Tim
Life is good
Joined: Nov 2007
Location: Kalamazoo
Bigger, more complex, and faster than ever
My network that is
Last week I finally purchased my new wireless access point, and boy is it nice. Oh course it was not without it's trials and tribulations. I selected the Linksys WAP200 for my device of choice for three reasons. One, I've used it on past jobs. Two, it's a business class device. And three, well it's pretty and has TONS of options. Of course a network would not be complete without a router or firewall. For this I selected the HotBrick LB2 Firewall.
I got the firewall up and running right away. This is a fairly easy setup just some port assignments and a few other small things. But the accesspoint gave me a headach...a few times.
I'd previously used this exact device for a job I did in Holland and found the net result to be very good. The WAP200 has a very strong signal and larger antennas that my WRV200 wireless router I'd been using. Because of this the signal strength as reported by my laptop was 100%. Where I'd lost a bar on from my WRV200. But my headache was that I could not for the life of me get the thing up in a web browser to configure the security. I could attach to it wirelessly but nothing else.
After the second day (the third time) or trying I gave it some thought to the last time I'd configured one. That's when I figured it out. Despite me breaking the rules of being a typical guy and actually using the instructions on the second attempt to connect. I still had one fatal flaw. In order to connect to it you must type the IP address in the web browser. The directions clearly state the default IP address to use. But in both occurrences, this time and when I did it for a job I did the SAME EXACT THING! The directions say to connect to 192.168.1.245. So why did I read this as 192.168.1.254... Why? Because the my brain tells me that .254 is the end of the road when it comes to devices like this and that I'm sure that it what I just read in the documentation 2 seconds ago. Also because I'm an idiot!
So despite my best attempts to anger myself I finally figured it out. So how did all of this help me. Well I've yet to do benchmarks to quantify it but even just browsing this site externally seems faster. Of course that may also have something to do with my recent upgrade to IE 8 but never the less I dig it. Inside my own network the site is blazing fast, though it's not to shabby externally either.