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Which wireless router to get?

my linksys wireless router was about half the price of hte apple one and works perfectly! i totally recommend it
 
can't you get boosters for most wireless base stations?

i'm looking at going wireless as well. i've heard of a brand called Bullion, or Billion. they've got a 3-in-1 unit. it's a wireless base station, ADSL moden, and router. that's really good for me because i've already got a seperate ADSL modem and a router, so having it all in one ought to clear up alot of the excess cables.
 
I purchased the Netgear WGR614 router and it works great with my iBook and my wife's Dell. Like most routers, you configure it with a browser. The range is very good, but I don't have experience with other routers to compare.

You can get it at Amazon for $70 (after rebate) and shipping is free. I picked up a 802.11g card for $45 (after rebate) as well.
 
i say buy the cheapest one you can find. worked for me. (D-Link, 2 macs hardwired, 2 macs, 1 PC wireless, $30.00 after rebates)
 
Make sure you get one with WPA (Wireless Protected Access) support, or for which you are soon guaranteed an firmware upgrade which adds support. The existing WEP protocol is insecure (some say it's "good enough" security, which is true in the same sense that analog cordless/mobile phones were also once "good enough"--until eavesdropping became an issue).

Incidentally, how is the WPA support in Panther? Does it work only with the Airport, or also with third-party devices that support WPA?
 
two story house?

Originally posted by villanova329
Hey guys, I'm in the market for a new wireless router. I'm getting a new G4 iBook and I want to take advantage of the 54g its capable of, but I heard that the airport extreme isn't my best bet, and I still need to hardwire PC's to the router. What 3rd party router would you suggest? I live in a 2 story house and need to get equal reception in all parts of my house. MacWorld magazine strongly recommended the Belkin 54g wireless router, but a few of my colleagues interjected. Feedback would be great, mac-fanatics.
Click to expand...

not about the routers, but what is a "two story house"?? I know a Bon Jovi song named "Two Story Town", something releated?! 🙂
 
Re: two story house?

Originally posted by toughboy
not about the routers, but what is a "two story house"?? I know a Bon Jovi song named "Two Story Town", something releated?! 🙂
Click to expand...

Do you live in the US? A two story house has two floors/levels. I didn't know that was American vernacular...
 
Re: Re: two story house?

Originally posted by aphexist
Do you live in the US? A two story house has two floors/levels. I didn't know that was American vernacular...
Click to expand...

thanx for the reply..
I'm living in Turkey, the city I live in, Izmir, is one of the metropols of Turkey, so we only have apartment floors in my city.. I think its an American Term, I didnt know it before..
 
i didn't even notice 'story'. but i'm almost 100% sure that when talking about levels in a building it would be spelt 'storey'. or should i just go and get some sleep now? 😛
 
Two weeks ago I replaced my D-Link 802.11b with the US Robotics USR-8054 that supports 802.11g with a Turbo mode for 100 mbps. Of course that is just the theoretical maximum, but nevertheless it zips along nicely.

You might be interested in the following head-to-head review published by PC Magazine:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,112467,00.asp

Note the benchmarking results on page 2:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,112467,pg,2,00.asp


The 8054 has performed well in my mixed PC/Mac network at home, but not perfectly. A couple of issues:

1. A 128-bit ASCII WEP encryption key is somehow restricted to the characters A-F, a-f, and 0-9 (the hexadecimal characters). The D-Link allowed the full alphabet, upper and lower case. I have sent an email to USR's tech support...no reply yet.

2. DHCP table gets confused from time to time. I haven't collected enough information to determine probable cause. When this happens, one or more hostnames show up empty even though their IP address is still leased out. Reboot the router and the problem clears up.

I hope US Robotics will address these issues in a firmware update. Still, the router works quite well.
 
Originally posted by myself
1. A 128-bit ASCII WEP encryption key is somehow restricted to the characters A-F, a-f, and 0-9 (the hexadecimal characters). The D-Link allowed the full alphabet, upper and lower case. I have sent an email to USR's tech support...no reply yet.
Click to expand...
Update: Received an acknowledgement from USR about this issue:

Re: Email ID <...cut...>

Dear Sir,

Thank you for choosing U.S.Robotics.

We are aware of this. Currently you can only use the letters A-F in ASCII as well as HEX. This should be fixed in the next firmware update. Currently the firmware is version 1.17. You can view our website for updates to this firmware. It should be out shortly however there is no ETA.

http://www.usr.com/support/product-template.asp?prod=8054

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to assist you. Should you require further assistance with your U.S. Robotics product, please feel free to contact us again.

Again, thank you for choosing U.S.Robotics.

If you need to reply to this message for more information or to answer any questions we might have asked you, please click on Reply and include all previous correspondence. This allows us to track your issue more efficiently and to resolve your issue more quickly.

Your feedback is important to us. Please visit our web site at
http://www.usr.com/feedback in order to rate your support experience.


Sincerely,
<...cut...>


I would expect the next firmware update to include WPA Security. As a side note, there are published reports about USR's poor support, but it seems they are making efforts to improve.
 
I have a Belkin and I would go for the 802.11b. Don't go for the 'g'. It's more money for no added benifit. Think about it - 802.11g is 54Mbps and Cable internet is 1.5Mbps (average) . The only thing you'll gain from 'g' is speed in transferring files between computers on your network. Otherwise it's a waste of cash.
 
I have an older Buffalo Airstation. My advice is, stay far away from any Buffalo Product! Works fine, but came with the worst documentation I have ever seen, as though written by a dyslexic retard. I had to go to a service center an hour away after wasting a whole day trying to set up.
The technician just shrugged and said "yeah, there are some mistakes in the manual." I just got my Powerbook and will buy a new router, rather than deal with that again.
 
Originally posted by crees!
I have a Belkin and I would go for the 802.11b. Don't go for the 'g'. It's more money for no added benifit. Think about it - 802.11g is 54Mbps and Cable internet is 1.5Mbps (average) . The only thing you'll gain from 'g' is speed in transferring files between computers on your network. Otherwise it's a waste of cash.
Click to expand...
I have a mixed Mac/PC network, the Mac being the latest addition to the family. As a recent switcher, I still do a fair bit of work on the PC. Rather than purchase Virtual PC and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous performance, I use Microsoft Remote Desktop Client on my PowerBook to remotely control the PC running Windows XP. With this simple (and NO COST) option, I have access to both worlds from one mobile device.

There are times, of course, when I have to get face-to-face with the PC, but I'm doing that less and less.

The performance is snappier after upgrading to 802.11g.
 
D-link works

I've got a d-link di-614+ (802.11b), but if I was going with a new one I'd get the di-624 (802.11g). Does WPA or WEP. Has the ability to do MAC filtering, meaning you can specify which specific NICs are allowed to connect to it. Last I checked the Linksys didn't do it right - it only would let you specify which MACs are not allowed to connect (which is rather silly IMHO). Also has 4 100Mbps wired ports you can use.

My Powerbook plays well with the di-614+ for the most part, although I've had trouble with it in 128-bit WEP with the SSID turned off. But since cracking 40-bit versus 128-bit WEP is the same amount of effort, I just use 40-bit anyway (and rely on SSL/SSH for real security in communications). You really want to use WPA anyway, as another poster mentioned (BTW D-link is back-porting WPA compatibility to its older products).

I'd never go with Belkin now that they've admitted to randomly redirecting some requests to one of their own websites for the purpose of advertising (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/07/1740205&mode=nested&tid=126&tid=153&tid=95&tid=99). It's like buying a piece of equipment that's broken, right out of the box.
 
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