router recommendations

[Rich Braun]

dsr at tao.merseine.nu wrote:
> I'm interested in what you find as buggy about the DI-604.

If you go into the Status->Log, take a look at the timestamps.  They are
garbled.  This happens whether I enable NTP or not.  I have updated the
firmware once (to version 2.18; I don't recall for sure whether I've tried
2.20 yet) and the symptom did not change.

> The Windows ME laptop is my mother-in-law's machine. She has a
> scrap of paper stuck to the top of the laptop detailing how to
> switch to the dialup config she uses elsewhere. She's a
> grandmother 7 times over now.

My grandmother uses email more than any of the other members of my extended
family, and her eyes are still very good at age 84, but network settings on
scraps of paper aren't something I would wish upon someone I love (or even the
poor souls inhabiting Abu Ghraib).

Indeed one of the things I can't stand about the wi-fi config settings on all
the cards I've tried thus far is that you can only have one configuration
stored at a time.  I have to keep network keys in a text file and cut/paste
them into the silly dialog box whenever I move from one LAN to the next. 
Drives me crazy.  I can't imagine doing support for an office LAN for
employees who also have a home LAN and a separate one at a parent's house and
maybe a university campus too.  It should just *work* without having to futz
with long hexadecimal strings.

I have started an ISP, built it to a bunch of employees, and sold it off. 
That act was made possible in part by one key innovation in PC usability:  the
bundling of TCP/IP and DHCP into Windows95, following the introduction of a
self-install kit called "Internet-in-a-Box" which attempted (valiantly but not
quite as successfully as the Win95 installation script) to make it possible
for neophytes to plug themselves into the 'net without having to learn basic
IP routing.  If Windows95 worked as badly as today's wi-fi products, then my
ISP would have been just as profitless as today's wi-fi purveyors and I never
would've gotten a dime for it.

-rich