Wireless adapters and routers supporting enterprise WAP.

[CougTek]

I'm just beginning my researchs on this topic, so help would be appreciated. I read a lot this evening about the various Wi-Fi security means. I knew WEP was crap and that WAP was better, but it had been a while since I touched that, so I needed a refresh. I've found this article among many others, which doesn't seem half bad.

From what I could assimilate, there's two main WAP types. One is called enterprise WAP or just WAP and the other is WAP-PSK and it's intended for simple SOHO networks. Enterprise WAP is supposed to be safer, assuming the passphrase used isn't something moronically simplistic.

What I'm looking for is a set of affordable routers, PCI (or PCI-E) adapters and other adapters for notebooks (be it mini-PCI or PC cards). I need choice in every category. I might have to advise buyers soon about this and I want a secured, all-around solution. I can't just answer "wait, I'll do a research" to every question regarding this. If I'm asked by a customer who wants to share his DSL connection between his two computers, I want to be able to tell him that he can buy this, this, or this router and this, this or this PCI adapter. No Googling, no delay, straight answer.

WAP-supporting devices :
Wireless routers :
PCI adapters :
PC card adapters :
Mini-PCI adapters :

WEP sucks, WAP-PSK is probably good enough, but since enterprise WAP exist, that's the one I want.

Thanks.

 

[CougTek]

Hmmm...

Wireless enterprise networks seem to use access points instead of broadband routers. I guess I was asking too much. Oh well...

SMC seems to have a fine lineup for wireless stuff. Most of it supports WAP.

 

[Mercutio]

There's WPA and there's WPA2.

IIRC the last Linksys WRT54G (the new ones that don't run Linux) that I saw did WPA2. So do current Trendnet routers and PCI NICs. Probably APs too. On the low end, current Linksys products would be my starting point; they're almost universally available and Linksys is good about getting firmware and driver updates to support new technologies. Linksys hardware tends to crap out pretty regularly, but everything else about it is miles better than the competition and despite my concerns about reliability, nothing works better than a Linksys router/AP, as long as it's working. Linksys makes signal boosters designed for its products and also has replaceable antennae on their routers/APs, both of which are quite handy.

Lesson 2: Avoid anything DLink.

Since the word Enterprise has been invoked, Cisco hardware is on the table, and I'm not even going to bother to look to see if they support it or not. Same for 3Com. Those two company names make nice words that should have a comfortable feeling for anyone who has dealt with IT purchasing before. Proxim makes a line of high-end managed APs but I'm not sure whether they support WPA2. They probably do. I know they support vanilla WPA.

"Enterprise" wireless security usually involves RADIUS authentication, which means some kind of server OS or dedicated hardware (e.g Cisco Aironet products). You should probably read up on that as well. And you'll want to be up on your encryption methodologies - explain why WPA is better than WEP for example, because people will ask even if they have no idea what either term means. Knowing a little about IPSec and Policy-based security won't hurt either if you're dealing with reasonably large installations.

Something that I don't have a very good handle on is capacity planning for wireless networks. Usually, when I'm setting up wireless LANs, they're for 10 people or less. As the "go to guy" for WLANs, you're going to be asked about multi-AP networks and roaming between APs, about interference, antenna boosts on the client and AP. You need to be able to sound smart when you discuss those things, but complex setups will always need research or at least a site survey (PocketPC + 802.11 card works well enough for me).

 

[mubs]

AFAIK WPA is not totally secure either; can be broken with a little more effort than required for WEP. WPA-2 probably addresses that.

 

[sechs]

Thanks to someone at Belkin failing to put an asterisk on their packaging, I just setup a Linksys WRT54GL. It supports WPA2. Any reasonable router/AP should be able to support it via a firmware upgrade.

Client encryption really has to do with drivers and having an appropriate supplicant, and little to do with hardware.

 

[Handruin]

At work we require a VPN login over local wireless connections. That's how we secure the wireless network. It seems to work rather well.

 

[Howell]

Since the word Enterprise has been invoked, Cisco hardware is on the table, and I'm not even going to bother to look to see if they support it or not. Same for 3Com.

Stay far away fomr 3COM. I'd rather throw the thing away rather than try to get an RMA. Horrible, horrible service.

 

[P5-133XL]

3com has never recovered from the buying of USRobotics; Just like Novel never recovered from buying WordPerfect. It seems, from these examples, that one really really bad purchase can take down what otherwise was a great company.

 

[mubs]

So true. Digesting an acqusition or merger is fraught with danger.

 

[Mercutio]

DEC + Compaq + HP = suck

My recent experience with 3Com network equipment (APs and some managed switches) certainly haven't been bad. I've been thinking that 3Com has been getting better.