Subject: Re: What 802.11 wireless gear do you recommend?
To: Michael Graff <explorer@flame.org>
From: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@research.att.com>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 02/04/2001 22:15:32
In message <v6g0ht7sal.fsf@kechara.flame.org>, Michael Graff writes:
>cgd@netbsd.org (Chris G. Demetriou) writes:
>
>> My understanding is that the underlying hardware in the Airport and
>> RG-1000 is the same.  Lucent hardware is obviously the strong favorite
>> in the responses I got -- there were some mentions of other gear, but
>> in fact little experience with things other than those above.
>
>Rumor has it you cannot use any of the existing software to put the
>longer encryption key into a gold card, should you replace the one
>in the RG-1000 with one.

I haven't taken mine apart yet -- is there an actual PCMCIA card inside?

Of course, the 802.11 crypto isn't very good.  See
http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/isaac/wep-faq.html

>
>The apple airport works fine.
>
>Also, the RG-1000 picks a rather annoying network name, and this
>cannot be changed so I was told.  This means you're screwed if you
>want to put two together and roam 'tween them.

Does that really matter?  I never set the network name to anything, so 
my card happily locks onto any net it hears.  Of course, I wouldn't be 
surprised if they did that, if only to avoid cannibalizing sales of the 
bigger access points.



		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb