On Fri, 3 May 2002, olearysheehy at goldengate.net wrote: > I am going to be setting up an access point in the Midway area of St. > Paul primarily for use by folks on our block club. I'm going to try > and come to the meeting on Tuesday. I am interested in knowing whether > anyone has recommendations for AP hardware that is > > a) stable and robust and > b) relatively transparent ... easy to figure out and set up. Well, if you want really good hardware, buy Cisco. *G* Otherwise, Linksys's WAP11 V2.2 is supposed to be pretty decent.. they ditch the USB port, set it up so that you admin it via a web interface (no more SNMP.. *whine*), and it's got a 100mW transmitter per default (which is actually clean, unlike the older ones that you had to hack to be 100mW). > SeattleWireless has positive references to SMC on their site. > > Also, I am seeing some stuff on 802.11a protocol. Supposed to be > faster. That's probably not going to matter given a cable internet > connection. However, does anyone have any thoughts about whether this > new protocol is more stable and robust than 802.11b? I've seen > concerns raised about interoperability. My suspicion is that for a > public site, it's better to choose a common denominator like 802.11b. First -- there aren't any outdoor-approved antennas for 802.11a yet. Besides that caveat, it's supposed to be able to do about as well as 802.11b, range-wise.. you do get high speeds when you're close, but once you get a ways away, you get about the same speeds as 802.11b. For what you're doing, 802.11b is the way to go -- that's what everyone already has a card for. > I admit freely that I am not a techie ... just someone who is > interested in making wireless access available to myself and > neighbors. -- Nate Carlson <natecars at real-time.com> | Phone : (952)943-8700 http://www.real-time.com | Fax : (952)943-8500