Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)If you already have an older 'wired' router, this is definitely the way to go. Just plug it in to an available plug on your existing router. Forget about the noisy 2.4ghz 11b and/or 11g, and go with this second generation 11a/b unit with the atheros chip. Not only does it provide turbo 108 MB 5 ghz 11a, it also provides 11b, so if you have any friends that need to connect they can with the popular 11b standard.
, compared to my SMC 'wired' router and my USR Turbo G wireless routers this is a quality solid corporate grade unit. The manuals are excellent, I had no problems installing it, within minutes it was running, plus 3 year warranty.
I also ordered an SMC2335W cardbus adapter with the WAP, which is an 11a/b adpater that supports 108 MBps turbo 11a. I was hesitant since this card was not on the recommended list that tiger provided for use with the WAB102. After doing some research I found out that this adapter used the same chipset as the WAB102 so I figured it would work well, and it did ...for only $20! ..plus great SMC limited lifetime warranty.
**PLEASE NOTE: THIS SMC CARD STARTED CAUSING MY PC TO CRASH AFTER ABOUT A WEEK, THE SIGNAL STRENGTH ALSO DROPPED, AND IT CAN NO LONGER MAINTAIN A DECENT CONNECTION. SMC SUPPORT WERE NOT HELPFUL AND WOULD NOT GIVE ME AN RMA UNTIL I TRIED IT ON ANOTHER LAPTOP. WHICH I THINK IS AN UNREALISTIC THING TO EXPECT, 'HEY, MIND IF I TRY MY FAULTY CARDBUS CARD ON YOUR $3000 LAPTOP' ???? THE CARD DOESN'T START TO FAULTER UNITL IT GET'S WARMED UP, SO I WOULD HAVE TO TEST IT FOR AS MUCH AS A FEW HOURS.** NO MORE SMC FOR ME! I RETURNED IT TO THE VENDOR AND ACCEPTED THE RESTOCKING CHARGE, IT WASN'T WORTH THE HEADACHE TO DEAL WITH SMC SUPPORT.
These two items work perfectly together, within a few minutes I had the network setup in 108 Mbps turbo mode. With the WAP on the middle floor of my 3 floor home, I get 100% signal strength no matter what floor or end of the house I'm on, cheers to 5 Ghz. For a test I transfered a 1.7 Gigabyte file, while the file was transferring I slowly walked through the house, making sure I went to the most obstructed places, no dropped connections and the transfer rate never dropped below 25 Mbps, the average transfer rate was 31.7 Mbps, it took just under 9 minutes to complete the transfer, WOW ...only a couple hundred bps slower than my wired 100 meg network.
I'm very pleased.
many thanks to this article that helped shed some light on the second gen 11a/b from atheros http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-article46-page1.php
Neil
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Netgear WAB102 802.11a/b Dual Band Wireless Access Point
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