Linksys Wireless Router

The joy of wireless. From the amount of nothingness (yes know it's not a word...or is it?) that I've achieved over the past month at least the setting up of a wireless network was a piece of cake. For once the whole process went completely flawlessly from the installation to the configuration of security and access settings.

The Linksys WAG354G is an excellent router and although one of my laptops had initial problems from accessing the internet two rooms away it has a powerful wireless connection. I solved that by using a cable for the USB wireless adapter on the laptop instead of directly plugging into the back of the laptop. Also I can access the net on my PSP all the way to the front door (my room is somewhere in the middle).

I set up WPA-TKIP encryption with MAC authentication which is all done through a web interface making the whole process even easier. The Desktop computer and my Thinkpad are using Wired LAN and my brother's laptop and my PSP are using the wireless. I also managed to set up file sharing with the windows boxes and my linux box using Samba. This was suprisingly very easy to do.

About two weeks ago I started to use linux on my desktop so that I can learn how to use the shell. Ubuntu is an excellent distribution in my opinion as it has the ease of use of Windows and the power of Linux. Downloading and installing new packages is as easy as invoking a single command or using the powerful Application Manager interface.

Using the "apt-get install" command I basically downloaded and configured Samba. The only thing I had to do was run "smbpasswd" to change the default samba password so that I could share files with my laptop.

Overall, the router is excellent, does everything you'd ever need it to do and has a very simple setup procedure. The advanced settings allow you to set up access restrictions (ports, time, URLs, etc). However, I couldn't find anything for bandwidth control or a way to monitor the bandwidth of the overall network which is usually a must for anyone with more than two/three computers attached to the network.