Forest BB

The router in the forest's office is an all singing and dancing Belkin F5D7630-4A ADSL modem with built in 802.11g wireless router. It is a very good router.

Here is a review.

Here is the manual for the router.

But can it control access to the wireless, and prevent people from abusing it?

The router does have a built-in firewall, including a list of pre-defined and custom services that can be blocked. It also appears to let you set the maximum transmission rate per wireless connection. The manual doesn't explain this feature. I think (hope), that this means we can cap the speed of wireless connections to quite slow, preventing people from abusing our Internet connection through the wireless.

I must investigate. If this one is no good, there will be more routers to come.

I think this single router may be able to replace the entire server setup above the kitchen right now. Does anyone know of any reason it might not?

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I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

That one looks good. It does 802.11b as well as g, which suits my palmtop. Don't switch on WEP encryption please. I'd have to find another cafe to work in otherwise.

It is amazing how a little 12v box can replace a big computer plus a whole lot of other boxes. There might be a Linux distro inside the box - there is in mine.

This router appears to have disappeared from the office. Perhaps it has just been moved. Perhaps someone has it.

Does anyone know? This router could really make life easier with the Internet connection.

_________________
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

If the/a router turns up, here is a suggestion of Gandolf's. Don't use 802.11g, just 802.11b. The g version offers much higher bandwidth to wireless users. Without it, downloading movies or whatever becomes such a drag that they give up. And, with the lower bandwidth, they can't take so much of the 8Mb for themselves.

This is assuming that we offer 802.11g at the moment. If we don't then this isn't going to change anything, so not solve the problem. But if we do, then it is quite a cunning bit of wireless traffic shaping.

Does anyone know what happened to the router?

I had a search in the office and couldn't find it. But maybe someone more familiar with that labyrinth in a teacup could have a look for me. It might just have got moved. Otherwise if someone has taken it we should find out who. We could swap it with them for another router or something. That one could be really useful for us because it appears to have the unusual feature of being able to cap the speed of wireless connections, which is exactly what the forest needs.

_________________
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

Belated update: the router turned up. Somebody had taken it home, and when they heard I was looking for it they returned it. My message didn't get out to them directly because they were on some other forest mailing list that I didn't know about and am not on. The forest should use less secretive and unknown lists and forums, they are an obstruction. Anyway, the router is back, but the power supply for the router is not.

Does anyone know where the power supply for the router might be?

Does anyone know if the router works, or is broken?

If I can get a power supply and get it working I still sort of think it can solve our Internet connection problems.

Kitchen people: is the Internet still being problematic? Are you having to restart it often? I haven't been bothered much lately with people asking me to restart the Internet connection. If the problem has gone away it's probably not worth the effort of fixing it. Chasing down this router is time consuming. But if it's still annoying everyone then it's worth sorting out.

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I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

Miroslav had the router. I think he said it was working. If anyone sees him soon, maybe ask him if he still has the power supply.

Amazing that the 'forest speaks' email list could be considered secretive. It is supposed to be totally free and open and accessible etc etc. I think its existence is fairly well advertised, though.

The sad thing about the 'speaks is that so many of the old-skool forest cats have blocked it because it used to be so traffic-heavy. Is very light traffic now, of course.

I just binned a knackered Belkin WAP.
I will bring in the power supply as it may work with the router.

See the last meeting minutes for an update on routers:

http://theforest.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1442

The Internet connection seems to have stopped failing anyway, so it doesn't matter so much, but if we do replace the server with a router, we want it to be one of those routers that has a complete Linux operating system inside of it, so we can run wonderful traffic-shaping scripts and all sorts.

_________________
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!