I love a good rant, especially when it’s well justified. The carriers want to rip you off. When it comes to paying for tethering on top of your data plan, Mike Elgan hits the nail on the head telling you how it is.

Did you know there’s a 237 mile point-to-point WiFi link in Venezuela that achieves 3 Mbps throughput? They used Linksys WRT54G wireless routers, one on each end. Both are running Linux-based firmware.

on’t call it a point-to-point phone network, that might scare small children. How about network-free communication or a self-organizing self-powered temporary network? Mobile phones and tablets communicating with each other without the need of infrastructure, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!

If you have two antennae, replace one with a direction antenna. Leaving the other as a omni-directional pole should give you a good area of coverage while the directional antenna serves to extend your wifi range to needed areas such as your backyard or that room down the hall and around the corner. If you only have one antenna, crack open the plastic casing on your router and look for a little socket for a second antenna. It’s cheaper for manufacturers to produce one hardware design and just downgrade the hardware to make more than one model than it is to have multiple, completely different designs.