[geeks] Wireless Router reccomendations

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Apr 13, 2008, at 20:04 , Lionel Peterson wrote:

>> From: Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
>> Date: 2008/04/12 Sat PM 01:03:33 CDT
>> To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>> Subject: Re: [geeks] Wireless Router reccomendations
>
> <snip suggestion to get a WRT54GL>
>
>> Well, there is one reason: The WRT54 series is slow as molasses,
>> bogging down under relatively light network loads, especially if you
>> use any features besides the most basic.
>
> What about a seperate access point and router? Smoothwall[0]/ 
> Vyatta[1] on a samll PC (like a PIII with a smaller (180 Watt?) PS? 
> [2]) and a low-end Cisco AP (seen on eBay for around $100 or less  
> with power supplies and power injectors - search "cisco Aironet  
> 1200"[3], for instance)?

I guess it is a matter of preference.

I am looking for something to make a gigabit router out of myself.   
Very little in the consumer market will do the job, and the commercial  
stuff is way over my budget range.

So I'm trying to find the smallest system I can with gigabit ports and  
thought of running one of the BSD systems from flash.

>> I like them, but mine frequently is a bottleneck, and I don't even
>> have that many NAT or other rules.
>
> I've not heard that before, but all I have on my WRT54G is my  
> Comcast WAN connection, a DMZ machine, and my 24 port switch - I  
> don't bother it with any traffic it doesn't need to see, maybe that  
> makes a difference?

It seems to be firewall and redirection that puts them under the most  
load.

Plus, a whole lot of connections will do it if there are any rules at  
all.

> Not that I doubt your words, but can you point to any sort of  
> discussion on that topic? I'm interested and sort of half-heartedly  
> looking for an excuse to go "professional grade" for my router/AP  
> needs... ;^)

I would not expect it to be hard to find.  Faster speed is one of the  
reasons for some of the alternate firmware.  Some people use it  
precisely so they can turn almost every function it has off and use  
the bare minimum.

I see the biggest issues when I am using software which makes a large  
number of connections to a lot of different hosts.  The unit begins to  
get hot, overall speed slows down, and it becomes very difficult to  
login to the WWW server.

Ditto the little Linksys WGA54 game adapter I have.  It also slows  
down and gets  hot enough to burn you when it is under load.

To be fair, for such limited memory and processing power, these units  
do very good, but you certainly can overload them.

I also have to reset my WRT54G sometimes if it has been under a heavy  
load for a long period of time.  It eventually just stops responding.   
Seems to mostly affect the wireless networking.


-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."