Recently, I discovered I had some weak wireless signal in certain areas of my home. My first instinct was check out BestBuy or some other online shop for a Wireless Repeater only to find that I’d be spending a minimum of $90 to get the device. Yuck. Double yuck. I wanted a cheaper solution. Yeah, I might have found something cheaper on eBay, but I was also impatient and didn’t want to wait.

I had this Linksys wireless router kicking around and wondered if someone knew how to turn it into a Wireless Repeater. Afterall, isn’t the technology used to be a wireless router or repeater basically the same? After a quick Google search, I found out there was a solution. Using the dd-wrt linux based firmware. I was familiar with this already as I had used it before on another router to upgrade it after I had read this article on turning your $60 router into a $600 router. So I decided to give it a shot.

Pretty much all of the instructions I needed I found here. Basically you have to:

• Disable the firewall
• Choose the network you want to repeat
• Create a virtual network to connect to

All said and done it took me about 20 minutes to set it all up, mostly because I didn’t want to brick my router, even if it only cost $50 and I wasn’t using it anymore. I’m not a fan of breaking stuff. Anyway, now I have great signal strength no matter where I am in my house, which is key. If you’re having a similar problem, I highly recommend trying this out, especially if you have the hardware lying around unused.