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D-Link's USB-Powered Access Point
Roger Ryder writes "D-Link announced the AirPlus G DWL-G730AP Wireless Pocket Router/AP, a pocket Access Point for travelers. It can be powered by a USB cable and works as an 802.11g access point, client or router. A 3-way configuration switch on the bottom of the unit changes the mode of operation. In AP mode, the DWL-G730AP can be used to create a wireless network in a room where a single Ethernet port is provided. In Router mode, it can be used to share a single broadband Internet connection. The internal DHCP server automatically assigns IP addresses to ensure everyone in the room can connect to the Internet. It supports VPN Pass-through and firewall features including Network Address Translation (NAT) and MAC filtering to protect your wireless network from malicious attacks. When set in Wireless Client mode, the device allows connection to an existing wireless network, without having to install complicated drivers or additional software. For added mobility, the DWL-G730AP can be powered over USB if power outlets are not available. Similar devices are available from ASUS, SMC, Apple's AirPort Express and Netgear."
Or are you happy to see me?
This looks like another ad/press release. First the Nokia phone, now a wifi product. Why are these getting approved?
So, when I'm on the road in a hotel I can plug this into my USB port, then plug an Ethernet cable into it and surf wirelessly? Oh... except for the Ethernet cable plugged into my USB port.
World's tallest building rises in the desert
Hang out for an hour, record the packets, go home and extract email passwords, etc...
This would probably work in an apartment complex, etc as well
Agile Artisans
Looks like D-Link's been doing its homework.
I recently bought a D-Link 802.11g+ card. The loaf at Best Buy expressed doubts about whether D-Link's 108Mbps "protocol" (compression, etc on regular g) would work with Netgear's 108Mbps protocol and he suggested I buy the same company's brand for the entire network.
Naturally, I ignored him. It works fine.
If D-Link can keep making devices that perform reliably and interact correctly with those of other manufacturers, I say "Great!"
I fail to see how this is any different (from a linux geek's point of view) from using any prism2-based WLAN card with the Host AP drivers.
Might appeal to PHBs without the necessary 'mad skillz', though, but these are hardly Slashdot's target audience.
This seems to serve the same purpose as the AirPort Express for the business traveller except that it has a separate power supply (unless you want to tether yourself to it with a USB cable). The fact that the power supply is not built in seems to me to limit its utility quite a lot. Given it costs 80% as much as the AirPort and also lacks the printer sharing (and non-sequitur music streaming) I have a hard time seeing this being a commercial success.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
However, this is the AirPort Express webpage.
The only use I see for this is LAN parties on Planes/Busses/Trains. I am sure the person in the seat next to me would enjoy it when my buddy from the back of the plane storms up and throws a glass of coke at me screaming "STOP AWPING NOOB!". ;)
The fact that this could also screw up plane communications and positioning equipment is irrevelant. No one ever uses that stuff anyway...
It's not that bad. I'm sure this will be useful for people who don't want to carry a router with them if they have more than one laptop or something in a hotel room, or if they go somewhere without a network yet want to use more than one computer at a time. What's so bad about a new versitile product, even if it does have a brand name on it?
Congrats..Your laptop battery life has just gone down from 2hrs45min to 20 minutes(10 if you're trying to achieve FP!).
If you think
Even the bed example is not a best fit; business travelers are usually tired enough, and they spend more time in restaurants (between 6pm and midnight) than in bed.
Even more detached from reality is the claim that you can share the connection. Sure you can, but with who? When you travel you have your room to yourself. I don't see any scenario when a bunch of people suddenly needs to share some Internet connection. I travel with other people sometimes, and we have notebooks... but sneakernet with USB flash disks is the media of choice; besides, we all have Internet access in our rooms, often included into the bill which we don't pay ourselves anyway, along with newspapers which we don't have time or desire to read.
This device may be useful to someone - anything is useful to someone, somewhere. But when I travel I need an Access Point much less than a spare battery, for example, or a stack of CDs. I do not need this AP on the road, and I don't know anyone who would need it.
Besides, most of business travelers are sales people, not very familiar with computers and rightfully afraid to mess with them. These guys know how to turn the thing on and how to start their PowerPoint presentation, and that's pretty much all they know. The good part is that they don't even need to know more.
PCTel's Segue Soft Access Point Module (SAM) is a clever piece of software that turns any LAN-connected PC into a Wi-Fi wireless access point. Given the low price of Wi-Fi APs (typically $60 or less), SAM might not appear to make economic sense. But SAM's price is even lower: Several motherboard and wireless chipset makers have purchased licenses to include SAM with their products, making SAM effectively free to end users. And for setting up a temporary AP in a hotel room, meeting room, or the like, it's a darn clever solution.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
two notes:
1. the mobile hub feature can be useful. traveling with two powerbooks, my wife and i frequently use a single network access (dialup, ethernet) in hotels, sharing it from one machine over ad hoc wlan
2. well, with a powerbook (or stationary mac with airport card), you get this option built in, without any hassle with a separate device or dlls from hell...
(please insert your apple rant here:... thanks.)
would be an ethernet-powered access-point: just one plug for an Ethernet port, and it bridges and/or NATs onto that connection.
I don't know how much power you can safely draw over Ethernet. Maybe it's not enough. But it would be cool if it worked.
Probably the best way to connect securely when traveling cheaply is to boot a cyber cafe computer from a Knoppix CD. That way you can be certain there are no keystroke recorders installed by some previous user. Basically, you will want to check your bank accounts and get your email from a web-based client. So Knoppix gives you everything you need: an OS and a browser.
There might still be a problem with a hardware-based keystroke recorder, but that level of expertise is unlikely, I think. A thief who could do that could get a good job, and wouldn't need to be a thief.
Airport express is more compact (no extra crap to carry around). It also has airtunes (hopefully someone will get a driver for mac/windows/linux so it can do more than just music).
That extra couple dollars is worth the design.
It's not a fucking ad. It's slightly interesting. How else would have you found out about this AND gotten to hear comments about it, anyway.
Even if it is an ad, what right do you have to complain. You're not paying for slashdot. Go elsewhere if you don't like it. I'm a subscriber (read: I pay money to see slashdot) and I love articles like this. Okay!?
This is becoming the new cliché on slashdot... "this is an ad... slashdot sucks... whine whine"
It's been said so many times that it's not interesting, insightful, or funny. That makes it -1 Redundant.
My other car is first.
I could see this being useful in an airplane if you wanted to game with friends or collaborate with coworkers on the same flight. Of course, it would also probably screw up the avionics and redirect the flight to Tibet. But at least you would be able to get some work or enjoyment for the long flight...
Or it would be useful for simple impromptu networking for a quick and dirty network situations where power is at a premium (like a natural disaster). Granted, that wouldn't involve Internet access, but a small easily powered AP is somewhat useful.
Well, let me give a real-world application that I have used...
At E3 this year, four of us were sharing two rooms, but we were doing all of our work in one room. Three of us had laptops, and we all would be doing work that would have required wireless internet. We knew our room would have internet access via ethernet, so I had brought along a full-size D-Link access point/router so that all three of us could use the internet access via wireless at the same time. Having one of these devices (or preferably an AirPort Express, had they been out at the time) would have saved me some room in my laptop bag.
Just my $.02...
I've been reading slashdot since 1998. These two stories from michael today have got to be the lamest entries I've ever seen on here. I'm very disappointed. At least this one isn't as bad as the Nokia one.
I would like to plug some of my company's products too.
-Lod
Has no one in this thread ever heard of peer to peer?
All the examples of "I could have used this when..." could easily have been solved by simply setting your wireless cards into peer mode and making an ad hoc wireless network. This is quick and easy with every network client app I have seen; does no one use this feature or what?
Why is this device any better than just bridging your ethernet to your wireless peer network?
I have the 614+, at the time it was 200, but I've seen it as low as $49, have had it for going on 2yrs now and it's been a good appliance, you need to be running windows to upgrade the firmware. Range has been over 150' using both an Orinoco Gold card and the DWL-650+ D-link card
~corporate tool, but employed~
I work as a Sales Engineer for an enterprise software company, and I can think of a number of uses for this type of product. Just to clarify, a 'Sales Engineer' is generally someone who is in charge of all pre-sales engineering duties, such as requirements gathering, proof of concept, etc.
First of all, I do a lot of work in hotel rooms, and I like to take advantage of the mobility of my laptop. I hate working at the cramped desk that most hotels give you, so I usually end up working on the bed, and wireless would be very helpful. Second, I feel that using a hardware NAT router in a hotel room is a 'Good Thing'. Yes, some of the software firewalls are nice, and will keep you protected - I feel however that the additional security layer is nice judging by the sort of activity that I see on the LANs of most hotels. Third, business travelers often have need for impromptu meetings while on the road. With this unit everyone can share a single ethernet jack to get some work done. Finally, the reason that might be most relevant only to other SE's like me....for a lot of proof-of-concept or demo environments it is imperative that you carry a router and other gear to emulate real world network conditions for your presentation/demonstration. This sure beats carrying a full-sized Linksys.
Consider yourself enlightened.
\/\/oobie
Second, I would know about this product because I read slashdot and have seen Airport Express postings, which have had comments referring to these. I also recently purchased the aforementioned Asus WL330 access point. (Which has been revised; see a review of older model here.) This is a very good product that I've been very happy with.
In my opionion, a PR page on a small access point, which follows the same from Apple, ( here, here, and here) is not newsworthy.
Frankly, if I _were_ a subscriber, which I have considered doing at length, I would be pissed that stories like this show up. I want insightful reviews and bleeding edge stuff I won't see other places for weeks. Not product pages to DLink products. I can go to dlink.com for that.
THIS is why I said what I said.
As opposed to your post?Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
One of the issues I have with all these "travel" APs that I've seen is that none of them have a modem in them. Most of the places I've had to set up a temporary wireless net when travelling don't have any existing network access aside from a phone line. I wish Apple had left out the USB port and dropped in a modem instead.
Guess the graphite Airport keeps travelling!
I don't see any scenario when a bunch of people suddenly needs to share some Internet connection.
How about a team of CPA's in for a large company's audit and certification of financials? Or sales tax investigators doing a large audit? A team of programmers in for a database migration? I bet the insurance company response teams in Florida could even have benefitted from such a device. Once you start thinking along these lines, the list starts growing and growing.
Just a few weeks ago my family and I, along with two other families spent a week vacationing in some cabins at a camping resort. I brought 4 notebooks and a LinkSys WAP along with some multiplayer games. It rained two nights in a row, but the kids had a blast playing games. We had quite a crowd of family, friends and even passers-by hooting and hollering on our front porch.
This got me to thinking how nice it would be if I could find a tiny AP to carry in my daily bag for similar purposes. Granted, most cheap AP's aren't that big, but this D-Link device looks small enough to fit in one of the unused diskette pockets in my bag, and since its USB-powered, I can leave the power-supply at home.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
From the KeyGhost installation instructions: "To install the KeyGhost, all you need to do is plug it in between your keyboard cable and your computer."
Obviously, these require no expertise to install. Obviously, also, you would look for these on any computer you used.
It might be good to carry one of those laptop-size USB keyboards, and use it instead of the cyber cafe keyboard. That would guard against keystroke loggers inside the keyboard. USB keyboards install automatically; there is no need to detach the normal keyboard.
I find alot of things that are "USB powered" aren't. They usually need two ports and even then depend on out of spec power levels. For example, my Lacie 4x slimline DVD writer can't draw enough power from the two USB ports on my Toshiba M200. I tried a d-link USB2 card that was supposedly rated at 500ma per port (The spec maximum) but either that's not enough power or the Toshiba doesn't deliver enough power to the card. There's just no way to get it to work. On my desktop, plug it into 2 USB ports and it works fine.
I'm debating either getting a small lightweight UPS around 300VA or if I'm better off cutting up some USB device or cable and wiring in a 4AA holder to put batteries in.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
I bought myself a WRT54G Router (about $60) for a similar purpose. After uploaded 3rd party firmware It has a similar functionality (no USB).
They both can be an access point, client or router.
The WRT54G is bigger, needs power, but hooks up to your computer via Ethernet and requires no driver.
I wanted a wireless client that did not use my CPU for a controller and did not taint the kernel. The WRT54G does a great job.
This site will interest most(all?) of Slashdot readers:
http://www.everythingusb.com/
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Simpy