Here is the original post, and below is what I did with screenshots

Configuration of a Blackberry Curve 8310 as a Windows XP Modem

This is a great setup - a benefit to residents of an apartment complex with shared Wifi.

Check this: http://swing.cs.uiuc.edu/projects/perm/index.php#overview

ERM is the Practical End-host collaborative Residential Multihoming framework. 802.11 networks have spread rapidly in the residential area, and it is common for neighbors to receive signals from each other’s home wireless networks. PERM allows residents to leverage such an opportunity to improve their last-mile Internet connectivity, at no additional cost, by pooling their Internet accesses together.

The presentation goes on with “For a typical residential user, while his
broadband connection is always on, it is probably idle for
most of the time. When the user actually starts Web surng,
P2P downloading, and/or video streaming, popular DSL or
Cable’s average 100700Kbps downlink speeds and even
lower uploading speeds can hardly support more than one
ow. By pooling all locally available Internet connections
with neighboring households’ access (amongst those users
whose service agreements allow non-prot sharing), Internet
connectivity can be improved in terms of lower latency, higher
throughput and resiliency, etc.”

The paper is very technical, it was presented as a research paper, and ends with

“PERM scheduling achieves nearly 15% improvement
in mean transmission time for light-volume ows and up to
27% improvement for heavy-volume ows compared with
schedulers proposed for enterprise multihoming. Compared
with a single Cable or DSL, PERM scheduling reduces latency
up to 50% for light-volume ows, and reduces the mean
transmission time of heavy-volume ows by up to 28% and
62% respectively.”

Source: http://swing.cs.uiuc.edu/papers/INFOCOM06PERM.pdf

This is like co-op internet. Let’s say you are a late night internet movie downloader, and your neighbor is sleeping while you surf, yes, it would be cool to get their idle bandwith. Likewise, if you are out shopping, working, etc… why not let your neighbors get the benefit of your bandwith? What if both people are intensively using the net? Well each person gets whatever bandwith they purchased.

What if some neighbor bought the premium 16 Mbps cable modem service, while you are still using a 768 kbps DSL service , things may not work from a social perspective. Generally people like to share if they feel equal contributions are being made.

With 802.11n networks that are wider in area, maybe this will come into use. PERM is available for download, though some configuration is required.

If your home internet connection has around 99% uptime - that means that for a 30 day month, you will have 7 hours of downtime. I have seen business class DSL ads for 99.9% uptime, which means approximately 40 minutes per month.

It is probably more like, every 6 months, the internet could go out for 2-3 hours. That is my experience.

If you cannot handle that, and sometimes you can’t, then it will cost money.

You could

- get another internet service (if you have DSL, get cable, or vice-versa)
- use 3G internet

The 2nd option is good if you already have an unlimited data plan for your cell phone. You will need to buy a 3G router, or tether your 3G phone to your computer, or buy a 3g computer card.

3g computer card - this plugs into your computer, generally laptop in the PCMCIA slot. It allows you to connect to a wireless carrier 3g data network.

tethering your phone - you plug your phone with a cable to your computer, change some windows settings, and you are connecting

3g router - you get a PCMCIA card, plug it into this special type of router, and you now have 3G network that all computers in your home can connect to.

The last option will probably cost around $200-300 dollar at the time of this post, but if you already have an  unlimited data plan , you  could even  get rid of your other DSL/cable broadband, though I am not sure of the uptime of the 3G data network.

It is right here

http://www.blackberryforums.com/blackberry-guides/2019-user-howto-use-blackberry-modem-laptop.html

For the iPhone, go here

http://dragonforged.com/blog/2007/09/tethering-the-iphone-for-os-x.html#more

With the 3G Iphone, things will probably be different.

“On 3G, content can be downloaded at as fast as 1.7 megabits per second and uploaded at up to 1.2 megabits per second, says Bill Hogg, AT&T’s president of wireless network services. AT&T is currently testing software that could increase the speeds up to four times, which the company hopes to make widely available within in the next few months, Hogg says.” in Forbes

Isn’t that as fast as normal DSL (standard DSL is 1.5 Mbps)

I wonder if you can get a 3G capable router and connect to the AT&T 3G network and the cancel the home internet service. You can just use the 3G network all the time - when you are out of the home, use the iPhone etc…   It would be probably slightly more expensive.

Would it be easier if the wireless router was made a part of the desktop computer, or home server?

The computer would just take the plug from the DSL/cable model box (or even that could be built in)… and then you could administer the router from a native client. Once you plug it in, your computer would broadcast your wireless network to other computers in the house, or other appliances.

Disadvantages:

you would need to make sure if the computer turns off, the router does not turn off
the computer now needs to be near the internet connection line (cable modem/DSL modem) or near a phone line if the modem is built into the computer

Advantages

One less confusing box for people.
Debugging the router.
Maybe network configuration could be made simpler since you are already connected to the router.

You probably still want a separate CPU for the router rather than using the computer CPU, otherwise you reserve 2% of the computer CPU for router usage.

I am just making all of this up.

This is Quality of Service. It is available on some of the newer routers, and also on the open source firmware available..

Quality of Service is about giving different types of network traffic a different priority. Imagine a freeway with limited lanes. Cars in the high occupany vehicle/carpool lane, are given a higher QoS with the limited freeway space. Similarly, police cars and ambulances are supposed to get higher QoS - they get priority over other cars.

On a network with limited space, a router can give preference to network traffic of a certain type or originating from a particular computer, or application. A company could have a critical system which will receive network traffic preference over those packets coming from a user just browsing the internet. The CEO’s computer might have a high QoS.

Is it useful for home? People have mentioned uses with Voice over IP, if you are using Vonage, etc.. You want your phone call to sound good. I can’t think of another reason…QoS is important within the home network - that is really all you can control now, once your packet goes out on the internet, there is no guarantee anyone will give your packet a particular priority. Companies that control the network, like Comcast, etc… can now manage QoS on their network, and then that leads to some aspect of the controversy of net-neutrality.

QoS is not important when you have a lot of bandwith on the network and very little traffic. Just like an empty street on which cars drive.

Similarly, if you have such limited bandwith that even your highest priority packets cannot get the bandwith they need, QoS does no good.

Right now, this is not QoS I think, but DSL or Cable companies advertise a particular speed that they sell you, for example 3 Mbps download, but I am not sure how or if they guarantee it. ie ,if they miss that level of service, is it a breach of contract?

That type of service guarantee is for enterprise level systems..

If they did offer that type of thing, they might then also limit bandwith or cap your speed, the sword cuts both ways.

http://www.myopenrouter.com/articles

This is an 802.11g router - open source. Model: WGR614L

Linksys also has an open source router - WRT54GL

Also see http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

This is 802.11 speed vs. distance from a Broadcom Whitepaper.

What are the actual speeds of Wifi? Generally for 802.11b, it is between 3 and 5 Mbps. For 802.11g, 10-20 Mbps.