Professional Geekism

I’ve found a solution to my woes. And it’s not a bridge! Well it won’t start life as a bridge, at least.

My plan is to spend less money on a Linksys WRT54GL, and flash it with some nice 3rd-party firmware. I’ve used this device in the past (albeit in its original 54GS v4 incarnation) and I regard it as the best Ethernet router student money can purchase, particularly with the features unlocked in it thanks to the world’s hackers.

By roughly following this guide, I intend switch the wireless access-point functionality off and instruct the device to act as a client instead. Once this is done, I’ll be able to share my new wireless connection with up to 4 devices via the built-in switch, and Linux may never know I’m using wireless. It also goes without saying that the antennas supplied shall be much more powerful than any wireless NIC (you can even boost the power to illegal levels, should you feel unnecessarily anarchistic.)

The only issue comes with having two steps of PAT, and thus two seperate networks. I don’t envision too many issues with this approach (besides having to forward any outside ports twice) but I’ve got a feeling that it is possible to switch the PAT off and let some true routing to go on. I’ll still be behind the gateway router’s PAT, so there’s very little at stake security-wise.

And I’ll still have to route between the two networks, but we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve recently secured a room in a flat, somewhere in the Jewelry Quarter (The Orb), and should be moving-in just after my exams are over. This means that hopefully I’ll be starting work a little earlier than expected!

First problem, however: NETWORKING again (as-in, I only cabled my house 10 months ago!) Though this time around, I’m concerned about wireless. I don’t think Sarah is going to want wires draping from one side of the flat to the other, but I also don’t think Linux is going to like me if I start using Windows drivers to configure its devices (ndiswrapper or not…)

So what I’d really like to invest in, is a wired-to-wireless bridge. I had already had my heart set on a Linksys WET54G-UK, but judging from the comments left by these disgruntled customers, I don’t think I’ll be having one anytime soon.

I therefore request recommendations for a wired-to-wireless bridge, please. Under £50 (preferably that’d be inc. VAT) and WPA2 support, whilst not being unreliable/flakey/generally crap. Go!