I'm FINALLY getting broadband at home (I'm leaving my corporate job and going to work ... construction!) because I will no longer get free T1 access from work.

I went with DSL and am now looking for a wireless router (wired to one PC, wireless to two laptops) and they all seem to be $150 w. the same features.. Does anybody recommend anything in particular? Any good deals or rebates out there?

Will you laugh if I say "an old PC and a Prism2 card in an ISA bridge"?

I run Linux on it, and the flexibility is incredible, but I will admit that since in addition to simple routing it's also a tunnel endpoint it may be less interesting to you. Some traffic uses real IP addresses via the tunnel while other traffic gets NAT'd directly onto the internet, based on port and IP rules.

The internal wired and wireless are bridged, so if I want to switch my laptop from wireless to wired or vice versa I can do it without changing addresses; No "agent", all of my connections just stay open.

Greetings!

I just got a Linksys BEFW11S4, and I am extremely happy with it. Easy setup, very configurable. And available from Amazon.com for about $130.

Just a slight warning about the Linksys - I also have one of those, and they are not the best units around - a websearch/googlegroups search will show up quite a large number of extremely annoyed users who have these.

In my case, the router works fine on our Blueyonder cable connection at home, but crashes within two minutes of being plugged into our NTL cable connection at University. The unit seems to be simply incompatible with certain networks - there's nothing I can do to make it work with the network here, and believe me I've tried.

Best thing to do, if you are interested in this unit (it works well when it works, and has a good feature set) is to try and find out if anyone is using it on the supplier you are with.

Incidentally, the issue only affects the routing - I use it as a wireless bridge and four-port switch 24 hours a day, and it works a treat.

HTH,

A.

I can't really recomend any specific deals, but the anandtech hot deals forum usualy has a good selection of stuff, if you lurk for a few days you'll probably see a wireless router deal...

I'd personally recomend my netgear FM114P. It costs a bit more, but I'm a netgear fan, and wanted the expanded firewall and integrated print server. I'm also anti-lynksys and D-Link, so it's the only name brand cheap networking hardware left... Mine hasn't crashed in the nearly two months i've had it, so it's fairly stable. I should be checking out the print server tonight, as I just picked up my cheap-s-can-be HP laserjet III...

Matthew

In my case, the router works fine on our Blueyonder cable connection at home, but crashes within two minutes of being plugged into our NTL cable connection at University.

Gosh. I've just got one too, and it works fine with NTL cable here in Cambridge. (But Cambridge was a different franchise before it got borged by NTL, so maybe it's running different server kit.)

The only complaint I've got against it, is that you can't seem to configure whether the AP is inside or outside the firewall: it's always inside. And if you don't trust WEP, that's not the right answer. If you do trust WEP, I've got this lovely St John's College bridge to sell you...

Peter

PS. Oh yeah, and it wasn't $130 from Amazon.com, it was GBP120 from Amazon.co.uk. And that was a special offer down fro GBP145.

Greetings!

I had checked with some folks I know with the same DSL carrier I use, and they had no trouble. So far, everything is fine. Thanks for the warning, though.

There has been quite a bit of discussion on 802.11 setup and kit on the Rio Receiver board - you should check out over there too.

I have Linksys WAP11's and they, so far, seem fine.

Paul.

Because of the problem of putting the AP outside the firewall on these routers, I'm probably going to go with the Linux route when I add wireless to my house.

So, should I just get an AP, and plug it into another PCI network card, or should I get a PCMCIA adapter and put the card in directly?

Then, of course, I've got to set up 3-way routing rules. Ick.

Using an AP probably makes it easier to have an external antenna, if you care.

Speaking of which, if you want "always on" connectivity, but without the fan noise and power consumption of a full blown PC, then these boxes may be just the trick.

I have one of them here (currently unused) and am considering using it as the Linux AP server/firewall. The whole set of required software will easily fit onto a single 128MB CompactFlash card, so no hard disk is required (but one could be used if I wanted).

[EDIT] One note though, the PCMCIA slot is 16-bit only on these boxes at present.

Cheers

Greetings!

This might make a really nice MAME box when combined with a good arcade joystick 1 2.

I'm probably going to go with the Linux route when I add wireless to my house.

Bleargh. OpenBSD all the way.

As to your question about PCI vs. PCMCIA, I don't think I understand. If you got an access point, then it'll just be bridged to your wired network, unless you specifically want it set up some other way, right? That is, use your Unix box as a firewall/router with a single internal and a single external interface, then have the AP sitting on the internal LAN and the wired and wireless nodes are all on the same network.

Otherwise, you could have a totally separate network for wireless, but it's more work for little effort. That's what I have right now (as I'm just running, essentially, ad-hoc, with my router being one of the nodes) and I'm looking to go the AP route, once I bother to save some money to buy one.

Personally, any wireless access point I would ever install here would be behind it's very own Linux firewall, transparently bridged to the wired internal network only for "validated" nodes. This requires a Linux (or whatever) box between the AP and the internal LAN.

Now.. just to be visitor-friendly, I might also configure it for transparent external access regardless, but the internal LAN here has too many business secrets on it to just make it open to the outside world..

As to your question about PCI vs. PCMCIA, I don't think I understand

I currently have a Linux box as my firewall. It contains two PCI Ethernet cards. One of them goes to the cable modem. The other drops down to an 8-port switch.

I'd like to add wireless to this mixture -- I recently bought a Vaio SRX87, which has built-in 802.11b.

I have considered replacing the Linux box with an off-the-shelf wireless router, much as many other people have. However, I'm just as paranoid as Peter about WEP -- moreover, I'm not particularly bothered about people wardriving my broadband when I'm not otherwise using it -- so I'd prefer to put the AP outside the firewall. The currently-available routers don't seem to allow this.

Since my cable-modem only supports a single host, I need to provide NAT for both the internal network, and whoever's connected to the AP.

I mean that I've got (at least) the following options:

1. Get a PCI/PCMCIA adapter card and plug in an Orinoco card (or similar). My research suggests that Linux can run these in AP mode (as long as they have Prism chipsets).
2. Get another PCI ethernet card, and run it out to a wireless AP.

Does that make it clearer?

Sweet. The OpenBrick E looks like exactly what I need, seeing as it's got 3 network sockets.

Yeah, the original Brick has only one built-in ethernet port, which can be supplemented with a 16-bit PCMCIA ethernet card plus however many slower USB ethernet devices one wants to attach.

I bugged them about this, pointing out that a proper firewall needs three interfaces minimum: (1) external, (2) internal trusted, (3) internal non-trusted (aka "DMZ").

Cheers

Yes. I was thinking that you might have been under the misapprehension that an AP would require a network separate from your wired network, but it is your policy that requires a separate network. Fair enough.

I'd still say to go with a separate AP. I've never deal with trying to make a Linux machine be an AP, but, in my mind, it's likely to be more difficult than using a dedicated AP. In addition, having a separate device as an AP is likely to provide more flexibility (as we're just talking about network infrastructure here, nothing particularly smart to which a real computer could add) since you can just move it around or easily replace with an 802.11a or g AP. And I doubt that any of us would have many problems finding uses for an additional $15 ethernet card. Not to mention what's likely to be a better antenna and better range. And pulling the plug on the access point in a security emergency would make me feel less queasy than pulling a PCMCIA card out of a Linux box.

Bleargh. OpenBSD all the way.

Linux is pissing me off more and more (RedHat 8 came with the "you can't play with the system call table" bug) but I have too many devices with no driver for any BSD, and no time to write them.... and if I switch one machine I want to switch them all.

Apple AirPort works fine with me at home and in the car for my MKIIa!!!

Talking about miniPC's, I've got one of these on order:

http://www.lex.com.tw/case-light.htm
Warning: Only seems to work on IE, worst website I've been to for a while.

Available to the UK Oct 7th, apparently.

They do 1, 2 and 3 lan models - mine will be running ipcop (www.ipcop.org) as a linux firewall.

Just thought ppl might like to see an alternative. It's a bit cheaper than the minibrick, but probably larger. However, hillary (from Bonatech -uk) is actually really responsive + helpful via email..

I'll put up some pics when I get it.

Paul.

Ok, I didn't see that link to the other site selling the 'OpenBrick E' until now.

Dunno if you get more for your money or something, but €460 is quite a lot more than I was quoted direct from Bona/Lex

Paul.

hillary (from Bonatech -uk)

Not Julian or Sandy?

That thing looks identical to the "Minibrick E", BTW.

Peter

See other post - i didn't follow all the links.

I believe that the minibrick lot are reselling this from Lex/Bona. Even without the RAM included, it's a bit cheaper direct.

Paul.

Linux is pissing me off more and more (RedHat 8 ...

Hey, no fair bashing Linux based on the worst distro

No shit. And Iive about 15 minutes from RedHat HQ. And I know several people that work over there, including Erik Troan (known RedHat bigwig), with whom I went to middle and high schools.

Hey, no fair bashing Linux based on the worst distro

I don't get to pick what companies buy, but note that it's not just RedHat. Kernel 2.5 as distributed has the same problem: sys call table not exported, no syscall registration mechanism, or at least did when last I looked.

And the whole EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL thing also pisses me off.

Thanks for all the ideas guys. I should have been a little more clear in what I was looking for. I don't have an extra computer, or the room for it. I just wanted a nice pretty box to sit by the modem. Well, I ended up getting the NetGear FM114P. Got it for about $160. I don't have my DSL yet, but I figured I'd get the switch and wireless ironed out before then. The wired ethernet went fine (my first time using DHCP) but I can not for the life of me get the wireless access point to see my US Robotic's card... It's not receiving the IP and DNS info.. All the settings match from encryption, channel, ID, etc etc.

EDIT: Ends up my card was setup as Adhoc (for p2p) so I had to switch it to Infrastructure. I still have to figure this WEP and "Open or Shared Key" thing, but I'm on my way.