Feeling Insecure

By Jerry Pournelle

December 8, 2003

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Column 280 (Continued from the Previous Week)

The Wireless Scene: D-Link

Some time ago we connected up wireless here at Chaos Manor using a secure Cisco Access Point and Cisco Wireless PCMCIA Adapter cards, using the Cisco LEAP security protocols. It worked fine, and it certainly was secure.

There was one problem: The only way I could connect my Tablet PC to the Chaos Manor wireless system was to insert a Cisco card. Since Lisabetta comes with her own built-in wireless this seemed needless; and of course most places I go will not have a Cisco system anyway. I find wireless confusing, and I needed a way to play with wireless here as it would look to me in places like the LA Convention Center.

The Chaos of Windows Wireless and the Glaskowsky Observation

Inveterate Macintosh user and editor-in-chief of Microprocessor Report Peter Glaskowsky once said that, with software on the Macintosh, "everything is either very easy or impossible." He might also have been talking about getting wireless networking operating on Windows.

D-Link has been practicing the saturation bombing method for getting coverage at Chaos Manor: Keep pitching products at the reviewer until he can no longer move through his office without knocking your gear off a flat surface. I believe my shelves are currently better stocked with D-Link 802.11g-compatible wireless gear than the local Fry's Electronics. It's good stuff, too, and it is clearly time to put this latest bonanza to the test, so we pulled a D-Link DWL-2000AP wireless router out of the pile. Let me hasten to add: We have used a lot of D-Link equipment, and I have yet to find anything I don't like. There's a lot of bang for the buck here.

802.11g, for those of you trying to stay buzzword compliant, is the faster version of 802.11b. It's completely upward-compatible with 802.11b, and runs at the same frequency, 2.4 GHz. There is also 802.11a, which operates in the 5.4-5.7 GHz band, and is therefore incompatible with 802.1

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