Ted Leung on the air
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...
Sun, 15 Feb 2004
You get what you pay for...
Late last year I finally stopped delaying and purchased an 802.11 wireless router for the house. Because I had just gotten the Powerbook, which supports 802.11b and 802.1g, I was looking for a router that could do both and which could support WPA as well. After doing a bunch of research (including favorable online reviews), I settled on the SMC
SMC2804WBR, which also had a rebate to bring the price down. Unfortunately, it seems that the old adage is true. The router works great -- it covers the entire house and supports WPA. Unfortunately, it seems to have stability problems. It takes anywhere from 1-3 days for it to lock up tight, requiring a hard reboot in order to solve the problem. I really like being able to take the machine and work somewhere else in the rest of the house, but its a royal pain to have to trot upstairs and reboot this thing every few days. I'm guessing that there are problems with the WPA implementation that need to be shaken out. Also, the dialogs for inputting WEP and WPA keys are horribly unfriendly -- type a 64 digit hex number? Twice, once for the router and once for the Powerbook? Insane. It's so error prone that I dread having to do it again.
[23:11] |
[computers/hardware] |
# |
TB |
F |
G |
8 Comments |
The redeeming factor for using the Apple Airport Base Station (even though you pay more) is that you don't have to put up with the hex stuff. I thought WPA was going to drag the rest of the world out of hex strings and into passphrases, but I guess not.
Posted by James Duncan Davidson at Mon Feb 16 00:07:10 2004
Posted by James Duncan Davidson at Mon Feb 16 00:07:10 2004
"Also, the dialogs for inputting WEP and WPA keys are horribly unfriendly -- type a 64 digit hex number? Twice, once for the router and once for the Powerbook? Insane. It's so error prone that I dread having to do it again."
Ted, you're a programmer! Can't you write some Perlish, Pythonish script thingie that will type your hexadecimal strings for you? If you don't want to do that, what about copy and paste? Just leave your hexadecimal string on a stickie or a text file and copy and paste the thing every time you have to change it.
Sorry to hear about your router problems, but this made me chuckle. Thanks.
Posted by dave rogers at Mon Feb 16 06:38:46 2004
Ted, you're a programmer! Can't you write some Perlish, Pythonish script thingie that will type your hexadecimal strings for you? If you don't want to do that, what about copy and paste? Just leave your hexadecimal string on a stickie or a text file and copy and paste the thing every time you have to change it.
Sorry to hear about your router problems, but this made me chuckle. Thanks.
Posted by dave rogers at Mon Feb 16 06:38:46 2004
Dave,
I'm a programmer, but the rest of SMC's customer's aren't. I shouldn't have to write a script because they did a bad UI.
Posted by Ted Leung at Mon Feb 16 10:50:54 2004
I'm a programmer, but the rest of SMC's customer's aren't. I shouldn't have to write a script because they did a bad UI.
Posted by Ted Leung at Mon Feb 16 10:50:54 2004
I'm not a programmer either! Which is why I suggested copy and paste. ;^)
Point well taken on unfriendly user interfaces.
Posted by dave rogers at Mon Feb 16 11:34:24 2004
Point well taken on unfriendly user interfaces.
Posted by dave rogers at Mon Feb 16 11:34:24 2004
I bought a 802.11b SMC router a few years ago. It worked fine most of the time, except when moving large amounts of data in a short duration wirelessly. It would lock up and required a hard reboot. I replaced that POS with the new Microsoft mn-700 and life is good.
Posted by Sam Matthews at Mon Feb 16 14:12:48 2004
Posted by Sam Matthews at Mon Feb 16 14:12:48 2004
I bought a Linksys WRT54G wireless router myself about six months ago. WITH the latest firmware upgrade, you can use "WPA Pre-shared Key" for wireless security. With WindowsXP at least, I just had to enter a passphrase to connect to the network, so it might be what you're looking for. I've only had two problems with it:
Dynamic dns through DynDNS.org didn't work correctly at first, although the latest firmware upgrades pretty much fixed that. Perhaps not something you would use anyways.
Lately, my wireless connection will suddenly drop out, when I'm working around 1am. However, since "coincidentally" when I hook up a cable to my computer the internet doesn't work either, and since last time it happened I called the cable company and they said internet access was down until 6am, I suspect it's not really a router problem.
Other than that, mines worked great for six months now. Hope this helps.
Posted by Will Gayther at Mon Feb 16 23:53:13 2004
Dynamic dns through DynDNS.org didn't work correctly at first, although the latest firmware upgrades pretty much fixed that. Perhaps not something you would use anyways.
Lately, my wireless connection will suddenly drop out, when I'm working around 1am. However, since "coincidentally" when I hook up a cable to my computer the internet doesn't work either, and since last time it happened I called the cable company and they said internet access was down until 6am, I suspect it's not really a router problem.
Other than that, mines worked great for six months now. Hope this helps.
Posted by Will Gayther at Mon Feb 16 23:53:13 2004
Ted, I've been using the USRobobtics 8022 and love it. I actually tried to upgrade to Airport Extreme Base Station AND a Dr. Bott antenna and..... HATE THEM BOTH! My range dropped in half.
I have had a bad history with USR, but in this case, I love it. Sure my model is a bit dated now, but I can access it from all over my house... of course, my iBook has a much better built in antenna than does my newer 15" PB, but all my laptops (1-PC and 2-Macs) have never had a hard time connecting.
BTW, I'm selling an AEBS and Dr. Bott antenna... anyone interested?
Posted by Paul Ingram at Tue Feb 17 15:12:09 2004
I have had a bad history with USR, but in this case, I love it. Sure my model is a bit dated now, but I can access it from all over my house... of course, my iBook has a much better built in antenna than does my newer 15" PB, but all my laptops (1-PC and 2-Macs) have never had a hard time connecting.
BTW, I'm selling an AEBS and Dr. Bott antenna... anyone interested?
Posted by Paul Ingram at Tue Feb 17 15:12:09 2004
Looking for a new home router with wireless built in? Continue looking...
Posted by Trackback from Aimless Words at Thu Mar 25 16:59:00 2004
Posted by Trackback from Aimless Words at Thu Mar 25 16:59:00 2004
You can subscribe to an RSS feed of the comments for this blog:
Add a comment here:
You can use some HTML tags in the comment text:
To insert a URI, just type it -- no need to write an anchor tag.
Allowable html tags are:
You can also use some Wiki style:
URI => [uri title]
<em> => _emphasized text_
<b> => *bold text*
Ordered list => consecutive lines starting spaces and an asterisk
To insert a URI, just type it -- no need to write an anchor tag.
Allowable html tags are:
<a href>
, <em>
, <i>
, <b>
, <blockquote>
, <br/>
, <p>
, <code>
, <pre>
, <cite>
, <sub>
and <sup>
.You can also use some Wiki style:
URI => [uri title]
<em> => _emphasized text_
<b> => *bold text*
Ordered list => consecutive lines starting spaces and an asterisk