igratton

Ok,

I'm about to split my house network again so that I can have wireless links to 2 laptops, fixed rj45 links to my server and workstations.

I am currently have an NTL cable connection going straight into the back of my workstations 100mb lan card and no external internet sharing on my existing network.

Can anyone recommend a good cable router that offers the following.

* A few regular RJ45 ports (for my workstation and server)
* A print server (not that important but a nice to have)
* Wireless lan support for laptops and other pcs
* Firewall
* port routing (machine on the lan will be running a dyndns website)
* etc

I think Dlink, Netgear buffalo do them but I'm not sure which is going to be the best. There is also some debate over which standard to go for 802.11b or 802.11g - I would prefer the higher bandwidth option to be a little more future proof. They all seem to be about £100-130 quid (I don't need a £2000+ cisco router - its my house)

Primary OSs W2K Server, WinXP Pro on workstations

I'm sure some of you guys will have done exactly the same thing so you already know what works and what doesn't

Answers on a postcard.

Regards

Ian.

carl

I have the DLink 714P+ which does everything you want. Was originally going to get the Netgear FM114P but they seemed to be out of stock everywhere in the UK. The DLink stuff does 22 Mbit/s, too

The DLink router supports DynDNS on-board, so you don't have to run the DynDNS client on your server. Not sure how well it works, because my IP address hasn't changed for a looooong time.

[Edited by carl - 19/03/2003 13:12:55]

igratton

Excellent

Thats the one I was thinking of. The new one with 11g support supposedly becomes available next week so I will probably wait for that one.

My biggest fear was losing the ability to have a dyndns alias mapped onto my box - it would cause a major problem if I lost it as I'm hosting our XTR2 website from home right now.

Cheers

Ian.

carl

802.11g standard is not yet ratified, and works over a shorter range than 802.11b. I think 802.11b is allegedly over 200m in free space, but in a house 10-20m is more like it. IIRC 802.11g 'draft' standard is only 50m, so inside a fairly large house it could be a problem.

BTW for hosting web servers, the traditional approach is to take the server to the bandwidth, not bring the bandwidth to the server
Hosting a website on your own box via a domestic broadband connexion is silly in two ways: (1) it's asymmetric the wrong way and (2) you can't do stuff like guarantee the uptime, have proper redundancy, etc.

RoadrunnerV2

802.11g goes the same distance as 802.11b. Its 802.11a that has crap range because it runs on 5GHz band instead of b and g running on 2.4GHz

The thing to watch out for on 802.11g 'Draft' products are :-

Interoperability between 11g manufactures - Therefore use same manufacture
802.11b products degrading the performance of 11g WLAN - Don't run any 11b stuff

Other than that you will be fine. BTW - I might be mistaken but I think D-Link promise to replace any of their draft products with compliant ones if they don't comply with the final certification

[Edited by RoadrunnerV2 - 19/03/2003 16:30:10]

mega_stream

I ordered my Netgear Wireless Lan kit today

Got a good deal

Netgear DG824M Wireless ADSL Router £130
Netgear Wireless PCMCIA Card £30
Netgear Wireless USB Adaptor £30

Total inc VAT £223

igratton

Yeah - I know web hosting is not the best from my home office. The site doesn't need 24/7 availability as it only really serves very small amounts of users ( < 1000 hits a day). NTL inbound bandwidth is a little worse than ADSL - but its fine for now.

For the time being I'm keeping it this way as its free - and I don't need to rely on an somebody else - if it goes wrong its my own fault (or my cats have pi$$ed on the power supply LOL).

I hope the .11g stuff is going to stretch from my office room to the garden - its where I'd like to spend some of the summer - if we have one this year that is.

Ian.

Charlie_Boy

Mega_stream, where did you get the kit from?

mega_stream

Insight

Got a good discount as we have an account, paid for it on my switch card and got it at company discount rates

Chris L

One of the guys at work was recommending the buffalo unit - 4 port switch, DSL router, stateful firewall and wireless base station. You also get a wireless PCMCIA card thrown for £130 - pretty good.

Chris

gregh

i'm writing this from a draytek
but it doesn't have printserver. does everything else you want. wireless strength seems to vary dependingn on position.

dunno if you need a built in adsl modem or not - I got bitten when my first router didn't have built in modem.

cheers,

greg

ps did u get my westie private message?

igratton

I did gregh.

I think its a done deal - do you want to se a photograph before we sort out the cash/delivery etc ???

Send me another private message on the westi bbs.

Ian.