[lug] Dumb Wireless Networking Questions

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Monday 28 April 2003 08:44 am, Ryan Kirkpatrick wrote:
> On 23 Apr 2003, The Matt wrote:
> > I am giving serious thought to buying a Tungsten C, so I'd like a WAP
> > at home for internet access.  I assume for this to work, I just need
> > to buy a WAP (Linksys or whoever) and connect it to my Actiontec
> > gateway (modem cum router)?  Or am I missing a piece of hardware?
>
> 	Yea, that is all you need, just a WAP and plug it into your home
> network.
>
> > Are there any recommendations as to which WAP is best?  And, since
> > someday I'll probably be giving Qwest their gateway back, is a
> > wireless router a better purchase?  Or is it unadvisable to run a
> > router off a gateway (which seems like it could be)?
>
> 	I would recommend the LinkSys Router/WAP combo (~$120) as the best
> deal. I have one of these, and while I do not use the router
> capablities, the WAP portion works great.

LinkSys do make good products.  I just bought a US Robotics 
router/WAP/print server that I like and it is very cheap.  

Here's a review I wrote for another mailing list.  One thing I didn't 
emphasize is that it is a real firewall, not just a NAT router.  It can 
filter both incoming and outgoing packets.  It can log stuff to a remote 
syslog.  It is obviously not going to be as flexible and powerful as a 
full iptables implementation on a server, but it is pretty good for less 
than $100.  On with the review:

Oh my God, I'm in heaven.

You may recall that I asked about printer ports on home broadband routers 
(included below).  Well, I took the plunge and bought a USR 8022 from 
Tiger Direct.  With the rebate offer it is about $80 with shipping.  It is 
both an ethernet router and wireless access point.  And it has the all 
important printer port.

I already had one that was ethernet/wireless (from 3Com--don't buy it), so 
I thought this just had the one more feature.  Boy was I wrong.  This one 
is awesome.

First, my old one used to die if you tried to access its DNS server too 
quickly after acquiring an IP address.  Why?  Don't ask, just reboot.  
This one returns dhcp addresses instantly and doesn't seem to crash.  It 
has port forwarding, DMZ, restrictions based on MAC, ... all the bells and 
whistles I had hoped for.  My old one only offered DMZ.  Now I can expose 
port 22 without exposing everything else.

It had a bunch I hadn't even though of.  It can automatically detect 
certain protocols and open up particular other ports.  It comes 
preconfigured to detect certain gaming systems (e.g. battle.net) but you 
can configure others such as Gnome Meeting quickly and easily.  It can do 
VPNs.  It's accessible through SNMP.  (All that comes disabled by default, 
of course.)

And, may I say, the printer port worked perfectly.  The only hard part was 
finding instructions for it.  Finally, I found on the support site 
instructions for setting up printing on a Mac that gave me the clue that 
the print queue was named "lp".  After that, smooth sailing.  So we should 
be able to share all the printer thoughout the house.  Time to see if I 
can print from my Zaurus!

Then I uploaded the firmware update.  I was blown away by the new features.  
First, it has support for dynamic DNS.  Tell it your dyndns.org (others 
are supported, too) account and it will update it for you when the IP 
address changes.

The next cool one is ntp support.  It set its time from a server.  I don't 
think it serves time, but maybe the next firmware update...

There are other cool things.  It can send wake-on-LAN signals to a machine; 
it can send syslog messages, it can filter packets (incoming and 
outgoing).

All in all, a very nice device and I recommend it.  Did I mention that the 
wireless signal seems much stronger than that of my old router, too?

Anyone want to buy a 3Com router?

Michael