802.11G access point recommendations?

Sat Aug 7 12:07:15 PDT 2004

Quoting Michael T. Halligan (michael at halligan.org):
> I'm looking to throw a couple of ap's at each end of my apartment to make
> sure we have good wireless throughout.  I'd rather not spend more than
> $200-$300 per access port (preferrably 1/2 that).  My thoughts on
> security are I'd just like to use WEP, and limit MAC addresses. Does
> anybody have a good recommendation for something like this?

2 quick options:
a) The Apple Airport (extreme = "g") was non-ugly enough for my
   ex-architect/currnet system admin parter to allow it in the
   living room.
   An Apple Airport Express (wired in or no) ($130) allows you
   to EXTEND the wireless.  And it lets you plug it into a stereo
   to stream music.  Still figuring out if BSD and the "daap" stuff
   can speak to it because I don't want to control it from a mac.

   You likely want an external antenna option.  http://www.netgate.com
   has been a great resource - small knowledgable and responsive
   company (except a week when they went on vacation).  I buy
   antenna and cards from them.

b) mentioned was the Soekris box.
   I have a couple, I've thrown them out as dedicated DNS appliances.
   As secondaries, they boot from a readonly compact flash and run
   unix.  I've gotten it down to 8MB as a wireless AP.  With 64MB
   of CF (the smallest CF's I readily find), you get ssh, a little
   web serving and what not.  From a readonly Unix.  Lose power?
   Who cares?  I used a little battery jumpstart thing as a UPS
   on it for a while.
   2-3 Ethernets + 1-2 wireless.  You won't pass more than 40mb/s
   through it in practice.
   Clearly I like my Soekris a lot.
   They all have a miniPCI slot, some of them have PCMCIA slot(s), others PCI.

   With a good pair of antenna, I can get pretty solid coverage.
   (and one was throwing about half a mile to a neighborhood uplink
    at full power/speed).

SPEED:
54Mb/s (or 11Mb/s for b) is the amount of data that leaves the
radios under ideal conditions, not the amount coming INTO the card
or leaving the card.  The DATA within is about half that.  So the
actual DATA throughput you get from a "G" is around 25mb/s (b=6Mb/s).

Both of these are faster than my Internet connection.  So that's
fine.  On occasions, I need to sync a big laptop with a house machine
(eg.  hurl all the mp3s onto the laptop when making a trip) so I'll
just use a wire and use GigE (~300mb/s > 25mb/s).

WEP:
WEP is clearly crap as david mentioned.  Like speaking piglatin in
a restaurant to keep people from listening.  LEAP helps a little
(spins keys faster).  IPSec or even PPTP to the "house server"
provides actual security.  The house server can do IPSec math just fine.

Until I messed up my IPSec setup (on the do to list), I allowed a
slow port 80 to strangers and everything if you were coming from
an IPSec connection.  SMTP always requires authentication.

802.11i has been ratified and I know nothing about it except it
supposedly deals with the WEP flaws.