I purchased a used HP EN5000 Digital Media Receiver off of eBay. The EN5000 is a "Media Receiver" that lets me play (through my stereo and TV) MP3 files loacated on local network servers. It's not the most feature-rich device, but for a low eBay proce of $27.00…. Anyway, it requires an Ethernet connection, so I decided that an additional Belkin F5D7230-4 Router would be the most economical connectivity solution.

In a prior article found here, I discussed how I set up my wireless network by leveraging the high configurability of the absurdly inexpensive Belkin F5D7230-4 Routers. I described how I configured three of these suckers to provide full-house coverage for all my networking needs. Read on to see what I did to improve my home network…

I purchased a fourth Belkin F5D7230-4 router to provide additional connectivity in another room. The wireless coverage was absolutely fine, but I didn't have any Ethernet jacks in the room, so adding the additional F5D7230-4 would provide the needed ports while seamlessly fitting in with the wireless network (more on "seemless" later.) One thing I am REALLY liking about the F5D7230-4 is that because it has 4 switched ports, it's basically like adding a wireless "hub" in the room. Wired Ethernet devices that connect via the switched ports simply see a 100MB Ethernet connection on the network. The reality of course is that the overall throughput is at 54MB 802.11G speeds, not the full 100MB, but for my devices, this is perfectly acceptable. In fact, after surveying everything I have connected, it turns out that the only "real" wireless device in my house other than the F5D7230-4 routers is a laptop. All other devices are standard 10/100 Ethernet, so I just use the F5D7230-4's to provide the ports to 54MB wireless connectivity instead of stringing wires everywhere.

ADDITIONAL TWEAKS:
After living with my wireless network as described in my other article, I decided to alter some of the settings to help improve performance and to secure the network. Here are the changes I made:

1. Configure Routers as "Access Point Only":
With the exception of the F5D7230-4 that's connected to the Cable Modem (I left that configured as a Router), I configured all routers as "Access Point Only". This way, they are only set to "do one thing". My idea is to simplify the settings and reduce the number of factors I have to handle during troubleshooting. Further, I only have one of the routers set to "allow client connections". This means that router is the only one that will accept connection from other wireless devices (ie: my laptop.) All the routers still act as wireless bridges, so basically this means that the routers are really nothing more than WEP-secured, wirelessly-connected, 4-port switched hubs, one of which allows for WEP-secured 802.11G connections. The end result is actually pretty slick.

2. Setting the IP Address:
By default, when you configure the F5D7230-4 as an Access Point only device, the configuration page defaults the Access Point to a new IP of "192.168.2.254". Obviously, I couldn't have three of the routers configured to the same IP, so I just changed the defaulted IP to an IP address that made more sense. In my situation, I have the F5D7230-4's configured with IP's ranging from 192.168.2.1 to 192.168.2.4–makes troubleshooting a bit easier. 192.168.2.1 is the router connected to the Cable Modem, and it also is the address used as the "Gateway" and "DNS" for any connected devices.

3. Configure Wireless Bridging:
Next, I configured wireless bridging as needed. I won't detail the specifics, but as an example, I configured wireless bridging on the router to which my ReplayTV box is connected, to bridge directly and exclusivly to the router where my "Video PC" is connected. That router, in turn, is configured to wirelessly bridge to the router that connects to the Cable Modem, and ultimately to the Internet. So, when my ReplayTV box does a "net connect", it finds the Internet and does a "moderate-speed" connection, hopping across a couple wireless routers. This is not a high-bandwidth transfer, so speed really isn't important. On the other hand, when I want to stream or transfer video between the ReplayTV box and my PC, it has high-bandwidth requirements, so it only has to go between one router-to-router wireless connection.

4. Security:
I next enabled WEP on all wireless devices. My network is now more secure. The nice thing is that WEP only concerns the wireless connections, so it's completely transparant to devices connected via the switched ports.

5. Labeled everything:
I used my wife's P-Touch labeler to create IP labels for any device that uses an IP address in the house. This way, I don't have to remember what is what, I just look at the label. They can be applied in inconspicuous places, and for those that aren't, they give the devices a nice "geek-look"!

Now to address that "seamless" comment above. OK, I have to confess one thing: It took me almost TWO HOURS to get that fourth F5D7230-4 configured and "talking" to the rest of the network! Once again, one of those "5-minute projects" escallated into a very frustrating evening. It turns out that I simply mistook the "WAN" MAC address stamped on the bottom of device for its "WLAN" MAC address which is only discovered through the Configuration Home page. Once I inserted the proper "WLAN" MAC address into the bridging tables (initially, I was using the "WAN" MAC address), things "lit up" properly and I was good to go. So the tip is this: The "WLAN" MAC address is ONLY viewable in the configuration page, NOT on the device itself. It can't hurt to just label everything or at least write everything down for later reference.

CONCLUSION:
I have four WEP-secured wireless routers scattered around my house; all sharing a channel that's not being used by other Access Points in my area; all visible to each other; all routed to the Cable Modem. As my needs grow, it'll be a simple matter of just purchasing another F5D7230-4 and configuring it into the mix.

So now, my wife and I can finally relax and listen to music in the comfort of our living room as it was meant, instead of huddling around the PC!

Do you have a lot of Hotmail contacts that you would like to add to your Gmail Contacts? “Montevino” submitted this tip on how to do just that. Read on to see how simple it is…

By leveraging Gmail’s new “Import Contacts” (see Gmail Tip #24), you can easily generate an importable file from your Hotmail Contacts.

Just set up Outlook Express to access your Hotmail account (by creating a new account, making it HTML, not POP3, and giving your Hotmail account name and password.) Then, open Windows Address Book, and synchronize. Address Book finds and auto-ads your Hotmail contacts. You can then easily output your addresses to a *.CSV file, which can then be imported into Gmail.

Thanks, “Montevino” for the tip! His home page can be found at www.livejournal.com/users/montevino.

Gmail currently does not provide the facility to send emails to a Group or a List or email addresses. But thanks to an excellent tip submitted by “arianj”, we now have a very doable workaround! Read on to see how to set up a pseudo Group Contact…

Although Gmail doesn’t currently support Groups in your Contacts, you can simulate a Group list by doing the following:

1. Create a new Contact

2. In the “Name” field, enter the name of your Group (eg “My Friends”)

3. In the “E-mail” field, enter your list of email addresses in the following format:

friend1@gmail.com>,<friend2@blah.com>,<friend3@foo.com

Note three things:

1. You must enter “>,<” (without the quotes) between all addresses

2. Be sure NOT to include a leading “<" or trainling ">“. This is intentional, because during auto-complete, Gmail adds these characters to the beginning and end of the full string that is in the e-mail field.

3. Also, there should be no spaces in the string.

Again, thanks to “arianj” for submitting this tip!

Want a quick and easy way to view all of your "Unread" messages? Here’s a neat tip submitted by Mark Worsham describing how…

Once again, the hard working Gmail Developers have implemented yet another much-requested feature: Import Contacts! Read on for more details…

For the best explanation of just how to Import Contacts, log into your Gmail account, click on Contacts, and click on the new “Import Contacts” link at the top of the Contacts screen.

But what can you import and how do you import? Gmail will let you import address books into Contacts from Yahoo!, Orkut, Outlook, and pretty much any other service by uploading CSV (Comma Separated Value) files to your Gmail account. You can even manually edit and create CVS files for importing using Microsoft Excel.

Just remember that currently, Gmail’s Contacts fields are limited to just “Name”, “Email Address”, and “Notes”. According to the Help screen, all other fields will be imported into the Notes field.

Gmail’s COntacts aren’t sophistocated, but now that you can Import, they certainly are more useful!

One small side note: On the Import Contacts Help page, it reads, “Because Gmail does not offer group or distribution list functionality at this time, this information won’t be transferred from other address books into your Gmail Contacts list.” The key words to me are “at this time”…not sure if this implies these functions will be incorporated or not, but we can dream…

One of Gmail’s “features” can leave you with extra entries in your Contacts list. Read on for more information…

Gmail has a (debatably) nice feature that automatically adds to your Contacts list the email addresses of those to whom you send emails. While this can be helpful at times, just remember that EVERY unique email address you send to gets auto-added. So, if someone or some company sends you an emai and you reply to it, the email address will get added. For clarification, it only gets added once. We’re talking about “unique” email addresses here. But how do you know what gets added?

Log into your Gmail account and click on the “Contacts” link at the top of any Gmail page. A window will open displaying any Contacts you may have. Any you have manually edited will typically have a “Name” and possibly a “Note” associated with it. By default, any Contact Gmail auto-adds and is unedited will not contain any “name” or “note” information, just the email address. Visually scan down the list and look for any that fall into this category. If you find one, determine what to do with it: Delete is, Edit it, or leave it alone. Obviously what you do with it is up to you, but I make it a personal rule to always edit any email addresses I want to keep and add names (and sometimes notes). Any I don’t want, I just delete. This keeps things clean.

Until I realized that Gmail did this, I was surprised as to how many Contacts were added.

So, every once in a while, I take time to be sure to monitor my Contacts list and clean out any unneeded entries.