Penny Arcade Forums› Help / Advice Forum
The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.

RE: Heavy duty Wireless APs.

mojojoeomojojoeo A block off the park, living the dream.Registered User regular
edited September 2011 in Help / Advice Forum
I'm burning through yet another consumer wireless router (ping times wired and wireless are climbing. Weird network issues.)

However I am a full fledged network dude at this point: I have a nice Cisco 2950 switch for a lab, why not just get a nice heavy duty AP and network the house like a buisness?

Anyone have an experience with using a Heavy duty business AP in a house? Are they fast for gaming and such?

Something like this- http://www.ebay.com/itm/CISCO-AIR-AP1242AG-A-K9-1242-WIRELESS-PS-ANTENNAS-/170704215050?pt=COMP_EN_Routers&hash=item27bec39c0a

maybe a suggestion of a solid consumer wireless router would be awesome also?

Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
mojojoeo on

Posts

  • RuckusRuckus Registered User regular
    mojojoeo wrote:
    I'm burning through yet another consumer wireless router (ping times wired and wireless are climbing. Weird network issues.)

    However I am a full fledged network dude at this point: I have a nice Cisco 2950 switch for a lab, why not just get a nice heavy duty AP and network the house like a buisness?

    Anyone have an experience with using a Heavy duty business AP in a house? Are they fast for gaming and such?

    Something like this- http://www.ebay.com/itm/CISCO-AIR-AP1242AG-A-K9-1242-WIRELESS-PS-ANTENNAS-/170704215050?pt=COMP_EN_Routers&hash=item27bec39c0a

    maybe a suggestion of a solid consumer wireless router would be awesome also?

    Have you tried running DDWRT on one of the wireless routers you already have? It tends to make shitty consumer routers tolerable.

  • mojojoeomojojoeo A block off the park, living the dream.Registered User regular
    Ruckus wrote:
    mojojoeo wrote:
    I'm burning through yet another consumer wireless router (ping times wired and wireless are climbing. Weird network issues.)

    However I am a full fledged network dude at this point: I have a nice Cisco 2950 switch for a lab, why not just get a nice heavy duty AP and network the house like a buisness?

    Anyone have an experience with using a Heavy duty business AP in a house? Are they fast for gaming and such?

    Something like this- http://www.ebay.com/itm/CISCO-AIR-AP1242AG-A-K9-1242-WIRELESS-PS-ANTENNAS-/170704215050?pt=COMP_EN_Routers&hash=item27bec39c0a

    maybe a suggestion of a solid consumer wireless router would be awesome also?

    Have you tried running DDWRT on one of the wireless routers you already have? It tends to make shitty consumer routers tolerable.

    I bricked an old linksys. :D Never really looked back after that. It was an old router tho'.

    Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
  • RuckusRuckus Registered User regular
    The ddwrt website/compatability database/wiki really makes it a lot easier to safely deploy it. I set it up on a D-Link DIR-615 that had been crashing every two-three days. It's been up and stable for a couple weeks now.

  • Jimmy KingJimmy King Registered User regular
    edited September 2011
    If you don't need wireless n then the Linksys wrt54gl is generally a safe bet. I've had two (on the second one because a direct lightning strike on my house killed the first one) and they've been stable. They'll also take pretty much all of the 3rd party firmware if you feel like playing with those. I ran tomato on my old one, I haven't gotten around to upgrading the current one yet.

    It appears they've got a wrt160nl these days if you want the wireless n, too. I don't have any experience with it, so I don't know if they're any good or what firmwares work with them.

    Jimmy King on
    https://bash-shell.net | https://mobelux.com/
  • taliosfalcontaliosfalcon Registered User regular
    If he's actually burning out the routers ddwrt won't really help. Consumer routers just aren't made to take sustained heavy traffic. I use ddwrt'd 54gl's and tend to burn them out every 6 months or so.

    steam xbox - adeptpenguin
  • punkpunk Professional Network Nerd Phoenix, AZRegistered User regular
    edited October 2011
    The 1242AG is a nice AP. We have a ton of them. Keep several things in mind: you will need to run the AP in autonomous mode since you don't have a controller. If the AP isn't already in autonomous mode, you'll need to have access to CCO to download the correct firmware to convert it. You could also run into problems accessing the AP if it has been registered to a controller in the past and the person selling it didn't do a complete factory reset.

    You didn't mention whether or not you had a stand-alone router as well. If you're on something like a WRTG54 (mentioned previously) then you'll have to replace the router function as well, since the 1242 is just an AP.

    Have you considered Cisco's Small Business line? They're a little more robust than consumer-grade hardware. You may also consider Cisco 800 series of SOHO routers with wireless built-in. I ran a Cisco 871W for quite a while and it was a solid unit.

    punk on
Sign In or Register to comment.
Penny Arcade Forums› Help / Advice Forum