OT: Wireless routers

[Bill Akers]

Fairlight wrote:
> Four score and seven years--eh, screw that!  At about Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at
> 08:00:11AM -0400, Brian K. White blabbed on about:
>> The D-link DIR-655 is hands down the best, both in terms of throughput,
>> latency, firmware software features, stability, responsiveness (the cpu
>> and ram is actually up to the task), ability to actually handle gigabit
> 
> Not here.  The only thing better about it over the DI-624 was a cleaner UI.
> Ok...know ytalk?  Latency issues every few seconds for up to half a line on
> a session to a wired system.  Unacceptable.

I have 2 ea DIR-624's at home and have never seen any latency 
issues. I used one of them at work when we were conducting training 
on the new order entry program, before we set up an in-house 
wireless network, and we had eight to ten wireless notebooks on line 
using the built in wireless system with the 4 inch antenna, without 
any complaints at all. And this order entry system is a resource hog 
of the greatest magnitude, both for local execution and data 
transfers; and the program transfers update information every time 
it is accessed after being off-line to the particular computer.
I also have a d-link wireless card for my desktop that worked fine 
with the router until I disabled it when I hooked the DIR-624 WAN 
port to the DSL Router and hooked the desktop directly to the 
router, but I still use my Lenovo Laptop wireless with no issues 
whatsoever. I just have no problems with the DIR-624 and the 
firewall is excellent for such an economical little beast.

> 
>> The only downside I see to the D-Link DIR-655 is not being able to use
>> OpenWRT or dd-wrt.
> 
> Or being able to do things without latency bursts even when at 54Mbps with
> 75-82% signal.  I've had rock solid connections at hotels on 42%.
> 
>> I had an early version Linksys WRT54G with openwrt and it was rock
>> solid. It was fine out of the box too with the original firmware. So have
>> several others been at client sites and friends houses.  For WRT54G and
>> openwrt and for quality in general you do have to know to look for old
>> versions on ebay, do not get new ones. They aren't improved, they are
>> the other form of progress, as in "ok so now that it works, let's see
>> how much we can get away with removing...". Some versions came with as
>> much as 8M of flash and 32M of ram, and some came with as little as 2M of
>> flash and 8M of ram.
> 
> Irrelevant.  Sony does that with PlayStation products in every generation.
> I had a 3rd model PS2--the last with hardware based PSX emulation.  They
> removed firewire a couple years later for the slim version because it had
> no use.
> 
> Complaining about a router's memory size only becomes relevant if you have
> a need for large ACLs, or if you do BGP.  If you run out of RAM for BGP, it
> drops the whole routing table on the ground and dies--happened at my ISP
> once.  And consumer level gear doesn't do BGP.
> 
> Other than that, you're looking at memory sizes for non-supported,
> unintended uses, like DD-WRT.  That's not the mfgr's problem, any more than
> it's Fender's problem if you want to put in oversized pickups that the
> model was never intended to hold.
> 
> Seriously, DIR-615, hell.  WRT54GN, instant heaven.  Played COD4 for 3hrs
> without one hiccup last night, and I couldn't go 3min on the D-Link without
> issues.

Linksys products are a great deal better since CISCO bought them. We 
are now using Linksys network switches, in places where we need 8 to 
24 ports in a localized area, with excellent results. We are 
beginning to get brave and starting to use linksys as our central 
switches and routers.
But we use Cisco as our wireless access points for connecting to 
computers on the production floor. They cut through all the 
electro-magnetic garbage in an admirable manner.

Bill Akers

> 
> mark->