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I can't speak for this router, since I recently purchased a Linksys WRT55AG router and I can tell you that the one I have has QOS support as well as a switch no NOT let any clueless newbie change the configuration of the router. Another thing, I called into Support to make sure I had to latest firmware, and checked the web page, the available firmware is 1.10, but when I look at the router, it states 1.20. Either case, this router has QOS, as well as selectable bandwidth for EACH lan port, MAC address priority, and application port priority. Overall, I'm impressed with it.

The lack of digital audio on the mac mini is pretty easily solved. My suggested solution is the M-Audio Transit, but there are numerous other USB soundcards which work just fine on the mac.

The big problem for me is the lack of a gigabit ethernet adaptor in the mini. Not a problem if you're not intending to move large video files around your network, but my intention with my hometheater PC is to be able to serve MP3s and MPEG4 to any PC on my gigabit backbone.

The lack of gigabit on the mini is almost unexcusable. I've got a mini, ordered on launch day, and I love it to death... but i'd pay +$100 for gigabit on it at this point...

• Important Stuff

Odd but true..

A guy at work was having a hard time maintaining a good signal at his house with his wi-fi. We do not work on personal stuff but he was using his work laptop and was having problems that just did not make sense for what he was describing was happening. Figuring he really has no idea what he is doing, I told him to bring in the router. I plug his router in and notice it is configured to not broadcast his SSID, he had a unique SSID, and had WEP enabled, of course he still had the default password. I was thinking, wow, not too bad for this guy, maybe someone else did it for him. I fire up his laptop and notice the only wireless network he has configured is linksys and no WEP. Turns out, he had been using his neighbors wireless for about 3 months and had no idea. I gave him two options, configure his own laptop for his router or have him ask the neighbor to move his router closer to his end of the house ;)

A quick and dirty guide or a basic wireless security is on the Linksys site. I give this link to anyone who even mentions using wireless.

If your dad has network access from the laptop -- and even better, wireless access that's available all the time -- you could hang one of these network storage puppies off the local network and use it to do one master backup and then deltas periodically. The Linksys unit comes with backup software that supposedly will do this very thing.

So has the Gamecube...
http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=3 3&scid=38&prid=558

Yeah, but the Terratec doesn't have any speakers.

There's also this linksys, but I read pretty bad reviews on it.

If you know any other (fixed) wlan mp3 player with speakers.

For people who are looking for a package solution: LinkSys Wireless-G Internet Video Camera a mere $299.99 CDN in a recent FutureShop ad. (Remember to secure your WiFi net.)

Even easier: http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=3 4&scid=29&prid=561

There's no chicken and egg about it as the other poster seemed to think. Whatever OS you're running, make sure you're behind one of these routers - there's a huge choice and they're fairly cheap these days (less than the cost of 1 month on DSL for a lot of people).

• I selected Roku Soundbridges. I like the interface, and the display. They can access the network using either 10/100 wired ethernet, or 802.11b wireless and provide analog and digital outputs to feed either powered speakers or your stereo. I have two hanging off the same server setup described above, and they work great.
  
• I can also "mount" the music shared in the manner described above with iTunes. I've only tested this w/ the winderz version, as there are no Macs in the house modern enuf to run iTunes.
  

• The slimserver software, and a software version of their client are available free from their web page. Try before you buy, or buy one squeezebox and use the software version on laptops elsewhere.
  
• Roku _might_ implement synchronized play in the future. I see no reason why they could not.
  
• Roku supports "tuning" internet radio stations. I plan to set up a stream, fed by another piece of software looking at the same set of files so that I have my own internet radio station in the house. I've used jwz's gronk, which is a web-based jukebox package for this purpose before with success, but will also consider grind this time around. I do not know if I will achieve synchronization this way or not, but I'm hoping.
  
• Gronk and Grind do not use ID3 tags, so when I originally ripped a lot of my music for Gronk, I didn't care about the ID3s. All of the rest of this software DOES care, so I have a bit of a mess on my hands.
  
• Gronk is written in Perl, so it's hackable. This comes in handy tweaking things like sort order, whether to include "the' in the band name, etc. JWZ also provides a demo version to play with on the site below.
  
• Another way to get the synchronized music, and to serve over wireless, although not the way you originally asked, is to set up an FM transmitter. I have not yet done this for this project, but my prior Gronk installation supported one of those micropowered fm transmitters intended for use with mp3 players in cars just fine.
  

• 
  Linksys NSLU-2
  Unslung firmware for the NSLU-2
  Roku Soundbridge
  Squeezebox and Slimserver
  mt-daapd on Sourceforge
  JWZ's Gronk
  Grind
  A review of a REAL FM transmitter
  

one possibility is for MS to offer a product to allow you to stream the media from your PC to XBox and view it on your TV

This already exists ) (works with Media Center 2005). Media Center 2005 can use an XBox (or other extenders) as a satellite and stream video to it.

perhaps he means a real hardware firewall, as in SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) like the Linksys BEFSX41?

Thank bog for BSD. Way to go Theo!

http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=3 5&scid=43&prid=655

For some reason i can't find the price. But our company bought an older version, for $500

These guys are upgrading a $50 Linksys router with a full SIP server and SIP NAT. Add a wireless Wifi phone you have your own wireless PBX for the house including Wifi, QoS, a killer firewall, and tons more to boot.

Why someone doesn't just slap an open-standard VPN server onto the base station is byond me. Solves a bazillion problems all at once.

Linksys already makes one: model WRV54G.

But, with true idiocy, they put the VPN only on the wired side, not the wireless side.

So, you can set up a secure VPN to your office, then allow any idiot to connect wirelessly with no security!

I've got a Linksys NSLU2 running the Unslung firmware. The Unslung firmware lets me run the NSLU2 as an rsync server.

On my Powerbook I'm running rsync, configured with rsyncbackup.

I live on the East Coast but travel to the West Coast every couple months. I've got it configured so that every night my powerbook just backs itself up to my NSLU2 sitting under the bed (with a very quiet 350GB Maxtor USB drive) no matter where I am.

I also back up my gf's Win2K and WinXP laptops as well as a FreeBSD box on the West Coast. I'm very happy with the setup.

For the drivers I use MADWIFI, which is a wrapper around a proprietary kernel module. It works as good as any Linux wifi driver I've seen. It only works on the mentioned Atheros chipset cards. link

This is what I do, and it works pretty good. Some people have more trouble than others getting it going, but the good news is, there is now plenty of tutorials on how to do it. The only issues I've had are that the transfer rate is not as good in Linux as in Windows, and the driver's default settings are more susceptible to interference. I spend a lot of time in a coffee shop with a shitty AP (though running b, not a), and I have a shell script that bumps up the retry and s/n ratio tolerances, everything now works fine. You get a moderate amount of attention running Linux in public places if you are running a crazy desktop manager.

I would just switch to 802.11a which runs somewhere in the 5Ghz band. It's faster than 802.11b and works great; just a bit shorter range is the main drawback. Granted this costs money but it should eliminate the problem since almost no one uses 802.11a. You can get routers that will do both A and G.

The WRT54GX uses the same chips if you'd rather buy from Linksys than Belkin.

Linksys WRT54GX: http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=6 70&scid=35 is a unofficial pre-N router.
Anyone want to take a guess why 802.11n takes 3 antenna and 802.11g has two or one?

But can they run Linux? http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=3 3&scid=35&prid=601

but Linksys has been selling wi-fi webcams for a while now: http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=3 3&scid=38&prid=650

Amazing! Thanks. Any advice about how to install OpenVPN on the WRT54G? Which package would you recommend? Do the OpenWrt packages have an adminstration console? I don't see any mention of that. It looks complicated, since I read that there is no Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) until installed.

Also, I note that OpenVPN will NOT work on Windows XP SP2 unless the pre-release version 2.0 is used. I suppose you don't care if you are using a WRT54G at both ends of the VPN. I'm not knowledgeable about this, but I guess that running VPN software on a WRT54G would be more secure than running it on a PC.

I note that Sveasoft provides firmware with PPTP VPN software, but there seems to be some question about whether PPTP is sufficiently secure.

Just guessing, but this seems to be a considerable job to configure. I wish there were a commercial release with the OpenVPN built in.

OpenWrt.

Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Broadband Router.

Linksys WRT54GS Wireless-G Broadband Router with SpeedBooster.

WRT54GS has updated chipset.

WRT54GS Under $70.

Both Linksys products have GPL'd firmware.

There is intense interest in the WRT54G and WRT54GS. One company, Sveasoft, provides upgraded firmware.

Amazing! Thanks. Any advice about how to install OpenVPN on the WRT54G? Which package would you recommend? Do the OpenWrt packages have an adminstration console? I don't see any mention of that. It looks complicated, since I read that there is no Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) until installed.

Also, I note that OpenVPN will NOT work on Windows XP SP2 unless the pre-release version 2.0 is used. I suppose you don't care if you are using a WRT54G at both ends of the VPN. I'm not knowledgeable about this, but I guess that running VPN software on a WRT54G would be more secure than running it on a PC.

I note that Sveasoft provides firmware with PPTP VPN software, but there seems to be some question about whether PPTP is sufficiently secure.

Just guessing, but this seems to be a considerable job to configure. I wish there were a commercial release with the OpenVPN built in.

OpenWrt.

Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Broadband Router.

Linksys WRT54GS Wireless-G Broadband Router with SpeedBooster.

WRT54GS has updated chipset.

WRT54GS Under $70.

Both Linksys products have GPL'd firmware.

There is intense interest in the WRT54G and WRT54GS. One company, Sveasoft, provides upgraded firmware.

Amazing! Thanks. Any advice about how to install OpenVPN on the WRT54G? Which package would you recommend? Do the OpenWrt packages have an adminstration console? I don't see any mention of that. It looks complicated, since I read that there is no Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) until installed.

Also, I note that OpenVPN will NOT work on Windows XP SP2 unless the pre-release version 2.0 is used. I suppose you don't care if you are using a WRT54G at both ends of the VPN. I'm not knowledgeable about this, but I guess that running VPN software on a WRT54G would be more secure than running it on a PC.

I note that Sveasoft provides firmware with PPTP VPN software, but there seems to be some question about whether PPTP is sufficiently secure.

Just guessing, but this seems to be a considerable job to configure. I wish there were a commercial release with the OpenVPN built in.

OpenWrt.

Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Broadband Router.

Linksys WRT54GS Wireless-G Broadband Router with SpeedBooster.

WRT54GS has updated chipset.

WRT54GS Under $70.

Both Linksys products have GPL'd firmware.

There is intense interest in the WRT54G and WRT54GS. One company, Sveasoft, provides upgraded firmware.

There's also a 802.11g-enabled version of this... :)

DLink makes some wireless cameras. Page is here: http://www.dlink.com/products/category.asp?cid=60& sec=0

Here is one from Linksys: http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=3 3&scid=38&prid=650

For small networks, I recommend using dnsmasq. It's a combined DHCP server and DNS server/proxy intended for use on a masquerading gateway that can run nearly without any configuration. Add your mac addresses to /etc/ethers for fixed IP adresses, add your hostnames to /etc/hosts, finito. There is no need to fiddle with to big servers (bind and ISC dhcpd). I use it on my (heavily modified) WRT54G with about 10 to 20 systems without any problems.

Tux2000

I don't know how relevant or useful it is, but Linksys (groan) [offers a HotSpot in a box] (more details [here]).. Since it seems so easy to set-up, you might want to immediately start running this at one of the locations, then do your other custom solution at another, and see which one works better. If you get a lot of customers used to going to many HotSpots, then this solution could work as it is with Boingo. You could go the T-Mobile route as well.

Disclaimer: I do not know anything else about HotSpots.

I don't know how relevant or useful it is, but Linksys (groan) [offers a HotSpot in a box] (more details [here]).. Since it seems so easy to set-up, you might want to immediately start running this at one of the locations, then do your other custom solution at another, and see which one works better. If you get a lot of customers used to going to many HotSpots, then this solution could work as it is with Boingo. You could go the T-Mobile route as well.

Disclaimer: I do not know anything else about HotSpots.

One solution that I've used that works well is to setup a netscreen box at the main office, and then use a snapgear at the remote sites. Both the netscreen and the snapgear run Linux underneath, so technically they are both as capable, but the netscreen tends to be versital (and slightly more complex to set up) then the snapgear. Making it the more logical choice for the main office.

I haven't tried this, but Linksys does make a VPN router or you could build your own using a Soekris Net4511 and M0n0wall. M0n0wall is a FreeBSD based VPN configured via the web with an interface that is very similiar to a SnapGear. (The netscreen is also setup via the web, but significantly different then the other two) If you used one, you'll feel right at home with the other (I have no idea if this is intentional or not. And the screens are not layed out the same, they just are catagorized the same, with a similiar layout)

Anyway, all the above solutions will let you set up a VPN, either with IPSEC (complete with your choice of SHA, DES, 3DES etc encryption), or the older, less secure Microsoft Point-to-Point tunneling protocal (which I can't think of the proper name of right off hand, heck maybe P2PTP was it), and once set up they run pretty much error and maintence free (Except maybe the linksys, I've used the others though, and they all work as advertised.)

I just did something a bit like this. I live in an apartment in the same building as my office, but it's on the other side of the building. Minor detail: the building is L-shaped, and home and office are on the different branches.

I spent a month or so going through different options: looking for a third point on the other side of the street that could act as a line-of-sight reflector, investigating existing cable ducts with phone wire and that long range ethernet thing.

Finally I decided to get a directional antenna (this one) and a new Linksys WRT54G. I had an existing WAP54G which I use for the other end.

The WRT54G is in my hallway at the apartment, stuck to the wall above the entryphone. The WAP54G is in my office, with the antenna bolted to my office balcony. Using the Sveasoft firmware, I've boosted the signal a little and have established a ~2Mbps bridged link by blasting the signal through the apartments in the line of sight. The WRT54G acts as a repeater for my laptop. Since the office only has a 2Mbps line, it's good enough. The people in the apartments between might start having funny-shaped babies, but I've got free connectivity, and that's all that matters!

I'm sure it would be better if the home-side box had an external antenna, but it's intrusive enough in my hallway anyway. I'd also then be able to use the stock firmware. The Linksys boxes are relatively cheap and thanks to third-party firmware are extremely configurable.

As far as the 5 second break every 30 minutes goes, I'd guess it's some third-party box negotiating something (eg. NetBIOS or NTP or something) and interfering with the signal on your cable runs.

I just did something a bit like this. I live in an apartment in the same building as my office, but it's on the other side of the building. Minor detail: the building is L-shaped, and home and office are on the different branches.

I spent a month or so going through different options: looking for a third point on the other side of the street that could act as a line-of-sight reflector, investigating existing cable ducts with phone wire and that long range ethernet thing.

Finally I decided to get a directional antenna (this one) and a new Linksys WRT54G. I had an existing WAP54G which I use for the other end.

The WRT54G is in my hallway at the apartment, stuck to the wall above the entryphone. The WAP54G is in my office, with the antenna bolted to my office balcony. Using the Sveasoft firmware, I've boosted the signal a little and have established a ~2Mbps bridged link by blasting the signal through the apartments in the line of sight. The WRT54G acts as a repeater for my laptop. Since the office only has a 2Mbps line, it's good enough. The people in the apartments between might start having funny-shaped babies, but I've got free connectivity, and that's all that matters!

I'm sure it would be better if the home-side box had an external antenna, but it's intrusive enough in my hallway anyway. I'd also then be able to use the stock firmware. The Linksys boxes are relatively cheap and thanks to third-party firmware are extremely configurable.

As far as the 5 second break every 30 minutes goes, I'd guess it's some third-party box negotiating something (eg. NetBIOS or NTP or something) and interfering with the signal on your cable runs.

In fact, there are other devices that could make this even easier. I saw that Linksys will be comming out with what may be the perfect product for you.

Now you should know that there are other (albiet more interesting) options. If you want to go for pure coolness and geekocity, I have just the thing. My brother managed to get a laser link for connecting networks between two buildings a few years ago. With think it's not functional (never tried, think parts might be missing), but it's a cool thing. We have two large units (look like outdoor security camera casings) that each have laser units in them. You point them at eachother, wire everything up, and voila! the networks are supposed to be connected. They were used at a local school years and years ago. Ours are probably slow, and we know they are tolken ring (that's about all we know) but they exist. You could probably find something similiar if you looked enough.

As for your current problems, I don't know. I assume you are running Windows? If you were running Linux you could find out WHY the network is going down (watch for errors from the USB subsystem) but I don't know how (or if) you can do that in Windows. My guess is your 20' USB cable is part of the problem (just a hunch). Also, are you using directional antennas? Not just directional (in that they are not omni-directional) but HIGHLY directional antennas (like Yagis or the pringles WiFi antenna)? That might help too.

Also, now that I think of it, I think many accesspoints have an option to bridge networks built in. A quick check says that my Netgear WG602v2 supports it. But it looks like both ends have to be operating in "bridge mode" (although you can still serve clients in bridge mode, it looks like). So that's a 3rd option.

In fact, there are other devices that could make this even easier. I saw that Linksys will be comming out with what may be the perfect product for you.

Now you should know that there are other (albiet more interesting) options. If you want to go for pure coolness and geekocity, I have just the thing. My brother managed to get a laser link for connecting networks between two buildings a few years ago. With think it's not functional (never tried, think parts might be missing), but it's a cool thing. We have two large units (look like outdoor security camera casings) that each have laser units in them. You point them at eachother, wire everything up, and voila! the networks are supposed to be connected. They were used at a local school years and years ago. Ours are probably slow, and we know they are tolken ring (that's about all we know) but they exist. You could probably find something similiar if you looked enough.

As for your current problems, I don't know. I assume you are running Windows? If you were running Linux you could find out WHY the network is going down (watch for errors from the USB subsystem) but I don't know how (or if) you can do that in Windows. My guess is your 20' USB cable is part of the problem (just a hunch). Also, are you using directional antennas? Not just directional (in that they are not omni-directional) but HIGHLY directional antennas (like Yagis or the pringles WiFi antenna)? That might help too.

Also, now that I think of it, I think many accesspoints have an option to bridge networks built in. A quick check says that my Netgear WG602v2 supports it. But it looks like both ends have to be operating in "bridge mode" (although you can still serve clients in bridge mode, it looks like). So that's a 3rd option.

Why not just use a pair of linksys WRT54G routers using the Sveasoft firmware? At under $60 each, not going to find a reliable solution much cheaper... firmware update allows all sorts of neat features, including VPNs.

The Linksys NSLU2 may be a good palce to start.

TomsNetworking has a good article about messing around with it.

Add a USB network card and a big USB key and you should be good to go (it has 2 USB ports).

for times when I'd like to use my laptop downstairs (approx. 2 storeys away) the signal strength is always poor with signal dropping out every now and then. With the least amount of cash outlay, I'd like to get more signal into other parts of the igloo.

Well, you could run some cat5 downstairs to another access point, or if you have a Linksys wireless router, you could purchase another AP and set it up to repeat the signal from one floor below (depending on the model). Barring that, you may have some luck with the Linksys high-gain antenna, or even one of these.

Jeez, if you want a microserver, check out a kurobox... it uses Linux. Or maybe go and mod a Linksys NSLU2. Both of these products are $185, and come with NAS/light server profile software already, and are hackable.

If you're lucky, you will have to pay for a second box, and will be "allowed" to watch it in your bedroom.

Funny, thats not how media center works right now. You can stream to PCs in your local network easily enough. And if you don't want to pop for a second PC there are "media center" extenders, low priced little things that will plug into your TV.

I know DRM is the big bad boogey man of /. (closely followed by SCO) but the media center DRM isn't that bad. Hell you can't even complain much about the MSN music store rules as they're exactly the same as iTunes.

https://ssl.linksys.com/rma1.asp

Just use that for RMAing linksys crap. You don't have to call them.

Has anyone tried setting up a harddrive based MP3-player without a PC?
It should be possible to use one of the USB harddrive-to-WiFi proxies out there, like this one: Linksys NSLU2 together with one of the MP3 players that plays from the network, like Creatives: Wireless Player (although that one requires a server running some software).
Then you'd have USB harddrive -> WiFi Proxy -> Mp3 player without the hassle, power consumption, noise and ugliness of a PC.

So, he took a big honkin' boom box, stuck a power supply, mini-itx mobo, a small hard drive, and a Linksys PCI WiFI adaptor in it. No other info available; picked that up from looking at the pictures. Not sure if this qualifies as a case mod (I mean, it's a computer, but it doesn't LOOK like a computer) or something else. Either way, it should have some kickin' sound output.

I've pondered, for some time, what would happen if large numbers of people had IPod-type hardware, with a WiFi or Bluetooth connection, and a public, read-only storage space available, and no encryption. If you could wander in-range of someone else, see what they've got in their publicly available directory, and download stuff that interested you, without even needing to know who exactly you got it from. Think P2P networking, without wires, without any way of figuring out who's distributing what. If the current P2P system didn't drive the RIAA crazy enough, this would REALLY push them over the edge. I suppose something like this is a logical first step in that direction.

I find myself in a very similar situation. However, I am interested in just a simple camera that my parents (who lives out of state) can access via the internet to see their grandaughter from across the miles.

I know there are several web cams that contain their own web server to allow for this, most pointedly the Linksys WVC54G. I have heard, however, that picture quality with this camera is not too hot. Anyone have any opinions on it?

Or perhaps suggest a better one that isn't going to dent my wallet to the tune of several hundred dollars?

I have to respond. The parent was correct. It's amazing seeing what people do to run windows, and what I've had to do in the past.

You say you seriously doubt anyone has done a fresh install of distro-of-choice and not spent time tweaking things to get the system fully usable. Then you go on to say you're hoping to build your first linux box.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, depending on what distro you choose. Someone below mentioned OpenBSD, and that's a good recommendation. I think you'll find that a fair amount of the unix-y environments start you off at a solid base, and allow you to build up. This is in contrast to whenever I have the (in my opinion, of course) displeasure of dealing with a windows install, where I have to tear down and build up.

No, not all distro's are the same. Sometimes they have annoying services listening on all interfaces, like cups or lprd. That's one of the reasons why OpenBSD is nice. It starts you off with a good base from which to build up. I have recently switched to the excellent ubuntu distrobution from debian sarge. I am pleasantly surprised by the fact that very few services are listening by default, so there's really not all that much to do to "secure" the box (at least from a basic point of view). In fact, when I installed ubuntu over debian, I kept my old home directory, so there was no tweaking to get my desktop how I want it. I guess you could do the same with windows, but it's a pain to mess around with the registry to point to a different location/drive for user's home folders. All I have to do is mount the old volume as /home and it works fine.

Not only that, but the installation of new software is tremendously easier for the unix-y domain, at least debian, where apt-get is very good at solving your problems. No cds to look for, no keys to look for, makes it all very easy. So I think you're making a kind of incorrect blanket statement based on your experience with windows (it seems).

That said, I prefer the old tiny personal firewall, but only the old version (2 or 3?) as the new one doesn't have as nice an interface. It seems to barf a fair amount when installed on XP, so I'm actually shying away from that these days. You didn't say which version of windows you're using. I've been using the virus scanner from etrust, free to valid microsoft users: ezarmor. It seems to work okay, and it's free. It also includes a firewall of sorts, but I don't recall being very impressed, so I installed tpf again. AV gets rather expensive, rather quickly. I purchased the symantec AV/Firewall suite for something like $50. As always, there's a linux NAT box protecting it all, allowing easy port forwarding. I've also used the linksys wrt54g and it seems to work okay. It's available pretty cheaply now, and allowed me to reduce the number of crud that clutters up the gf's apartment.

Anyway, I wish you luck with your new linux box, and I think (once you get used to it) you'll find it pleasantly surprising.

I have to respond. The parent was correct. It's amazing seeing what people do to run windows, and what I've had to do in the past.

You say you seriously doubt anyone has done a fresh install of distro-of-choice and not spent time tweaking things to get the system fully usable. Then you go on to say you're hoping to build your first linux box.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, depending on what distro you choose. Someone below mentioned OpenBSD, and that's a good recommendation. I think you'll find that a fair amount of the unix-y environments start you off at a solid base, and allow you to build up. This is in contrast to whenever I have the (in my opinion, of course) displeasure of dealing with a windows install, where I have to tear down and build up.

No, not all distro's are the same. Sometimes they have annoying services listening on all interfaces, like cups or lprd. That's one of the reasons why OpenBSD is nice. It starts you off with a good base from which to build up. I have recently switched to the excellent ubuntu distrobution from debian sarge. I am pleasantly surprised by the fact that very few services are listening by default, so there's really not all that much to do to "secure" the box (at least from a basic point of view). In fact, when I installed ubuntu over debian, I kept my old home directory, so there was no tweaking to get my desktop how I want it. I guess you could do the same with windows, but it's a pain to mess around with the registry to point to a different location/drive for user's home folders. All I have to do is mount the old volume as /home and it works fine.

Not only that, but the installation of new software is tremendously easier for the unix-y domain, at least debian, where apt-get is very good at solving your problems. No cds to look for, no keys to look for, makes it all very easy. So I think you're making a kind of incorrect blanket statement based on your experience with windows (it seems).

That said, I prefer the old tiny personal firewall, but only the old version (2 or 3?) as the new one doesn't have as nice an interface. It seems to barf a fair amount when installed on XP, so I'm actually shying away from that these days. You didn't say which version of windows you're using. I've been using the virus scanner from etrust, free to valid microsoft users: ezarmor. It seems to work okay, and it's free. It also includes a firewall of sorts, but I don't recall being very impressed, so I installed tpf again. AV gets rather expensive, rather quickly. I purchased the symantec AV/Firewall suite for something like $50. As always, there's a linux NAT box protecting it all, allowing easy port forwarding. I've also used the linksys wrt54g and it seems to work okay. It's available pretty cheaply now, and allowed me to reduce the number of crud that clutters up the gf's apartment.

Anyway, I wish you luck with your new linux box, and I think (once you get used to it) you'll find it pleasantly surprising.

Well, my manual only mentions 192.168.1.245 as the default address. Even if it didn't mention any address, you could always hook a PC to the ethernet port and run tcpdump when you turn on the AP. I think you will see some activity that leads to the address it is using, but I don't know for sure right now.

for roughly $65, you can buy a linksys wrt-54g which runs linux out of the box. add to this some free third-party replacement firmware and you get full control over the unit and loads of features - VPN, packet shaping, advanced packet filtering, captive portals, and all sorts of other stuff. the unit is very flexible, reliable, cheap, and most of all it is supremely hackable - especially if you know your way around linux.

if you do go down this route be sure to avoid sveasoft's firmware, for reasons illustrated here. basically, the guy writing it is a total cockbite. last time i questioned his (ab)use of the GPL here on slashdot he banned me from his forums, so if you do intend to send him $20 you'd better be nice.

How about the Linksys NSLU2? No wireless but you can buy a WET-11 Ethernet bridge for it if you want. Also, it can run Linux, and with the addition of a regular access point and a USB Ethernet adapter it'd probably work pretty good as a router.

The WRT54G isn't the only thing from Linksys that runs Linux. The NSLU2 is a designed to be a NAS solution. But you can hack the firmware to run practically whatever you want. Supports up to two hard drives (connected via USB) and has an Intel XScale (ARM) processor. It has no fans, so the only noise comes from the drive(s) you attach to it. You can pick one up for about $80.