Windows XP Hacks

Optimize Your Residential Gateway

Residential gateways let you share broadband Internet access and build a home network. Here’s how to get the most out of your residential gateway.

Encrypting File SystemIt’s quite easy to set up inexpensive hubs/routers, usually called residential gateways, for setting up a network at home and sharing Internet access. But the default settings aren’t always optimal, because no network is one-size-fits-all. And, frequently, the documentation for the gateways is so poor that it’s hard to tell even what the settings are and what options you have.

Residential gateway options differ somewhat from model to model. Here’s advice for how to customize the most common and most important settings:

Connect on Demand and Maximum Idle Time settings

Depending on your Internet service provider (ISP), you may become disconnected from the Net after a certain amount of time of not using the Internet. To solve the problem, if your residential gateway has a Connect on Demand setting, enable it; that will automatically re-establish your Internet connection when you use an Internet service, even if your ISP has cut you off. If there is a Maximum Idle Time setting, set it to 0 so that your gateway will always maintain an Internet connection, no matter how long you haven’t used the Internet. As a practical matter, you should need to use only one of these two settings; either one will maintain a constant Internet connection for you.

Keep Alive setting

Use this setting ...