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Aldrin Fabricius wrote:

> You guys are great! Many thanks for the prompt responses.

Enjoy your reading.
grumpy

On Wed, 25 Jan 2006 04:48:26 -0800, wrote:

> Hi Guys/Gals! I need some advice/recommendations/feedback for a sub
> $200 wireless router/access point for my home network. Features I'm
> looking for are web filtering, vpn access, spi firewall, messenger
> filtering, dhcp server, inbuilt switch, good security encryption,web
> configurable and portable to various OS like linux, windows and Mac OS
> X. There are hundreds of choices out there all touting how great each
> product performs, so what I'm really after are some opinions from the
> everyday geek who will willingly give an honest unbiased opinion from
> his/her own personal experience with the equipment.Any help would be
> greatly appreciated.

I found that the only product that does do all of these ( and I'm still
not certain that they support M$'s mickey mouse VPN ) is the
Linksys WAG-54G[1]. Spent most of last weekend looking thtrough specs, so
you timed it well (:

[1] Without rolling your own Linksys router ( WRT-54G and
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysWrt54g works out *much*
cheaper )

Gordon wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:43:17 +1300, Maximum Damage wrote:
>
>> Linksys WRT54G with third party DD-WRT firmware. $153 from Ascent.
>> Stay away from D-Link!
>
> In your view, why?
>
With my DI-724 the wireless it would just stop working for no reason,and
need a reboot to get going again. Plus the general concensus of Dlink
users was that Dlink customer support was Crap (TM)
Plus the third party firmware available for the Linksys products has
MUCH better support.

Steve wrote:
> > Hi Guys/Gals! I need some advice/recommendations/feedback for a sub
> > $200 wireless router/access point for my home network. Features I'm
> > looking for are web filtering, vpn access, spi firewall, messenger
> > filtering, dhcp server, inbuilt switch, good security encryption,web
> > configurable and portable to various OS like linux, windows and Mac OS
> > X. There are hundreds of choices out there all touting how great each
> > product performs, so what I'm really after are some opinions from the
> > everyday geek who will willingly give an honest unbiased opinion from
> > his/her own personal experience with the equipment.Any help would be
> > greatly appreciated.
>
> I found that the only product that does do all of these ( and I'm still
> not certain that they support M$'s mickey mouse VPN ) is the
<snip>

I'm curious: Exactly what is mickey mouse about M$'s VPN

Cheers
Nathan

On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 00:31:47 -0800, Nathan Mercer wrote:

> Steve wrote:
>[snip]
>> I found that the only product that does do all of these ( and I'm still
>> not certain that they support M$'s mickey mouse VPN ) is the
> <snip>
>
> I'm curious: Exactly what is mickey mouse about M$'s VPN
>
> Cheers
> Nathan
Seriously, it would take pages and pages. Suffice to say that M$ and Cisco
spent millions developing a decent system in IPSec, but still don't push
it. And there are far more secure versions than that available.

All of which are much safer than pptp.

Steve

Gordon wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:43:17 +1300, Maximum Damage wrote:
>
>
>>Linksys WRT54G with third party DD-WRT firmware. $153 from Ascent.
>>Stay away from D-Link!
>
>
> In your view, why?

All my d-link AP's (dwl-2000ap and dwl-2000ap+) various hardware revisions all
have issues where they just have not done what they say they will do reliably.

They say that you can bridge 2 of them, and you can set it up, and you can ping
some hosts on the other end of the wireless bridge, but not all, seems there is
some undocumented mac address limit that it will bridge - seems to be somewhere
about 4. Also you cant take a mac address from one end of the bridge and move it
to the other and have it work without powercycling both ends of the link, great
for moving the laptop from the shed back to the house etc.

Newer firmware and broadcast wouldnt work, but only one way, so arp broke. I had
to set up a continuous ping from one end to keep things working. Reboot them and
maybe broadcast would work the other direction across it - still only some IPs
visable.

So I decide to give up on a bridge and have a client connecting to an AP. Same
issues with number of mac addresses. Update firmware again (this was several
months later) - suddenly the client mode options change and instead of
specifying a mac address of the ap to client to, it wants the SSID - cant even
specify the channel. So instead of connecting to the AP in the house thats on
the lan, it connects to the one in the shed thats plugged into itself. Because
there is no spanning tree it just sets up a broadcast storm repeating itself.
Back to the old firmware so I can specify the AP in the house.

Then add that turning on either encryption on any mode is hit and miss if things
will associate with it or just sit there not getting a DHCP from it.

I swapped all the **** out for 2 wrt54gs's and stuck sveasoft firmware on them,
ticked WDS, put in each others mac address and it worked. Turn on WPA-PSK -
still works. Stably, fast (faster the the dlinks when they did work, even tho
WDS repeating should have a very noticable impact on speeds) and just goes and
goes and goes without problems.

Thruout the endevours with dlink I had so many BS solutions, the "csrs" were not
aware what firmware was on there FTP telling me that versions I had did not
exist or were for the wrong AP, I was told that they were not able to do what I
wanted (which is quite true) despite it being in the spec sheet and the manuals,
and in general my opinion of dlink is so low that they make an ISP helpdesk look
positivly genius.

grumpyoldhori wrote:
> shannon wrote:
>
>> The firmware is what makes a good router, and there are more options
>> with the wrt than anything else, QoS, UPnP, static DHCP, adjustable
>> power, antenna selection, all comes with the custom firmware.
>> The stock firmware also had some issues with bittorrent DHT UPnP etc,
>> read the utorrent or azureus faqs if this means anything to you.
>
>
> Have you tried the STA -client mode, Shannon,if so,what
> sort of results.
> grumpy

No, but I'm quite keen to try it.
Thats where the WiFi connects to the WAN and the wired ports are NAT for
the local network, is that right ?
Could I use that with NZ Wireless ?
Come in Steven Worthington.