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Wireless Networking

Journal jawtheshark's Journal: Buying wireless gear and realizing it's useless 7

Journal by jawtheshark

Some of you might now already, but my sister has become my neighbour recently. She lives in the apartment in the block next to me. Being a nice brother, I said she could use my wireless to access the Internet. Alas, the signal doesn't come as far as her living room where her desk is. Tough shit.

So, again, being a nice brother, I borrowed her my laptop and set it up in the room closest to my apartment where the signal is still strong enough. So, I told her she should get her own DSL as soon as possible, because the Wireless solution isn't going to work.

Today, I was in the local supermarket and noticed a Linksys wireless router on sale for 65€. Now my idea was: "Cool, I surely can set this router to be a repeater and set it up at my sisters place". I also thought: "Cool, she can use this as her ADSL modem as soon as she got her own line". Somehow I didn't realise that if I manage to set up the repeater she won't *need* an ADSL line, because she can use mine! Duh!

I tested the damned thing, and no it can't be set to be a repeater. Why, is beyond me... after all a repeater is a much simpler device than a router, yet repeaters get sold at 99€ here (from Linksys, to make a valid comparison). Why are repeaters so expensive and routers not? It's a bit like making Yugos more expensive than Porsches...

Anyway, can't use OpenWRT because I've got version 7.0, which is the only one with Atheros chipset. Sucks to be me...

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Buying wireless gear and realizing it's useless More

Buying wireless gear and realizing it's useless

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  • and that seems expensive anyway, I just picked up a netgear router for $19.99.

    • Europe... where nothing is cheap...

      We get 1€ = 1$ conversions if we're lucky.... The UK people are even worse off. Believe me, 65€ for a router is a cheap deal.

  • Should you be willing to sell it, I'm in need of an additional router...

    • I'll first try to make a separate network and setup the router to route to my other router. (Now that was quite a sence, right?) I'll also ask if my sister still wants to have her own DSL, because if she wants it, this could be her router. After all she'll need one.

      When all that is negative, I'll contact you and you'll get it for half of what I paid.

  • Quality and interop is terrible since the Cisco acquisition. I fought for months with one of their repeaters - from on of their routers! WPA2 was never possible. There are numerous other cases I know of or have seen.

    Good cheap gear is still made by Netgear.

    I dumped my Linksys setup for my older Netgear AP as a repeater, and a Ruckus router. Fantastic setup. I can use my laptop in the Solarium - and outdoors.
    • In all fairness, Linksys were pretty good at putting out shitty products before Cisco bought them.
    • Next time, I'll ask you first. ;-) My experience with Linksys had been good, so I didn't think twice. The only product I have had trouble with is a PCI Wifi card that refuses to do WPA2. WPA works fine, so I settled for that. My PSP doesn't support WPA2 anyway, so....

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