle of running a Cat-6 all the way out there.
I've tested the signal and speed by connecting a hardwire from my netbook to the router (and turning off wi-fi on the netbook), and speedtest.net shows me that my Internet speed is every bit as fast on the wireless bridged connection as it is on my desktop in the house. (I've not benchmarked throughput between the house and the garage yet, but I don't feel any sluggishness that would indicate a poor wireless connection.)
I wish all my little projects went as smoothly as this one did.
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