CompUSA 802.11b wireless rounter $19.99 plus shipping

[Braxus]

There are about 4 left at the San Bruno Store if anyone is interested still.

 

[Odarby]

What kind of card do you need for your computer with this??
Is there any deals for the card??

 

[tedinde]

Been using this router for 6 months, with 2 Netgear USB wireless adapters, no problems, always connects. Flashed newetst firmware when i got it.

 

[SearchMaster]

Originally posted by: Odarby
What kind of card do you need for your computer with this??
Is there any deals for the card??

You should be golden with any USB or PCI 802.11b wireless adapter. The "b" technology has pretty much faded away, so it's pretty easy to find great deals on these adapters. Most likely you'll find the USB ones much cheaper - usually in the $10 range with rebates and such. The 802.11g technology is the latest and greatest, and is faster than this is, but for general networking (printer sharing, Internet sharing, etc.) this is more than sufficient.

 

[DPK]

What do I need in addition to this for two PCs to use my DSL? I would like to convert to wireless.

 

[SearchMaster]

Originally posted by: DPK
What do I need in addition to this for two PCs to use my DSL? I would like to convert to wireless.

This router will plug into your DSL. If one of your PCs is close enough to it, you might consider plugging it into this router directly, in which case you'll need a network card for your PC and a Cat5 ethernet cable. Your performance will be faster and more consistent with a wired connection. If not, pick up two USB 802.11b adapters (can usually be found for $10-$25 after rebate), or PCI 802.11b adapters, probably around $30 each. The network cards are pretty cheap (under $10) and the cable is another $5.

 

[RagingBITCH]

Originally posted by: CheetahMk2
**EXCELLENT** cheap WiFi router/bridge/WAP combo. It has all the basic security options, and as long as you update the firmware, it has GREAT reception. It goes across our 3.5k sq ft house just fine, even on the second floor. As long as you update the firmware with the Gigafast clone's, it doesn't have signal resets or anything.., I'm typing on it right now with a Orinoco card.

WEP is a joke, but as long as you secure it with MAC filtering, and hidden SSID broadcasts, it is good for surfing. And I doubt there are wardrivers in my neighborhood : /

GIGAFAST CLONE MODEL: WF711-APR
PDF Manual Link
Updated Firmware Link

Mac filtering is just as big of a joke - it's easily cloned, much easier than cracking a 128bit key.

 

[skasibat]

can use it as access point with the security turned on.

 

[CheetahMk2]

Originally posted by: RagingBITCH
Mac filtering is just as big of a joke - it's easily cloned, much easier than cracking a 128bit key.

Heh, you may think that, and I know what you know... The tricky bit is, most cards don't support mac cloning, they get 'invalid IP address' if they try... no support for it I guess. And if you layer security, it's all over. More trouble than it's worth, especially if your neighbor has an unsecured one : /

Above: get yourself a crossover cable, and connect that to both whatever is upstream of the 'access point' and into one of the LAN ports on the WAP router, and turn off it's DHCP server. That should do the trick.

 

[Nemesis300]

Picked one up thanks OP.

Kinda weird I have it setup in my basement yet I can still get a signal on the second floor, wouldn't of thought it would have that good of range from the basement to the first floor to the second floor .

Now if I only had a laptop of my own to use with it hehe.

 

[vegetation]

Good router, only negative point I give is the antenna is not user removable so if you plan on attaching an add-on high gain antenna then this router is not for you.

 

[unhuman]

Does this actually function as a bridge? I want to connect a thingie to my Ethernet port to live on my existing network.

 

[commOdog]

hey guys i'm having problems getting my laptop to link up.
If i set the router to default, it works fine. If i change 1 thing like the SSID or something, save and restart, My laptop can't connect.

latest firmware.

thanks

********************update*********************
I reflashed firmware again and it works fine!

 

[bryantson03]

Hi will a 2.4 wireless setup like this interfere will 2.4 ghz wireless phones in the same house? Thanks.

 

[Emulex]

no the phone will usually trash the routers' signal.

Fire up your 2.4ghz portable right next to the router and watch the laptop across the room go poof

 

[ctx1001]

hey guys check out the other wireless ap deal on the board for a uniden ap with pccard for $19.99 AR that Tarkus has posted. I got it and it is the best ap I have used in a long time. I get very good connections with either the dwl650 i have or the bundled pccard. as a bonus it even extends the range of 2.4ghz uniden cordless phones. the link to the thread:
uniden wireless ap w/pccard

 

[ziddey]

i got one of these back in august for 20bucks. as of right now, im looking for a replacement. it has died just a few weeks after the damned 90days warranty. i have 4 different wireless cards (admtek8211b, prism2, agere orinoco thing, and realtek 8180) and none of them will really work anymore. i use the realtek for most of my testing since it has a nice status page. it shows that transmits from the client are fine, but all receives (ap transmits) are trashed (crc errors). if i reset the thing, it may or may not work a little for 30 minutes afterwhich it dies again. ive tried all firmwares from 1.12 all the way through to 1.941 just for kicks without any luck. im guessing that the chip is about burnt out.

if any of you have your case open, let the wireless run for an hour or more and touch that heatsink. i took a probe to it and it read 134'f on the heatsink. hmm....

btw, for anyone who is interested, the pcmcia card that comes with it is a prism2.5. ive tried it in my laptop to see if that was the issue but it was great. although it was connected to some cheap ant, it was still enough for me to get my neighbor's signal and connect to it. not bad...

ive also tried all channel variants just to let you know (i used to use ch1 but id get interference when i neared my neighbor's house (he was also channel 1). then i moved to 6, then 11, then 14, all of which dont help now).

anyone have any ideas?

 

[ziddey]

its interesting how the latest posted firm is 1.941 but the pdf shows 1.95

 

[ziddey]

http://www.egalax.com.tw/new6.htm

 

[sharq]

The deal is now $29.99 on the web.
Just to give my 2 cents, WEP is easy to crack, SSID hiding is truly useless, and so is MAC address fitering. By using netstumbler I could see my wireless network. It picked up the SSID if you had specified one in the text bar. If there was nothing there, then it didn't report it, but otherwise it found my wireless AP. WEP is easy to monitor and crack, there are numerous books and sites that'll tell you how to, I never bothered to try and crack it, but I know if you get 500mb of traffic, you can crack the WEP key, some tools can do it with as little as 100mb of traffic. MAC addresses can be copied. Most mainstream cards that I have seen (Dlink, Netgear, Linksys) will not let you, atleast the popular ones, but if someone wants to get on your wireless network, they will have a card that can. If you use WEP and MAC filtering along with disabling DHCP, you should be ok as long as you change the WEP key atleast once a month. But, almost every article/website/book that I read, says that you should not use wireless for sensitive things, like logging into your bank account. I personally setup a Radius authentication system, but I still don't use the wirless for anything more than browsing and chat. Anything important/sensitive I do from my desktop.

 

[ziddey]

aye i was initially not paranoid but just wanted to be uber if you know what i mean in securitizing my house. i had my linux server do pptp encrypted sessions. but it wasnt really worth it and i dont really worry about getting haxored i have nothing that critical

but yeah, i managed to crack out my own system with my laptop in 4 hours. all was done in linux. first found the ssid and a mac addy. sniffed data to get the key. then went in xp, put in the data and wham. but you have to understand that unless someone had a motive to do this, they would not camp out at a residential area... and i dont believe i have any data that is "that good"

there was some lady who parked her car in front of my house one night. not sure what she was doing but i couldnt see any bright objects (laptop or whatnot. you can see easily in the night). nonetheless i phoned the police and went to bed. she was gone the next morn. didnt notice any penetration to my network

 

[sharq]

Well yes, if you live in a house, and there is distance between you and your neighbours, I doubt anyone could camp out, and I doubt your neighbours would get a signal strong enough. Some AP's will let you lower the strength of your AP. What I said was meant more for those who live in apartments, or in very close proximity to their neighbours. I am just paranoid by nature (I am one who runs a firewall with the toughest settings on each computer on my network despite the fact that they are all behind a router/firewall with NAT, and I am the only person on my network ), so once I found out how insecure the settings available in wireless AP's are, and since my desktop is a linux box, I was able to find an easy to follow tutorial, that helped me setup radius in a couple of hours. I've heard Radius isn't the final answer, but it's supposed to be alot better than WEP alone, so I figured I would do it. Plus, not all AP's have a feature to allow for Radius authentication.

 

[optimistic]

In-stock again.

I'm gonna try this out.

 

[ziddey]

its official. mine died. 90day warranty sucks the big one

 

[solo717]

haha..i guess i got lucky~~~ has been using mine for about 6 months already...just upgraded firmwares. Very good....