[vox-tech] Seeking Router Advice

[Alex Mandel]

On 10/29/2010 11:01 AM, Bob Scofield wrote:
> I am asking the following questions in regard to a wireless router I use in my 
> home.
> 
> I recently attended a class where I was told that one should use WPA2 if it is 
> available.  I have an old D-Link (DI 614) which is not longer supported by 
> D-Link.  It's been good.  I've had no problems with it.  Right now I've got 
> it set up with WEP and MAC filtering.  I could use WPA, but it cannot use 
> WPA2.
> 
> I saw a discussion on the Internet where people were saying that WPA2 is not 
> really better than WPA.  People were saying that WPA2 was just being pushed 
> so that vendors could sell more products.  Here are three question:
> 
> 1) Should I get a new router just to use WPA2?
Depends, what is the density of your neighborhood? How strong is your
current router (ie how far outside your walls does the signal reach?
Would plugging into a wire be acceptable for things that you're paranoid
about (ie Credit Card transactions).
Sorry I'm not familiar with the difference between WPA and WPA2.

> 2)  How new would the computers in my family have to be to use WPA2?
WPA2 in my understanding is a software thing, so theoretically any
hardware could run it if the proper driver is supplied. Doable on any
recent version of linux, but on other OS's with older hardware may not
be possible without a vendor provided driver.
> 
> 3)  If I did get a new router, what would be a good one to get?
> 
I've had good times with Netgear and ASUS routers. My 2 current ones are
also open source variants that are hackable, and include things like
OpenVPN etc.

> I've been happy with D-Link, but I've had occasions where my laptop with an 
> Atheros card could not connect with a Linksys router in Linux, but could 
> connect with Windows.
> 
> Thank you for any advice.
> 
> Bob

Enjoy,
Alex