If you want to begin in a simple way not necessarily creating original content, here’s how to create the basis of a successful blog.

Keep in mind that: selection and aggregation of relevant content might be valuable as the original content creation.

Image Credit: luchschen

Start a blog on WordPress

The blog’s platform is important because it allows connection automatization on blogs you link on your posts and vice-versa (trackback).

The dilemma always lies between choosing WordPress or Movable Type, but if the choice for a platform consists on generating the higher traffic in less time, so you must start a blog on WordPress for a simple reason: it’s the one more frequently used and it offers a high level of customizing due to the several plugins and templates for every demand.

Select a few but relevant sources

Almost every blogger don’t generate self content, they limit to comment / translate / reelaborate the same news coming from the same sources (a.k.a. background noise, 1% rule, etc). It’s important to get them directly from the original sources skipping intermediaries.

Here there are 5 websites that constitute a good source pack on new medias, web 2.0, etc:

• Mashable
  News and articles on web 2.0 and social media
• Lifeshacker
  Great source on useful programs and advice on PC
• ProBlogger
  Specific advice on how to improve the quality of your blog and monetize traffic
• TechCrunch
  The best site to get in touch with start-ups news and new media backstage and rumors. News frequently travel as rumors by TechCrunch much before they get to public acknowledgement…
• KillerStartups
  It’s a social media specific for web applications and start-ups. Every new web-based service come by and users love blogs that post on new services on the web

If you post on other topics, you should obviously find relevant sources of your interest.

Metabolize the process of acquiring fresh news

To check and to evaluate new posts from several sources should constitute a very simple process since it may cause a great stress due to the information overload.

It should be as simple as opening the browser. And that’s exactly what you should do:

• create a homepage on iGoogle
  If you have a Google account of any kind, you can customize your homepage adding lots of content, including the RSS feed sources previously mentioned.

• use your iGoogle page as the initial page on your browser
  Evey time you open your browser you’ll instantaneously get the most recent news from the web
  

Select and publish the most interesting posts

Choose one piece of news a day from your sources and publish it to your blog.

1. Summarize the original article translating it from English
2. Add your notes and opinions
3. Always mention and link the source without hesitation
4. Always insert a related image to it

Another good idea is to insert links to other articles to get a better idea on the topic (in your blog or to an external link). That procedure generates incoming links due to automatic trackbacks and it offers a useful service to your readers.

Share only your best posts on social media

There are lots of social media that allow content sharing and getting traffic. Don’t go over the top and use one strategy that allows better results with less effort. Use SocialPoster to spread your post across social networks and OnlyWire to share your pages into the most popular social bookmarking websites.

Hint: do not post all your content indiscriminately. Share only the most interesting posts even the ones not written by you. This little strategy will help you gain reliability and get the attention of other users.

Resist to teasing

There comes a time when someone will tease you by saying all you can do is copy and paste articles and that your blog is a clone of this or that website: don’t bother!

To filter, to select with criteria and to suggest again the news published every day has become a procedure almost as important as generating original content.

If there was no one to do so, think of the amount of original news that would get lost in a global ocean of information without reaching the ones they were written to.

Some of the most popular and followed blogs do exactly as mentioned above. No doubt they do it in a structured and organized way, but what they do essentially is to gather, to select and to indicate news.

Watch, evaluate and evolve!

You’ll gradually learn how to understand what your readers search for and get to know their inclinations in a better way.

You’ll learn how to direct your researches, to select other sources, to focus, to create original news and to generate new kinds of content (audio, video, etc.).

You’ll also feel the need for tuning the instruments and to begin using more complete and efficient RSS add-ons. You’ll find more specific social media and learn how to use the ones you already work with in a better way.

We wish you good work. And remember: the ingredients for a recipe are only a part of the dish: it’s up to the cook to turn them into something good with dedication and passion.

From the official website:

FoolDNS is a private DNS service focusing on user’s privacy protection… Each time you access a webpage, or a banner appears,  your navigation logs becomes visible to the website that you visit and to the advertising network that provide the ads on that page

That is true. Generally, both graphical and textual advertising are included through specific codes (javascript or else) that, besides viewing the ads, read your navigation log in order to recognize you when you visit different websites with the same ad network.

What you get by using FoolDNS

You’ll be able to surf the web just like before with two great advantages: you’ll see even censored websites and all ads on the pages will disappear.

What FoolDNS gets with this

A valuable db:

We can provide detailed information on the number of banners displayed by advertising networks to our users and, at the same time, we can extract precise data on the most searched websites from our DNS server. Everything is reinforced in an anonymous and aggregate way. In simple terms, it means we are aware of the website popularity as well as the several advertising networks popularity.

Doubts….

It sounds perfect, right? No publicity, no tracking and all for free. However, there’s something wrong with this…

The service perception concentrates on ethics and there’s something to say about this specific point of view. I’ll explain myself better:

It takes hours of work, lots of energy and effort to create relevant content to be provided to users not asking anything in return. Part of this effort is remunerated by online ads.

What FoolDNS does is not only removing advertising and detouring censorship, but also to intercept publicity on the blogger’s pages, memorizing data to be sold in the future and, then, make them disappear.

In few words, the blogger works to produce content and foolDNS takes advantage of it by creating a data file and statistics to be monetized.

That doesn’t sound very ethical. Should I call them bastards (to use their own words)? Of course not… : )

In what way would FoolDNS really be ethical?

There’s a little detail missing for foolDNS to be truly ethical and flawless: it is revenue sharing.

Does Adsense offer 75% of the clicks to sponsors? So, let foolDNS offer a fair payback out of data selling to the websites it gets ads from.

It’s not an immediate process, but it’s technically possible. I’d like to ask Matteo Flora some questions and I tried to reach him over the e-mail, but I haven’t had any answers from him yet.

This is the video of the FoolDNS speech (in italian) at  Blogfest 2008 in Riva del Garda (IT) where I ask Matteo in the end if it`s possible to somehow give the user control of the online ads networks list to be cutted-of.

What do you think about it?

What follows here are not real rules but just few simple considerations as a result of a long lasting experience and publications of several articles on the subject.

Now I want to share my knowledge with you:

1. No news is too old

The fancy we have in longing for posting original news is the main stress cause for blog abandon. In reality no article and no news is too old for any blog, as netsurfers are many, with different experiences, cultures, interests. So, those news we consider old and not interesting, could be otherwise very interesting for many readers of that blog. Imagine 10 million people that daily look for news and information. If we consider an information useless, it can be instead very interesting for at least 10% of those visitors. This means that you can have 1 million readers easily, on a “ready” subject.

Practically speaking, one of Ikaro most commonly read article is one written in August 2005: “ADSL without telephone”. For me, and particularly for wired people, we are speaking about a sort of prehistorical subject, as we are currently dealing with subjects as Wi-max, hdspa  and advanced technologies. However, I realize that the reality is a different one as many people don’t know yet of the possibility of an internet line without a fixed line. And many are those still searching for this kind of information on the net.

Then, think of the quantity of readers you can lose whenever you leave out some not-interesting or too old (in your opinion) subjects. Again, think of how many posts you could write and the number of potential visitors you could get without searching on Digg or on thousands of feeds at the same time.

2. Don’t confuse duplicate contents with similar subjects

Another problem comes from the will of speaking about software or any other particular service not already discussed in other blogs.

Writing posts about a product already met doesn’t mean creating a duplicate content. You can write about it using your own words and experience, whatever subject it is: Voip, HTML editor, a Web 2.0 service or any other.

I usually don’t look for reviews about services or products, instead I prefer to share other users’ personal experiences about those products, as they are more reliable for a real idea on quality levels. Sharing our own experiences, even if they are similar one to the other, will certainly give an added value to the subject, maybe absent in other articles.

How many software do you have on your PC? How many Social Networking portals do you use to share your information? Which programs? Here you have an idea of some subjects you can deal with for six months at least.

3. A blog must be updated once a day? False!

Of course that would be perfect. However, it will be possible only one day when we maybe could work on it full time. But writing a post daily or three times a week doesn’t make any difference for readers or search engines. Our need of letting our site appear better than others isn’t satisfied by the updating frequency but by the information quality.

The striking thing is that the boom this site had coincided to 8/10 days periods inactivity.

4. Schedule posts

I don’t know if you agree with me, but my love for writing is determinant for an article good quality. Our enthusiasm transmits energy to the post and this is felt by most of readers. So the main rule is: don’t write if you are not in the mood.

Recently I started writing two or three articles one after the other with scheduled dates so that they are published in fixed days. This allows me to write only whenever I want to and then I am trouble-free about this.

5. Don’t care about Trolls

If we compare Internet to Tolkien’s Midway Land and bloggers, hackers, sem (and more) to the different beings living on it, Trolls would be the most dull, annoying and useless beings of this fairy world.

A Troll is the one that comments, provokes and irritates other users for the idle pleasure of doing it. Recently Trolls are slightly changing their bahaviour, as they constantly have the compulsive need of clicking on “no” in any news that are posted on Social News portals.

It doesn’t exist a particular reason for this behaviour –maybe they even don’t know why – but if in the net someone provokes and offends you for your contents or comments, you should imagine him as if he was clammy, quite ugly and pimply, playing hide-and-seek behind his monitor while his mother is preparing the soup for him. And suddenly you will lose the wish to reply him. Your reactions are his food: DON’T feed him!

A Troll ignored for a long time will definitely disappear for spontaneous combustion.

[Photo Credit: Charles Thompson]

Therefore, I personally made my own experience.

The first thing to say is that I am not speaking about commercial services. For web Tv I mean:

• Having a boundless net use;
• Freedom in choice of any software (such as Mediaportal,  Streamerone, PPLive, or Miro/Democracy and so on), without being forced to choose any others;
• No subscriptions, apart from web line that I use for my streaming connection.

For this kind of freedom I have only one solution: connecting my pc to my cable Tv.

My tools

1. An LCD 32” Tv with VGA entry;
2. A docking system I connected my notebook to;
3. A medium level quality notebook;
4. A Bluetooth keyboard and mouse (up to 15 meters capacity);
5. An internet line supposed to be 1280 Kbps, but on contrary supporting  670 Kbps (I tested it).

So, there’s nothing particularly expensive or of hard technology.

How to create your own Home Web self branded system

Here you have all the connections I made:

1. First of all I connected my notebook and docking, and then I set the driver too. A docking system allows your laptop pc to interface to other peripheral devices as, for instance, another monitor, Tv, keyboard, etc.;
2. Then I connected the docking VGA port to Tv VGA, in order to send my pc video signal to my home Tv;
3. I connected the docking exit audio jack (usually the headphones one) to the Tv audio jack (you can either use a couple of amplified speakers suitable to your pc);
4. At last I set on my notebook the Bluetooth keyboard in order to control all the system in a really comfortable way.

At this very moment I met the first real problem: notebook display and Tv screen syncronization. Either one and the other have a series of limited resolutions: you should find the same one for both and set it either on the notebook (interfaced to the docking) and on the Tv in order to see all images and controlling your PC from Tv using a wireless keyboard.

You need to pay attention then to the notebook video mode setting: it must be set in “clone” or “mirror” mode as the image sent to the Tv must be the same one we see on our pc screen.

When I succeeded in solving this problem:

1. I started my notebook and tuned my Tv in the VGA entry port;
2. I sat down on my sofa with my wireless keyboard and mouse;
3. I started Coolstreaming mediaplayer test (but you can either use any internet Tv program).

Streaming quality: the most important test

Here we are at the core of the problem: can an ordinary user with a simple 640 Kbps ADSL succeed in watching web Tv in a real proper way, with no interruptions and good image and audio quality? I started the visualization of streamings from lower speed ones, such as 150/200 Kbps, to gradually rising speed ones.

Leaving all tricky streaming, I discovered I could have an excellent web TV quality also with 800 Kbps streaming transmissions.

I was particularly stroke by Desync quality, that during my tests was transmitting very good films, with a very surprising quality: I imagined thet if in that particular moment I had had some friends at home, I think that none would have understood he was watching a web Tv. I suggest you to do your own experience!

These are all results I had by a 700 Kbps line.

So, now, I can say that web Tv can really substitute the traditional cable one!

I can choose among thousands of online channels and then choosing which programs I can use to watch streaming Tv. You now have only an embarrassment of riches! Of course everything depends on your line speed and quality, but even with a very simple one you can substitute your traditional Tv with web one.

Here you have a short list of useful links:

Peer-to-peer Tv or web Tv softwares

• Mediacenter di Coolstreaming
• PPLive
• TVKoo
• TVAnts
• SeeTV
• Miro
• MediaPortal

An important statement

If anyone of you may think I did all this just for seeing football matches for free is doing a big mistake: as much as about this I created my personal slogan with a sort of stadium banner: SKY I won’t clone you, as I won’t subscribe to you. (Italian: “SKY, non ti clono. E non mi abbono”).

I just wanted to give my tribute to fight all that bad quality promotion carried out by web companies, trying to convince all consumers that best quality web internet products are just theirs.

Web Tv means:

• Watching all your favourite programs;
• The way you prefer;
• Whenever you want;
• No contracts;
• No subscriptions ( a part from the connection one);
• No need of any particular technological support.

All the rest is not web Tv, but we are dealing with private services for sale. Internet Tv is not for sale: that’s already yours.

Due to privacy issues, however, it is possible to unable the recording of Skype talks via chat or to limit memory time for three months, one month, two weeks in your PC, or even to disable the talks memory completely.

The problem lies on when we wish to delete the talks of only one contact, and leave the rest of them in the memory of the program. The only alternative so far was to delete them manually, but now a tool to cancel the chat history of only one user has finally become available: all you have to do is to select the username.

The program runs on both Skype 3 and 4 and can be downloaded from the Skype forum.

Via: gHacks

The most common way of phishing is sending an email which invites the user to update his/her own credit card information or other due to various, and clearly false, reasons.

The link the user should click really looks very similar to the one of the actual service supplier, but the real destination is another and the provided information is drawn by unknown people with fraudulent purposes. Media often give the alarm, but never make available to users the few and easy pieces of information to defend oneself from this kind of swindles. To protect oneself against phising is extremely simple.

When the cheat takes place

Phishing does not happen when user clicks on the suggested link, but only when he/she enters personal data in the link destination page. It’s therefore sufficient to check with attention the page address in order to understand whether we are dealing with phishing or not (even if, for non-expert users, it would be better never to click on links of unclear nature).

Page source

Once in the page containing the form for data entering, watch the extended address of the page itself. In particular, examine the domain, which is the part between ‘http:// ‘ and what comes after the next “/”. In the example the domain is displayed in blue: http://cldp.co.kr/ws/redirected.to.paypal.com/cgi-bin/web-run/Paypal.dll It’s a tiny string which reveals whether the page is authentic or not.

Second level domain

The domain is unmistakably made up of words separated by dots. Well, the first two domain words starting from the right identify the actual page source (the so-called second level domain). The actual address source in our example is highlighted in red: http://cldp.co.kr/ws/redirected.to.paypal.com/cgi-bin/web-run/Paypal.dll Even if the creators of the page in our example have made their best to spread the word Paypal in many positions of the address, it is clear, on the basis of what was explained, that the page, no matter how much similar to those of Paypal, is fake.

Phishing, the most skillful ones.

As regards the domain, (in our example cldp.co.kr) the part in red is the identifier, registered to a registar, while the one in blue (what comes before the second level domain) can be set by phising authors as they like. It is then possible that in the domain also appears the name of the company whose users are the target of the cheat, but this can appear only in the blue part of the domain. So, even if our page address was: http://Paypal.co.kr/ws/redirected.to.paypal.com/cgi-bin/web-run/Paypal.dll This address would NOT belong to Paypal because the second level domain is not the correct one. In fact the real second level domain name of Paypal have to be paypal.com and not co.kr

For those less experienced I dare say that­:

internet line can be compared to a sort of pipe and connection speed is the water passing from that pipe.

For this reason:

1. our provider doesn’t supply us with water but he just provides us with a pipe and we just pay for our pipe real capacities (the real amount of water that can pass through it);
2. the source of our water is not our ISP but it comes from another tab (the server we are connected to).

That is to say that all online programs measuring our line speed usually send us a file showing the download program speed (in practice they deliver into our tab a certain amount of water so that we can estimate the real quantity passing through our tab at the same time).

The first real trouble to run reliable tests is the following:

• Is the speed showed by servers during these tests lie or truth? And is it the same one as for any pc? In other words, are the figures real ones?
• If so, does this speed correspond to my computer one?

So you must check if the visualized download speed is not an invention.

To verify our speed we can install a program testing our band and it will show us the data entry speed that should correspond to the one visualized in any test site. I found a free and nice one, Netmeter. You can install and start it during your ADSL speed test so that you can do a comparison of all figures (the ones showed to you and also your pc ones). Then you will be showed a window like this one:

Make a supposition of your ADSL speed from different test results

It might even sound like a silly doubt, but it is not. In case my ADSL speed test server supplies my tab with a quantity of water smaller than its capacity, its speed will be a correct one but it will never correspond to my line real speed.

Here you have different download speeds reported during speed test programs I personally ran using these devices:

• CPU dual core – WinXP Pro Notebook
• Router Wifi Zyxel 660 HW
• Wlan Connection 802.11 b/g (up to 54 Mbps)

Even if they are very variable, I had confirmation during all tests by my Net Meter that these data are reliable ones. So, how to know my real connection speed?

If thinking about the comparison of water and tab, with reliable figures, my ADSL speed nearest result certainly is the highest one (4.492 by zdnet.com.au). All the others had lower results for the following reasons:

• They sent less data than my line could really support (less water than my tab capacities);
• Maybe the net was engaged (a water waste during the flowing and so its incoming quantity is less than my tab capacities).

The main difference between Wifi and Ethernet cable connections

Of course, we are not dealing with the same 10Mbps I am paying money for, but I feel lucky in comparison to other people facing some sort of never ending stories. Anyway, I didn’t want to be content with that, so I had the care of repeating all tests again, this time connecting my notebook to the router by an Ethernet cable and not a Wifi connection.

Then a doubt arose, as I already knew that Ethernet cables guarantee a better performance on the same line in comparison to wlan 802.11 b/g, but I didn’t know how much.

Give a glance to all the same line and same conditions results, using an Ethernet cable to the router.

Connecting by a cable the notebook to the router, I obtained that my ADSL ran at an incredible higher speed! Then I had the possibility to confirm that all these tests are reliable even when new cable measurements show homogeneous and substantial differences among all ADSL speed tests in comparison to wireless ones.

I even had a strong waste of time trying to improve my wifi connection. I did so working on my router settings, but I didn’t get to any consistent improvement. Then, as for wireless connection, I was already in a sort of pole position.

Anyway, in this occasion too, I had the chance of making new discoveries, that sooner I’ll have the pleasure to share with you all.

Many are DSL operators inefficiencies, and sometimes you just need a little bit more knowledge to avoid any useless stress. Here you can get some further information in order to verify whether your ADSL is really a slow one or you just made a possible wrong estimation.

Photo Credit: cerae

Differences between asynchronous (ADSL) and synchronous (SDSL) DSL

Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line is a wide band line with an upload speed lower than its download one. For private and not business use ADSL is the most common one as there is no need to send too many data, for there are many more incoming data than outgoing ones. On the contrary symmetric DSL (SDSL) guarantees you the same speed, for both kind of data.

Megabit and Megabyte: how to understand lines real speed

For a 4 Mbps (Megabit per second) line people think of a 4 Mb/sec (Megabyte per second) download speed. Be careful: one byte corresponds to 8 bits; one kilobyte corresponds to 1024 bytes; one megabyte corresponds to 1024 kilobytes. Such a high quantity of speed measures variables usually generates a sort of confusion, created on purpose by the commercial system.

Here you have a list of an hypothetical 4Mbps line, which is translated in bit, bytes and megabytes:

• A Mbps line downloads no more than:

• • 4 Megabit per second
  • 500 Kbyte per second
  • 0,5 MegaByte per second

So, a 100 Mb file, with a 4 Mbps line, should need 200 seconds time download, with a browser indicating a 500kb/sec download speed.

The minimum guaranteed band

Therefore, all operators guarantee a really minimum speed much lower than the one in force in all commercial networks. For a more detailed idea of ADSL lines performances, you must calculate as done before, considering the minimum guaranteed band and not the commercialized speed.

Anyway, take care: the minimum guaranteed band is often indicated in kilobit! But your PC can show a kilobyte speed where 1 kilobyte corresponds to 8 kilobit. Is that clear? You should divide the minimum guaranteed band for 8 and the result will be the value that should be then shown in your PC during the download (in case it shows it in kilobytes).

Let’s take a 10Mb file, that must be downloaded on a PC, and let’s give a glance to the maximum download speed supposed to be as the guaranteed band varies:

• 128 Kilobit/sec.-> 11 minutes download at the maximum, with a transfer speed of 16 Kilobyte/sec.
• 256 Kilobit/sec.-> 5,5 minutes download at the maximum, with a transfer speed of 32 Kilobyte/sec.
• 512 Kilobit/sec.-> 2,5 minutes download at the maximum, with a transfer speed of 64 Kilobyte/sec.

How to calculate your real ADSL download speed

1. Connect here and check your line download speed
2. Mark Kbps (kilobit per second) speed
3. Check which is the minimum speed guaranteed specified in your subscription and, first of all, if it is in Kilobit (it should be so)
4. Connect here, insert your value in the text box and then the speed is converted in other measurements standards (Kilobyte, Megabyte, etc).

In conclusion: too many people are still confused by kilobit and kilobytes, as there is no clearness on the subject.

I hope I didn’t do any serious mistake…if so…please tell me !!!

Photo Credit: Mickdam

So, I’ll try to explain in the easiest way possible and with simple words, some few concepts in order to help you protecting your ADSL wireless connection and preventing unknown people from connecting and entering in your personal data.

Let’s start with a very simple thing: an 802.11g wifi router range is 100 meters. That is to say that your wifi router in our sitting-room is sending a signal reachable even from the road.

What shall we protect in a wireless ADSL connection?

It could sound a silly question, but in the effectiveness it is not: an open and unsafe wifi connection means two different risks:

1. An ADSL connection unauthorized use
2. A data wiretapping between your PC and your modem or router

In the first case the risk you run is that someone, in 100 meters range, can connect to your PC with his, then surfing free! The consequence will be that you will pay all his operations and connections! And in case his ADSL use is illegal that will cause you countless troubles too!

In the second case, instead, the risk you are running is that someone very close to you (maybe even a neighbor), is able to catch all data sent by your wifi router to your pc meanwhile you are surfing the net. So, try to imagine how many risks you run whenever you enter any personal data as for instance credit cards numbers, remote banking account, and so on.

So, there are two levels protection for a wireless network:

1. Preventing anyone from surfing the net using your wireless router;
2. Preventing anyone from wire-tapping your net surfing data (as cryptate with a password your connection).

You can either use one or both protections.

How to prevent anyone to use our wireless ADSL

The easiest and really working way to prevent anyone from using our wireless modem is to arrange our modem in order that it can recognize all connection authorized PCs, accepting to connect to these ones only.

For this use we can set an identification code for any PC (or any device as well) which is authorized to a MAC Address connection: we can consider MAC Address as a sort of plate that identifies the net adapter used by our Pc for an internet connection. In few words: a PC can have a cable and a wifi card internet connection, so in this case our PC will have two different MAC addresses, one is for ehernet (cable connection) and the other is for the wireless connection.

Of course, we should consider the wireless card MAC Address only.

How to get MAC Address

Usually you can find Mac Addresses written on notebooks labels, in your laptop lower position. Whenever it is absent, you can follow this guide.

How to cryptate Wifi connection

Another shrewdness is the audio signal cryptation, coming from your router and using a password. Cryptation techniques are usually identified in WEP and WPA abbreviations. The system is a very simple one: the router is configured by a password crypting the signal. Only the computers with access to that password can:

• Connect to the router

• Surf the net thanks to that connection

Of course cryptation solves the first trouble as well, as without password you can’t connect. But, for a reliable protection you should use both methods as:

• You can force a MAC Address on your PC (entering as if you were authorized and so skirting MAC filter)

• It is possible to hack the password of wi-fi signal (and then you can surf undisturbed using a wifi ADSL of anyone).

You can then even expand the protection subject about wireless connections on your own , but if you do what just listed here above you have the guarantee of a good level safety even at home.

Video Guide To Home Wireless Security

Photo credit: tforgo

As much as about me, I’ve got a 10 Mbps ADSL line: by cable I can download up to 8Mbps. On the contrary, when I have a wireless connection its speed seriously falls down to 4Mbps.

As a consequence, I have a 50% loss in efficiency and money. Therefore, I started a research to verify if and how it is possible to improve all wifi ADSL connections.

Why wifi connections are slower?

The lower efficiency of wireless connection in comparison to the cable one are mainly 3:

• Various Interferences
• Wifi signal direction
• Any device setting (router and wifi net cards)

Obviously a 640 Kbps ADSL connection managed by a  wifi router is less sensible to any interference than a 20Mbps one, like, for instance, the effect of wind on slower or faster cars. For this reason new ADSL2+ connections can consistently have a drop in their power.

10 tricks to improve ADSL2+ speed in wireless mode

The following ones are the main points to pay attention to for improving net efficiency and to limit speed (and money!) loss in your hotspot for connections higher than 4 Mbps.

1. Test router compatibility with ADSL2+.
   That’s the connection standard on high speed duplex cable.
2. Always up-to-date your router firmware with the latest available version.
   Before my line always fell down, but now after its updating it perfectly works!
3. Enable the ADLS2+ mode on your router.
   On my Zyxel 660 HW this option is named Enable Wireless g+ .
4. Use the net only in 802.11g or 802.11n mode.
   Either router and wifi net cards are normally set to use both 802.11g and 802.11b. The first one is definitely faster than the second one (up to 54 Mbps). You should force router and net cards to use the first one: search in the 802.11 mode.
5. If you have a 2.4 GHz cordless phone change it.
   It has the same hotspot frequency, so it can disturb. Take a 900Mhz or 5.8GHz one.
6. Choose the most efficient transmission channel.
   Some interferences can take place on definite channels. Change transmission channel (Channel ID) on the router running speed tests to find the faster channel.
7. Put the access point in the center of the requested area.
   I know it isn’t always possible to do this, but try at least to keep the antenna far from your home side-walls.
8. Cover the omni-directional antenna top with some silver paper if you don’t need connection on the upper floor.
9. Think of buying a directional antenna.
   If you are forced to use the wireless router on your home side-walls, check first if the omnidirectional antenna is removable. If so, substitute it with a directional one (it is not expensive), pointing it towards the inside of your home.
10. Verify the absence of any intruder connected to your router.
    One day I discovered that the cause of my connection slowness was a certain Giusy78 that was connected to my line saturating my band. So, protect your wireless net system.

Conventional and…unconventional tricks

Here you can have a do-it-yourself amplified antenna and replace it to your router one just using a screw, a piece of lead and a straw. But consider the fact of destroying your router!

Otherwise, if you love creativity, you can also make your amplified antenna with a Pringles (chips) tube or just with a coffee tin.