The Fugue

For the price of a new Actiontech DSL modem/wireless router, I purchased a used Cisco 678 and a Buffalo AirStation WHR-G54S. I don't need to tell you which is the better deal.

I've been hearing some good things about Buffalo, and since you can't be sure what you're getting with a Linksys Wireless router these days I decided to go for it. I've just finished configuring it and now I have some opinions to spout.

First, it seems like a good router. It's pretty, has 4 ethernet ports, a WAN port, and wireless (of course), it's working fine, it's very configurable, and it's reported that OpenWRT runs on it. The cons are that it takes a lot of rebooting to configure, the wired port LEDs are in the back, and some of the terminology is a bit confusing. For example it does support WPA but nowhere in the manual is it called WPA, and only as an aside in the web interface do you realize that "AES" is WPA, when it asks for the WPA "previously-shared" key.

Some highlights from the configuration, that I had plenty of time to ponder while rebooting after every screen:

• WAN
  • Does PPPoE, DHCP, unnumbered IP, or static
  • can set the MAC address
• LAN
  • lots of DHCP server options
• Misc
  • NTP
  • Syslog
  • Very detailed system info screen
  • Logs, and granular control over what's logged (or what's sent to syslog)