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I did work for a guy who has a media center in an area of his house I couldn't reach with CAT5 without opening a hole in the ceiling (two-story house.) I tried several combinations of G and N routers and repeaters over the course of 6 months, but neighboring access points would interrupt the signal enough to cause his streaming music (transmitted from his desktop running Rhapsody to his media center) to skip or stutter. Finally, I tried the Netgear HSXB101 wireless set, which uses the power lines for transmitting. At the distance he's going, it's only good for about 25mbps, but that's plenty to transmit streaming music over, and he's had no skipping or other problems since. (I also tried the Panasonic BL-PA100KTA kit, but it didn't have the range.) YMMV, of course.

This post brought to you by these two patches, against 2.6.22-rc2:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireles s.general/2368
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireles s.general/2369
The little WG11v2 is a happy interface. Figure I'll need to stockpile a couple them critters.
Now, how is it that I'm off the hook for managing any of that bad, bad firmware with this wee beastie?
Ivo or Michael, though I'm nowhere near as cool as you dudes, I'll buy you a beverage if I see you in Ottawa next month.
Dunno if GKH's driver program actually helped in this matter, but the general trend in hardware is positive, and I feel Realtek and Netgear deserve a free shill.
Best,
Chris

I had a MIMO Netgear wireless card and router once. They claimed it doubled the bandwidth and range of your WLAN on the same principle. I thought using two signals was kind of cheating, but it worked.

Here's one of the routers.

I'm assuming you've heard of the Netgear Digital Entertainer HD, because you just described it. For $350, it makes Apple TV look pretty weak. Apple TV's only advantage that I can see is its ability to play DRM-protected iTunes Store content.

Why don't you just use VoIP such as Skype (or OSS equivalent)? And yes, they do sell wireless handsets that work with this service.

Which is what you'd be doing anyway with the OpenMoko when you don't have cellular. If you don't want custom apps on the go or cellular access, what's the point? Get a Skype phone.

MetroPCS is the way I'd like to see Cell Phones done everywhere in the future.

The most you'll pay is $45 (plus taxes) a month, and it's the only plan I've seen where you're not paying for minutes in your own area.

With one caveat though, you go out of your area, and you're paying $0.45 a minute, and their coverage area isn't that big.

Alternatively there's a Skype wifi phone now, which connects to your account online. The downside to that is that if you expect to phone people, and not just computers, you have to buy their service, which I believe is about $35 a month.

http://tools.netgear.com/skype/

who is M&G? I never heard of such magazine so I don't trust them.

With that said, I have actually considered upgrading to Netgear Prosafe Wired Router.

I believe he was referring to netgear's "REAL" routers, they offer some small business routers that are bigger badder than the ones they sell for home use. http://www.netgear.com/products/business/prod_vpnr outer_wired_security_sb.php

Uh? Aren't the routers ... well ... just routers? That is, not general-purpose computers, but little boxes specifically designed to do wlan routing? Like, for instance, the Netgear WGU624? I'm sure you could (for some values of "you" and "could") compile your own software on such a router, since they very probably do contain general-purpose processors, but still. It wouldn't be pleasant, and I really have a hard time thinking it would "work well" to build something as targeted at compilation as a compile farm. Maybe I missed your point, though.

Sort of like this one? http://tools.netgear.com/skype/

http://www.netgear.com/products/details/SPH101.php

WTF? Why was this moderated as a troll??? Here's a link to the equipment. They're claiming all of the things he stated including 300Mbps. He may have been joking, I don't know, but it definitely isn't a troll.

I was just looking for something to do this same thing. I haven't solved the problem yet, but Netgear and Linksys have some inexpensive stuff. I ordered the Linksys RV042 and it should arrive today. I'm anxiously awaiting setting it up and testing it because of the Dual WAN functionality. My second internet connection should arrive on Thursday :)

http://www.netgear.com/products/business/prod_vpnr outer_wired_security_sb.php
http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Produ ct_C1&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1117775454480& pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper

I'm the systems admin (domain admin. donning asbestos suit.) for a small/medium busines in New Orleans. We use one Netscreen25 in our main office downtown. That gives us granular control over individual users' security policies if desired, but I'm in the process of moving them all to a single policy to ease administration. The box can maintain 125 concurent tunnels. It can do quite a bit of other craziness as well, but I haven't worked here long enough to get deep into it. Too much other stuff to do. Not absolutely certain about the cross-platform client, so you can look that up yourself. ;)

In addition to the individual user VPNs, the Netscreen maintains persistant tunnels to two remote sites. They're equipped with Netgear ProSafe FVL328 routers. Less capable with low(er) throughput, but the branch end has to deal with a whole lot less traffic. The NS downtown maintains security with its lesser peers, too.

It's here and the faq says it is now planned for a mid-2006 release.

It's here and the faq says it is now planned for a mid-2006 release.

As long as it has a headset jack that'd work:

http://tools.netgear.com/skype/

Expected 2nd quarter 2006.

Thanks.

I've tested and reviewed about 20 APs and wireless routers in the last two years. I've found only one that had WPA ebabled by default: Netgear's WGU624.

More about the phone (including a link to a large, print-quality image) can be seen at Netgear's site: http://tools.netgear.com/skype/

For the love of Dog, don't just go out and buy any old crappy wireless card and hope that linuxant or ndiswrapper will support it. All of these slashbots who recommend this route are just remorseful that they didn't do their research before wasting their money on a monopoly-sustaining wireless card.

The worst part is that ndiswrapper and linuxant usually don't allow full use of the card. Sure, you can probably get some connectivity out of it, but sometimes you can't use 802.11g, put the card into promiscuous mode, or use one of the fancy wifi signal-strength and network information applets in KDE and GNOME.

When people ask me about Linux wireless support, I tell them two things:

1) Skip on down to Staples and pick up a Netgear WG511T. It'll cost $40-$50 depending on where in the nation you buy it and what rebates they have going at the time.

2) Boot your favorite distro and install the MadWifi drivers. Configure ath0 for DHCP, sit within range of an access point, and you're good to go.

The madwifi drivers work with Atheros chipsets and evidently Atheros themselves contributed a large amount of the code, so it would be in the interest of all Linux users to support them by checking out the MadWifi compatibility listing and purchasing one of the listed cards. You'll be helping the open source community and getting the most out of your wireless card at the same time.

Netgear SC101
a Network drive enclosure support raid, using SMB and FTP to transfer.
so just get 2 300G HDD and then u got a 1/3.3333333 TB raid file storage with SMB and FTP access

AND it only cost about 100-150 for the enclosure...

It is basically a network appliance (no TM) box that allows you to put your own IDA drives in to make your own storage device. Seemed like a good idea for the newbies out there.

Grandparent: Did these new laptops not have USB or ethernet ports?
Parent: All the laptops had ethernet ports, but strangely enough I was using them to connect to the networks I was on

Cluestick!

The grandparent was suggesting the use of either a Parallel->USB converter/adapter or a print server. Many routers have also had a parallel port built-in to share a printer over the network.

I confess I don't know. It's a Netgear DG834.

I confess I don't know. It's a Netgear DG834.

I confess I don't know. It's a Netgear DG834.

You have to find the ARM firmware and put it in the right place, but some of these cards will work...

http://www.netgear.com/products/details/WG511.php

Buy it someplace where you can return it.

The Buffalo unit the OP was asking about has giga ethernet. The NSLU2 does not. The Netgear SC101 also lacks giga. For me, this is a major issue.

I just got one of these today: http://www.netgear.com/products/details/SC101.php

Pop in two IDE drives in either RAID 1 or 0 and you've got a simple NAS device. I call it the hard drive toaster :)

Curiously Netgear has 10/100 Mbps hubs AND 10/100 Mbps switches

Curiously Netgear has 10/100 Mbps hubs AND 10/100 Mbps switches

My answers to your original questions, in sequence: I use a Watchguard FireBox II hardware firewall/router combo box. If I were going to go through an actual purchase process, instead of ending up with the FireBox II as a gift, I would purchase either a Zyxel ZyWall 5 or one of Netgear's hardwired router/firewall combos.

Your second question: "Is it less than $100?" Only if you get REALLY lucky on the used equipment market. If you're at all serious about protecting your servers, your data, and your LAN, it's far more important to be paranoid than it is to try and be frugal.

In other words: The best possible computer and network security device is sitting right between your ears. Invest in a good solid firewall, yes, and expect to spend more than $100 for it, but also invest in good security policies and procedures for your users to follow. Use a combination of common sense, paranoia, and planning, and you will probably do pretty well.

Happy tweaking.

My answers to your original questions, in sequence: I use a Watchguard FireBox II hardware firewall/router combo box. If I were going to go through an actual purchase process, instead of ending up with the FireBox II as a gift, I would purchase either a Zyxel ZyWall 5 or one of Netgear's hardwired router/firewall combos.

Your second question: "Is it less than $100?" Only if you get REALLY lucky on the used equipment market. If you're at all serious about protecting your servers, your data, and your LAN, it's far more important to be paranoid than it is to try and be frugal.

In other words: The best possible computer and network security device is sitting right between your ears. Invest in a good solid firewall, yes, and expect to spend more than $100 for it, but also invest in good security policies and procedures for your users to follow. Use a combination of common sense, paranoia, and planning, and you will probably do pretty well.

Happy tweaking.

I totally agree. I have been down the Netgear MP101 and can I say that the box is a big load of rubbish. It continually skips. Netgear keep releasing patches, and keep saying "on the next release we promise to fix streaming problems" (see here). But they dont (at least not yet).

I tried using their own software - XP based. rubbish. I tried the twonkyvision server. Nope.

There's lots of unhappy MP101 users out there.

Then I bought a squeezebox. What a joy. The server runs on anything (perl). The box is reliable, quick, slick. The boxes can be controlled from the server (turn on, change look etc). The boxes are *really* easy to configure. I have my music on the mythbox which streams it to my stereo and PC. I have squeezeboxen in the bedroom and garage.

My advice - dont waste time with the cheap crap. The extra few dollars for a squeezebox is worth it .

You might want to check out some of the Pre-N wireless comming on the market.

Pre-N Wireless Router Model WGM124 NETGEAR's Pre-N Wireless Router is the best performing router based on Airgo True MIMO(TM) available with up to 8x the wireless coverage and speed than standard 802.11g.

Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router 800% greater coverage than standard 802.11g - Belkin Pre-N provides the industry's best wireless coverage, extending your range with improved reliability and fewer drops.

My understanding is that the Netgear FVS-328 blocks incoming connections to all UDP ports. It has a control panel for unblocking them.

If you do not want wires at all, you extend your stereo rack with a Netgear MP101 or Netgear MP115.
You can use wireless speakers like these or, what is more geek like (and more expensive) is a new speaker system called pursonic. Check the pursonic homepage.
Now your speakers are your wall and your floor...

If you do not want wires at all, you extend your stereo rack with a Netgear MP101 or Netgear MP115.
You can use wireless speakers like these or, what is more geek like (and more expensive) is a new speaker system called pursonic. Check the pursonic homepage.
Now your speakers are your wall and your floor...

When the manufacturers refuse to open up the specs for their hardware, then there's an implicit understanding that they will at least supply working (closed) drivers of their own.

So I may not be able to get the device to work under Linux, or some other OS that wasn't listed on the box, but at least I'll be able to run it under Windows, as advertised.

Unfortunately, the driver for my particular card (Netgear WG511) is one of the worst pieces of crap that I've ever had the mispleasure of having to use.

By way of example, when run under Win 2K, it doesn't "remember" the settings, such as WEP keys, unless you're running as Admin. Netgear's advice has to be seen to be believed - they have a web page that tells you that you need to run with Administrator privileges to avoid the issue, and ON THE SAME PAGE, tells you how dangerous it is to run with admin privileges...

This same piece of crap utility loads itself into the system tray at startup, and continues to soak up processor time for no readily apparent reason - - you can kill it, and the wireless link continues to function.

This same utility also regularly sends packets out to numerical addresses on the web. Spyware, who knows?

In summary, if the manufacturers can't or won't supply working drivers, then the whole product they're selling is essentially fraudulent - they're promising something that they're not delivering.

So I believe that they should be FORCED to open the drivers.

For lite uses, and many heavy ones, SQLite seems excellent. I haven't used it yet, but whoever writes for the project is an excellent communicator.

In my experience, most open source projects, and almost all commercial products, have a (maybe mostly unconscious) plan: "We will carefully measure how much hassle people will accept, and make sure we don't document anything more than enough to just barely keep people from rejecting us."

It's common to visit an open source project and find that, yes, they have a new version, but the manual is two years old. There are plenty of commericial projects that are the same way, like Netgear's FVS318. Their reference manual is for version 1.4, but the latest version is 2.4.

An advantage of open source projects is that they are usually far more honest than commercial projects. I love this from the PostgreSQL What's New page: "Although tested throughout our release cycle, the Windows port does not have the benefit of years of use in production environments that PostgreSQL has on Unix platforms and therefore should be treated with the same level of caution as you would a new product." Marketing people are generally so dishonest that they would not allow an honest statement like this.

MySQL is a non-standard implementation of SQL. That's a problem that's probably partly caused by not doing good documentation. If they had documented everything as they wrote MySQL, they might have seen what a mess they were making. Bad documentation obscures programming messes.

PostgreSQL has an elaborate documentation system, and the new features are very impressive.

Netgear Low Cost Routers

Power over Ethernet

Ethernet over Power

Power over Ethernet

Ethernet over Power

Overstock.com has a few for $30 ($33 with shipping).

It was a Netgear WG511 actually.

Even simpler. If your PocketPC has CompactFlash and SDIO slots, a ported version of airpwn would be equally disruptive, and much harder to detect physically.

Compare:
SMC TigerSwitch 8624T
Dell PowerConnect 5224
NetGear GSM7324
DLink DGS-3324SR
Well, that's all of them, except for Linksys, which is just rebranded Cisco equipment.
And of course, they all use COMPLETELY DIFFERENT firmware. Lovely.

I'm surprised they didn't think enough to add external USB disk support. A similar product (though not nearly as nice of a form factor is the netgear Wireless Media Router: http://www.netgear.com/products/prod_details.php?p rodID=242 That's the killer app in my opionion (specially given the form factor). I could travel with just it and my USB disk and have a fileserver/router setup much like I do at home. And since its the same size as the original Ipod charger, why not set it up so it could charge the Ipod as well, thus eliminating the need to carry the Ipod charger (which is the same size). It'd be alot more functionality with virtually NO added space requirement in my travelpack. -a

It plays havoc with people wanting a linux compatible Wifi card as well. Basically no wifi manufacturer has released a card that at one stage had say a nice prism or orinoco chipset in it that hasn't changed it for something uncompatible like a Broadcomm or TI.

eg:
Netgear WG311 was an Atheros supported by the madwifi driver but is now a Texus Intruments which is yet to have a stable driver (partial success has been had with this one, just not by me). At *least* Netgear had the kindness to call the TI version "WG311v2" and change the box slightly (documented here it still makes it really annoying when you see "supported" next to "wg311" at places such as here, then you buy one and find out it's changed from 4 weeks ago)

The (in)famous Linksys WMP11 used to be a linux-friendly prism but is now a Broadcomm or inprocomm (I think it's been both according to The List

Many other wifi cards have undergone such massive (I consider a chipset change massive) changes without there model numbers changed and it makes getting a wireless card for linux *VERY* difficult and frustrating.