A Tale Of Wonky Wifi Part 4: A Doubleheader Featuring 802.11B/G vs N, And WLAN vs Mesh
When last we left this story our protagonist had returned the Cisco AP to BUY.COM leaving le maison du Graves without functional wifi for about two weeks. Fortunately I was out of town a lot during that period so it wasn’t much of an inconvenience. If anything it gave me some time to evaluate my options regarding replacement gear.
I’ve noted that whereas I had a lot of problems with 802.11n type wifi APs I’d previously had far fewer issues with 802.11g type hardware. Very recently I was reminded by someone who should know that 802.11a/b/g is more mature hardware than 802.11n. This certainly rings true as my very old Linksys WAP-54G ran for literally years with no problems at all.
How I long for the Linksys of old.
There are myriad inexpensive consumer routers available that include wifi functionality, but far fewer freestanding wifi access points (AP.) I surmise that this is because every broadband connected home needs a router and wants a wifi AP, so a converged device is the most affordable approach to this marketplace. Yet in many ways it’s less than ideal.
This is part 2 in the continuing saga of my fight with replacing a dead Netgear WNR-2000 that had served a my wifi AP. Please recall that I just RMA’d the Cisco WAP4410N that was to be its replacement.
One of the things that Santa brought over the holidays was a new Wifi access point. Back in November our Netgear router/AP just up and died. In fact, that was the third time in 18 months that the Netgear device has failed. It was twice replaced under warranty. On the occasion of this third failure it, and others of its kind, were not welcome to return….at any price.