No strings
My recent descent into old age was eased somewhat by a call from Lewis a couple of weeks ago. In America, on one of his frequent business trips, he wanted to get me something to celebrate my dotage and calling from a computer store suggested he would bring back a wireless router and a notebook card for my laptop. After much "no, no, no I don't want anything" (for all of 2 seconds if that) I caved in and accepted his very generous presents. He arrived back a couple of weeks ago and I got my hands on the lovely shiny new kit. Thanks again Lewis.
First thing was to get a power supply as the one supplied was for the USA only. This was harder than I anticipated as the DC power requirements were quite beefy (5v @2000mA) but my EE bitch managed to secure one from RS Components. Unfortunately, in my eagerness, I had tried a different 5v power supply and as it turns out blew an internal fuse on the PCB. The Electronic Engineer bitch soon got that sorted so I was ready to cook on gas again. Next problem to rear it's head was a lack of power cable for my laptop as I'd left it at work. I got the router installed and it self configured itself based on my existing ADSL router's settings. So everything looked fine. I brought the laptop power cable home tonight and immediately fired it up to check the network. Perfect first time. I'm getting about 90% signal strength downstairs in the kitchen and sun lounge, about 65-80% in the living room and about 40% in the bathroom. First class, 54Mbps achieved while lying on the sofa cant be bad.
Next important thing to do is configure the security encryption (WPA-PSK). While on the sofa I noticed there is a very strong wireless network signal close by so this is doubly important. Must be the neds across the road. I'll also try positioning the router to see what increase in signal strength I can get.
So what will I use this wireless network for? The ability to check the net from anywhere in the house, nice. Lie on the sofa and monitor the state of the markets and maybe consider making a binary bet, very nice. Deliver music on demand to any area of the house with the help of a networked digital media player, lovely.
posted by Ricky Dee at
9:03 PM
1 Comments:
I am pleased all the kit worked, I was worried there for a while, and disappointed I didn’t test it before taking it back.
Before you do anything else, I would recommend you update the firmware on the router, assuming there is an update available. Often this requires losing any configuration changes you have made, so you want to be working off the latest software before you do any configuration work. First step after that is done, is to change the default password for the router configuration, then save off a router configuration file (most configuration software has this option) that is “default”, so in the likely event that when playing with the configuration you don’t like what you have done, you can refresh the settings without having to hardware reset the thing and do the password setup again.
In addition to the security setup for wireless, which you really must do, usually these routers can provide a firewall. These give a nice level of security, and provided you aren’t doing any web or mail hosting, or online gaming, they are pretty easy to configure. As you effectively have two routers, you can even create a demilitarized zone between them. That can be useful if you want to do web hosting, by allowing you to place your server “between” the routers. Meaning you can still maintain a nice secure LAN behind a tight firewall.
Configuring firewalls to work with VPN is straightforward enough, you just need to be sure the required port is open, needless to say, this kind of thing is easily tested. Last piece of advice is that once you are finished configuring and happy with how it all works, save off a configuration file somewhere it will get backed up.
By
Anonymous, at 16 March 2005 12:07
Post a Comment
<< Home