On 10/13/2010 10:48 AM, John Stoffel wrote:
"Frank" == Frank Sweetser <fs@WPI.EDU> writes:
Frank> On 10/13/2010 10:26 AM, John Stoffel wrote:
Guys,
I'm looking to replace my WAP54G (802.11bg) wireless access point. I really need to get more speed to the wife's computer, and I don't want to run wires.
I'm thinking I'd like to get something that DD-WRT can run on, and possibly something with dual radios and/or dual 2.4ghz and 5.0ghz band, so I can have a secured network, and an open, slower network for guests.
My home network looks like this:
cable modem <---> router <----> GigE Lan switch <-- clients | | WAP54G
Frank> Congratulations, you're me a month ago =)
Heh, so where do you end up putting your new wireless router in your network? Did you replace the core router, or add on? Yeah I'm a professional SysAdmin, but I don't do the network side day to day... so I want to stay secure. Probably way too paranoid, but that's me.
I threw out everything else and I'm just using the netgear for everything. I didn't bother to set it up, but openwrt does support setting up a second guest wireless network if you want to segment guests off from your own machines.
Frank> The only glitch there is that it's a little more strict about Frank> wireless security behaviour, so some non-compliant devices Frank> (droid1 phones running android 2.2, in my case) can't associate Frank> at WPA2/AES.
Bummers. :] That's why I figure I'll keep around my old WAP54G for wep devices and stuff that I don't care about much.
I was able to get them running by limiting encryption down to WPA/TKIP. Of course, AES is required for 11n speeds, so I'll be mucking around with this more when either the phones or the router has a new update available =)
Frank> I've heard very good things about the buffalo devices, Frank> especially since they ship with dd-wrt from the factory. They Frank> don't have the same performance (again, smallnetbuilder has Frank> excellent benchmarks for side by side comparisons), but are a Frank> lot cheaper. One drawback of that particular model at least is Frank> that it's single band, 2.4GHz only. Personally I strongly Frank> recommend going with a dual band device, as 2.4 these days Frank> tends to be a pea soup of interference, while the 5GHz bands Frank> that 11a uses has a lot more open channels available.
Yeah, I think I really want dual band, dual radio, gigabit. Going to have to pay for it though. But if the device lasts, I'm not too upset.
Yeah, that's exactly why I opted to pony up for the netgear (about $150) instead of the cheaper buffalo. -- Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu | For every problem, there is a solution that WPI Senior Network Engineer | is simple, elegant, and wrong. - HL Mencken GPG fingerprint = 6174 1257 129E 0D21 D8D4 E8A3 8E39 29E3 E2E8 8CEC