Wireless router opinions please

[SuperDave]

I guess I'm the oddball .... I use a mac, and have an Airport. (802.11) and it is great! No complaints, just that mac's don't get much respect!

[m396 #00-011]

I got the Dell w/ my laptop. I don't know who makes it for them, but it works great, no complaints.

[whodat]

Another D-Link here, I have the DI-714P+  I chose the D-Link because of the built in firewall and print server.

Just curious if you changed your firewall config from the default settings?? If you're worried about someone hacking you should check out the PIX 501, those are pretty sweet and only about $450-500.

 

Only issue I had with DLink was distance, returned it and went for Linksys. Got more range out of it, so im a little happier.

I've kept everything default, just turned on the Encryption to 128bit and I update the firmware as needed. Its capable of 256bit, but unless you run D-Link all the way around, you might not be able to use the full 256bit encryption its capable of.

 

Haven't had any problems with distance, although I don't go to far from the router

[rico750sxi]

Another question, can I mix and match. What I mean is can I use a LinkSys router with a card from someone else? Sorry, I'm green when it comes to wireless. Microsoft sells a wireless card for the xbox and I want to make sure it will work with whatever router I get.

 

Thanks

[Rays B4U]

I'm using the Linksys WRT54G AP w/4 port router and my daughter's laptop has a differant brand of card. Works fine. But I have heard of some brands not liking to play well with other brands, so it might depend on the setup.

[lrymal]

I guess I'm the oddball .... I use a mac, and have an Airport. (802.11) and it is great! No complaints, just that mac's don't get much respect!

The Airports are great and used here locally for the local cyber shops. My only issue with the 'ports are their cost when compared against D-Link and LinkSys. I use a D-Link at my home, mainly because how cheap it was.

 

For reference both my G4 Tower Mac, iBook, and my Dell D600 Latitude take to the D-Link very easily in my DSL broadband. Very simple to set up and any maintenance can be done via the web interface.

 

Another observation..., our little white iBook has easily about 50 feet more range on talking to the D-Link than the Dell D600 notebook.

[creaker]

Another question, can I mix and match. What I mean is can I use a LinkSys router with a card from someone else? Sorry, I'm green when it comes to wireless. Microsoft sells a wireless card for the xbox and I want to make sure it will work with whatever router I get.

Baseline wireless 802.11 hardware should be compatible with other 802.11 hardware.

 

The exception is when mfgs decide to add non-standard features, like D-Link's "Xtreme" series (for double bandwidth)... in those cases you best better stick with all hardware being the same brand and the same feature set. Otherwise there really isn't much point (e.g. you buy a D-Link Xtreme Router and Linksys NIC - you aren't getting any benefit from the D-Link at all). But they should still place nice with each other.

 

Other than that, I'd get 802.11G wireless if I were you. Make sure all the cards & router are G compliant. And make sure you use some form of encryption on the signal (WPE at least, WPA preferably). There are half a dozen wireless networks I can access from home and none of them have any encryption turned on and most of them are still set to the default SSID.