The last few days I have been investigating replacing my borrowed
802.11b gear with some of my own. I've been checking the net, and I am having difficulty locating equipment that has the feature combination I am hoping for and which doesn't have an angry horde of dissatisfied customers. Perhaps someone can direct me to a suitable make and model?My preferences are for:
- 802.11g + 802.11b
- diversity antenna
- antennae do not have to be replaceable (home use, not wide area)
- SPI (Stateful packet inspection)
- NAT
- WPA support preferred
- repeater function preferred (WDS)
- configurable port passthrough (e.g., so I can run servers)
- IPSec passthrough preferable, mandatory if next point not meetable
- built-in IPSec with several endpoints allowed (more than 2... 5 would be enough I think)
- reliable -- seldom drops signals, seldom overheats or freezes
- support for a small number of inside devices acceptable -- e.g.,
10 would be enough- "hackability" is *not* an important factor -- but the manufacturer must have a track record of fixing bugs.
In my investigations, I find that at places such as zdnet, that even the most popular 802.11g APs get "mediocre" to "poor" ratings from the users... and not just from one or two either. The reviews there and at amazon and epinions seem to have a fair number of reports of duds. e.g., Linksys WRT54G dropping signals, Netgear WGR614 overheating and freezing; other devices that start out fine but quickly decay. And the technical support ratings for D-Link, Netgear and Linksys don't seem to have improved in the ~18 months since I last seriously evaluated the market :(
I am -not- confined to the mass market manufacturers... e.g., I would consider Buffalo or ZyAir or Motorola. I'm a bit hesitant on Orinoco, which I know has a fairly good reputation, but the Orinoco AP I had was unstable from the beginning and these days overheats within minutes of being turned on, so I'm not entirely comfortable with Orinoco. I also had a bad experience with Netgear's return policies (on a non-wireless device), so they aren't at the top of my chart.
The Linksys BEFS11v2 I've been using has been fine, as has been the WET11 -- neither has ever given me any trouble... but it's time to let the owner have them back.
I did find a Linksys BEFSX41 firewall with VPN, but it is limited to 2 endpoints, which I don't think would be sufficient for me.
Did I mention that reliable is important? ;-) I'll be making recommendations to someone else with much less computer experience, so "set and forget" gets high marks, but bleeding edge is not the best for these particular circumstances.