Cycled the router and it connects now

Post #352,551 by drook 12/29/11 10:28:58 PM Reply	Cycled the router and it connects now I suspect the router is getting flaky. I have to power cycle it ever couple of days for the Wii to reconnect to it. The laptop never had a problem until the last couple of days. Will see if it continues the next couple of days and write it off as a lost week. -- Drew
Post #352,552 by scoenye 12/29/11 11:31:04 PM Reply	Glad that's sorted... Unfortunately, the current crop of wireless routers out there is downright scary. I've had the best of luck so far with the older Linksys WRT54 chassis reprogrammed with DD-WRT firmware. Proxim APs are good out of the box but are pricey. I wouldn't touch Cisco's current SOHO line with a 10' pole (we have a dozen WAP200 units and some 8 port POE switches at work. Even under light duty, the WAP200 only last a few days needing a reboot, and the switches require IE for configuration.)
Post #352,569 by drook 12/30/11 3:21:08 PM Reply	Been thinking about flashing this one Hmm ... seems this one (Linksys BEFW11S4) doesn't have a third-party firmware available, and I've got the latest official one from Cisco/Linksys. Guess I'll wait until I switch to cable internet and get a modem/router then. -- Drew
Post #352,571 by folkert 12/30/11 4:19:14 PM Reply	Stay away from Cisco's SOHO stuff... Even a lot of enterprise stuff... total crap. I've been dealing with a lot of friends lately with Wireless gear that just dies. It all turns out to be Cisco crap. Or Linksys (owned by Cisco) stuff. I mean they are paying a couple hundred dollars and then they are charging $70 for support per hour to fix something they can't... and end up charging them to tell people its broken. A lot of Wireless antenna and transmitters are badly tuned to each other, the transmitter then blows itself up or goes all whacky and its power factor efficiency goes to the sub 5% arena... meaning you have to be 3 or less feet from it to get any signal. Just stay away from it. They last stuff I used was the WRTG54S and even that was flaky, it was still a good linksys design, but re-designed by Cisco and cheapened up to the point it had less RAM and processor that its previous incarnation.
Post #352,573 by drook 12/30/11 4:36:45 PM Reply	Forgot to include the quote I found Lots of people saying the BEFW11S4 needs to be power cycled every couple of days. One guy even put his on a Chirstmas light timer so it would power cycle every day in the middle of the night. I might do that myself. -- Drew
Post #352,576 by static 12/30/11 5:50:47 PM Reply	People need to be more active in returning crap. "I'd like to return this, please." "But you bought this two months ago." "And it's died. I'd like a refund please." ... Wade. Static Scribblings http://staticsan.blogspot.com/
Post #352,593 by hnick 12/31/11 8:20:56 AM Reply	There have been a lot of changes. In 2000, all the Cisco wireless stuff was based on Aironet, which they acquired. At that time, Cisco was still making their own chip sets and they had a pretty classy product. There was some degradation in converting the access points to IOS but it was still pretty good. There was an A radio they added that was made by an operation they acquired in Australia, which never really worked out well, but it worked. When the G radios came out, they outsourced the chip set to Atheros (never did get the source code for the drivers), and things started going down hill. They also started making more of their chips in China. Cisco started regarding the wireless stuff as a commodity and there was a lot of talk about disbanding the client group entirely. Most of the code was moved to Bangalore for testing and maintenance. Later still they phased out the autonomous access points for centrally controlled AP's which were produced by an acquisition on the east coast. The client group was back in favor again but it was split between the Ohio group, east coast group, and Bangalore. A few years ago the east coast operation was reduced by over half and the Ohio group by a third. Last November, 2 more of the Ohio client group were "early retired". That leaves 5. It's safe to say that Cisco has changed for the worse. I'm sorry to see it go.
Post #352,604 by drook 12/31/11 1:08:00 PM Reply	Ripe market for "Apple-fying" With more people getting TVs with wireless built in, plus all the portables we're carrying, it would be really nice to have a single device you could plug in wherever the wire happens to come into your house, with enough range and a simple interface to easily connect all your devices and only your devices. -- Drew
Post #352,606 by hnick 12/31/11 2:09:10 PM Reply	I'd agree with that. The client team was, for a while, working on a subset of that idea, but for the enterprise market. The project went by the wayside. One of Cisco's main problems is that their idea of innovation is to find a company doing something they like, and buy it. That adds another layer of new executives who immediately start empire building. All priorities are shuffled. There is no point in taking a long view because there will be another power shift in a year and a half to two years. Anything that can not go from scratch to making a LOT of money in that time is not particularly viable. If some other company already had such a product under development, Cisco would probably be interested in buying it. Then all the execs would piss in the soup to give it the corporate flavor and we'd be back to the original topic.
Post #352,620 by scoenye 1/1/12 12:00:07 AM Reply	WiFi protected setup? http://www.theregist...fi_not_protected/ Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) is used to secure access to wireless networks and requires each router to have a unique eight-digit PIN. the protocol used by Wi-Fi Protected Setup reports back after the first four digits have been entered, and indicates if they are right, which means they can be attacked separately. The last of the eight digits is just a checksum, so having got the first four the attacker only then has to try another 1,000 combinations (identifying the other three digits) and the entire PIN is known. Oops...
Post #352,628 by static 1/1/12 1:50:40 AM Reply	That's worse than WEP. And I still use WEP because I had one device that only did WEP. And I couldn't be arsed changing it. (Besides, I have MAC control on the firewall, so if some neighbour guesses my key and gets on, he's still going nowhere. :-) Wade. Static Scribblings http://staticsan.blogspot.com/

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