If you've been following my adventures making the transition from 12
years on slow rural dial-up to wireless broadband, you may recall that
in my last report I was having problems with my old G4-upgraded
Pismo PowerBook and its
Buffalo G54 802.11g WiFi PC Card adapter dropping connections with my
wireless router, refusing to reconnect, and being generally
aggravating.
This behavior had gotten steadily worse over the past six weeks to
the point that the Pismo had become essentially unusable on wireless,
and I found myself reverting to dial-up to get my work done.
My wife was away visiting her family in Bermuda for 10 days earlier
this month, and while she was gone I experimented with using her Pismo
instead of mine. It seemed to be a little more reliable, but it
basically acted the same way on my wireless LAN.
In my earlier report, I mentioned that I wasn't getting these
connection dropouts with either the MacBook or the G4 PowerBook, so I deduced
that it must be either something about the way the Buffalo WiFi card
addresses AirPort in the Pismo (or vice-versa) - or perhaps an OS X 10.4 "Tiger" issue, since I
was using OS X 10.5
"Leopard" on the other machines. One of the frustrating aspects of
these phenomena was that sometimes the Pismo would connect and function
just fine, then after I had put it to sleep and returned sometime
later, it would refuse to connect again.
However, I've now discovered that my deduction about the problem
being the Pismo or its OS was not entirely the case. Difficulty in
diagnosing and troubleshooting the issue is that notwithstanding the
wireless broadband installer's comment that I was the first customer
he'd hooked up in our area that "knew what they were doing" in terms of
network configuration, I think that impression was more attributable to
the fact that he's a PC guy and not terribly familiar with the Mac's
typically hassle free network connectivity.
The fact is that my ignorance of wireless network technology and
engineering principles is near-encyclopedic.
It's the Router
However, when discussing the
issue with my daughter, who has made her living doing telephone tech
support for wireless networks, she asked what sort of wireless router I
was using. When I told her it was a Belkin Wireless G unit, she
immediately suggested that might be my problem. According to her, these
Belkin routers don't have a very positive reputation in the wireless
tech support community. Who knew?
She was able to suggest some configuration tweaks, but the problem
persisted.
She also happened to have a Linksys
Wireless-B Broadband Router Model BEFW11S4 that she wasn't using,
so she kindly dropped it in the mail for me to try - and it turns out
that the router was indeed the culprit. I've only had the Linksys
router for a few days at this writing, but so far, so good. It seems to
have solved the problem. The Pismo with the Buffalo PC Card adapter has
been connecting reliably and staying connected with a good healthy
signal indicated by the AirPort icon in the menu bar.
The Linksys unit is physically much larger than the Belkin router
and has two antennae instead of one, which probably helps.
The Linksys router is much larger than the Belkin.
My daughter thinks that Linksys makes the best wireless routers, and
this one certainly does work well. The Linksys Wireless-B Broadband
Router has been discontinued, but there is a similar unit called a
Wireless-G that is probably its contemporary equivalent.* It's still
early days, so I can't yet affirm that the problem has been
conclusively solved, but the leading indicators are promising.
Needless to say, I'm very grateful to my daughter for diagnosing the
problem and providing the hardware solution.
In defense of the Belkin router, it had worked flawlessly for me
with the Unibody MacBook, which presumably has more robust wireless
support than the 10-year-old Pismo running Mac OS X 10.4 .11. The
Linksys router, of course, works great with the MacBook as well.
Wireless Broadband Update
As for my wireless broadband service, it has been flawless since it
was installed on September 10, with no glitches or outages to report as
we close on the three-month mark. It will be interesting to see how
things hold up in winter weather. Since it uses a directional dipole
antenna rather than a dish, snow build up shouldn't be a major problem,
as it is for some folks I know who have been using satellite
Internet.
Needless to say, I'm delighted to have the Pismo back giving
reliable service as my number two production machine and road computer.
A used wireless card is on the way for my wife's Pismo, but I may
reprocess it and hand off the 17" PowerBook to her, since she uses her
computers almost exclusively in desktop substitute mode with an
external keyboard and mouse, so the 17-incher's crummy trackpad (the
worst I've ever used on a laptop computer), bulk, and weight should be
largely irrelevant - and I'll have a second Pismo back for more
portable service.
Linksys Wireless-B Broadband Router BEFW11S4 Info
The Linksys Wireless-B Broadband Router BEFW11S4 is an older,
discontinued 802.11b (the same as the original AirPort hardware) router
with 128-bit encryption and four 100Base-T ethernet ports. Linksys also
has Wireless-G, Wireless-G with Speedburst, Wireless-N, and Dual-Band
Wireless-N hardware, including some with gigabit
ethernet and Storage Link for connecting and sharing a USB 2.0
drive on your local network or over the Internet.
The Linksys BEFW11S4 connects wireless local networks to a
high-speed broadband Internet connection and includes a 10/100 Fast
Ethernet backbone. Configurable as a DHCP server for your existing
network, the Wireless-B Broadband Router can function as the only
externally recognized Internet gateway on a local area network (LAN)
and serve as an Internet NAT firewall against unwanted outside
intruders.
The router can also be configured to filter internal users' access
to the Internet. Some wireless routers may need to rely on an external
hub or switch to share their Internet connection, but the Wireless-B
Broadband Router channels this connection through the full duplex speed
of its built-in EtherFast 10/100 4-Port Switch. This combination of
wireless router and switch technology eliminates the need to buy an
additional hub or switch and extends the range of your wireless
network.
Specifications:
- Frequency Band/Bandwidth: 2.4 GHz (802.11b)
- Transmission Speed: Up to 11 Mbps
- Wireless Security: 128-bit WEP Encryption
- Ports: 4 x 10/100 Ethernet LAN (RJ-45), 1 x 10/100 Ethernet WAN
(RJ-45)
Features:
- Share Internet access with others in the network
- Interoperable with IEEE 802.11b (DSSS) 2.4 GHz-compliant
equipment
- Provides Roaming, best access point selection, Load Balancing, and
Network Traffic Filtering
- Long operating range supports up to 91m (indoors) and up to 457m
(outdoors)
- Capable of up to 128-bit WEP Encryption
- MAC Address and Internal Access Filtering
- Connects to a Broadband modem, a 10/100 Ethernet backbone and a
wireless network
- Configurable through your networked PC's Web browser
- Supports Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) Passthrough and
Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP)
- Able to act as a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server
for you existing network.
