That thing. It's sold under a variety of Brand/Model names. The two I bought for CDN$22.50 each are "Blanc Networks BW-54R11" branded. But the more common variety in the USA is apparently the "GigaFast WF719-CAPR".

It's a bog-standard single-antenna 802.11B+G Wifi router. Runs Linux (2.4.18) internally, and has a decent web config GUI. Range is *excellent*, despite only a single (installed) antenna (there's a solder pad inside, for a second one).

Did I mention it was *cheap* ? I got two of them. One thing it can do, after upgrading firmware to v1.4.1, is a decent WDS function. Combined Client/AP on one channel, so I'm currently connected to one acting as a repeater, which is relaying to the other one upstairs acting as the actual router/gateway to the xDSL connection here (inlaws' house).

Okay, so I'm easily amused.

But if you ever need another Wifi access point (AP), and see one of these on the shelf, rest assured that it is very capable and great value for the money.

EDIT: more info here.

Cheers

Following up on my own thread.

I liked this beast so much that there are now two of them here.

Our next door neighbour has kindly agreed to let us leach off of their DSL line until ours gets reinstated *late next week* (arghh!!). So to make the connection between houses, we're using the two cheapy wireless routers in WDS mode, protected with WPA2(AES).

Of course, our "lan rooms" are at opposite ends of the two houses from each other, so today SWMBO helped me string cat5 across our basement to the garage, which gets the signal closer to the neighbour's house.

Slight complication: the cat5 run seems to be too long for our switch to handle (WTF?), so we had to insert a hub into the middle of the run to amplify things.

Later I'll try a fully bridged* setup, so that our domain (rtr.ca) can become visible again over this temporary setup. (* as in, a single xDSL modem with two active PPPoE sessions up, one for the neighbours dynamic-IP, and a second connection for our rtr.ca static-IP).

now thats a good neighbour, when I recently moved I went directly to walmart and bought a linksys wireless card for my pc as the local cable company said it would be 2+ weeks to get things switched around. I had almost 10 wireless connections to pick from in this building. I could only get about 80 KB/s but it was enough to hold me over.

Looks nice. I'm partial to the Buffalo WHR-G54S, which run about $40-45. They run all the standard open firmwares, and the five I've deployed have been utterly reliable, and have a nice strong range. I doubt I'll be trying any others until 802.11n comes down in the sub $50 range, as I've got a critical mass of these deployed.

I've run into some really bad ethernet ports in seemingly decent computers, but I've never found a switch to switch connection that doesn't function over a certified network run.

Matthew