AtomicInternet Archived News

A recent woot brought the Netgear WNR834B Router to $50. I was holding out for the gigabit edition but it seldom falls below $120 so I decided I can't have everything and grabbed the bargain. My last router upgrade was a necessity for my then wireless media machine, but now that it's been properly wired this is purely a "looks better, runs faster" upgrade. The configuration screens between my old WPNT834 router and the new one were virtually identical, making configuration transfer easy except for the security configuration. Apparently my 64-bit WEP security just doesn't cut it anymore since the only options on the new router are "None" or "WPA2-PSK". My older computers can't do better than WEP, so this had me bummed until I figured out I could backup the config file and manually edit it using my old routers config file as a guide. A quick restore of my hacked config file and the WEP option magically appeared. Score one for Netgear on lame software, I guess removing the option makes the router "more secure" by eliminating older protocols. As you can see, the new router looks more menacing and has an equally impressive light show. Both are key features that prompted the purchase. Ron hasn't mentioned server speed in quite some time, but I'm again hoping I'll get a comment about a noticeable increase in packet handling speed.