I'll start by admitting that I get way to excited about these types of things.

After much research, I bought some new network equiptment.  A friend at work told me about DD-WRT, which is an community which develops router firmware that can be applied to a handful of retail brand routers.  Mainly, they develop for Linksys routers, but their firmware also works for other brand names.  I tried this on my Motorola 54G home router and it worked good for a while - then I started tinkering with it.  I think I bricked it about 3 times (to 'brick' is to mess it up so bad, i serves as nothing more than a paperweight - get the idea?).   The firmware even lets you overclock your router ~ I overclocked my Motorola and instantly bricked it .  I had to put the thing in my freezer for about 20 minutes - then quickly power it back on and reset it back defaults.  Long story short, I messed around with my Motorola too much and now it's kinda flakey.

I did some research, and found an 802.11g router that I liked, which also works with DD-WRT.  I bought the Buffalo WHR-HP-G54, and on Monday it arrived.  It was much easier to load the DD-WRT firmware than my old Motorola.  And the real reason I purchased it - is for it's extended wireless range, due to an internal RF amplifier.  I figure that this summer, when the city starts selling municipal WiFi ~ I'll use this bad boy as a network bridge and pull down some good signal.  Until then, it'll be connected to my cable modem (5500 kb/s down - 350kb/s up).  It's working pretty good, I've got it configured for QoS, giving priority to my Vonage phone adapter.  I'm also able to get statistics from the router in RSS format, kinda fun if you know anything about RSS (if you don't you're a n00b).  At heart, DD-WRT is simpily a linux kernal running from a router.  

 Check the stats right off my router.  [CLICK]

 Here is a list of the routers that DD-WRT works with:

• Linksys WRT54G 1.0 CDF0xxx or CDF1xxx
• Linksys WRT54G 1.1 CDF2xxx or CDF3xxx
  
• Linksys WRT54G 2.0 CDF5xxx
• Linksys WRT54G 2.2 CDF7xxx
• Linksys WRT54G 3.0 CDF8xxx
• Linksys WRT54G 3.1 CDF9xxx
• Linksys WRT54G 4.0 CDFAxxx
• Linksys WRT54G 5.0 (JTAG only with cfe update, see here )
• Linksys WRT54GL 1.0 CL7Axxx
• Linksys WRT54GL 1.1 CL7Bxxx
• Linksys WRT54GS 1.0 CGN0xxx or CGN1xxx
• Linksys WRT54GS 1.1 CGN2xxx
• Linksys WRT54GS 2.0 CGN3xxx
• Linksys WRT54GS 2.1 CGN4xxx
• Linksys WRT54GS 3.0 CGN5xxx
• Linksys WRT54GS 4.0 CGN6xxx
• Allnet ALL0277
• Buffalo WHR-G54S
• Buffalo WHR-HP-G54S
• Buffalo WBR-G54
• Buffalo WLA-G54
• Buffalo WBR2-G54
• Buffalo WBR2-G54S
• Belkin F5D7130/7330 (2mb flash)
• Belkin F5D7230-4 v1444 (2mb flash)
• ASUS WL500G-Deluxe
• Motorola WR850G
• Siemens Gigaset SE505
• Ravo W54-RT
• Askey RT210W