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Business users have been among the first to
jump on the 802.11g bandwagon, as the new standard offers increased security
over the previously flawed implementations of WEP.
90% Rating: 
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Gigabyte GN-A17GU |
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Options and Ease of Use
Operation Mode tab: Sets the access point up either as a standalone unit
that will communicate only with clients and not with other access points (the default),
or as a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint device which can communicate with other access
points as well as its own clients.
This allows you to have a wireless network with a wide area of
coverage, as clients within range of any access point can communicate with all
of the access points within the network.
Associated List tab: Simply shows which
clients are currently associated (connected) to the access point.
Once we
had assigned a static address for the PC we were using to configure the Gigabyte
GN-A17GU, everything was smooth sailing. We set up laptops and a pocket PC with
both 802.11g (Gigabyte’s GN-WMAG) and 802.11b (SMC’s SMC2632W as well as
a Linksys WCF12 compact flash card for the pocket PC) and had no problems with
connecting and communicating with the access point.
The AP manager software proved easy to use and
configure, requiring no restarts during the multitude of changes we made to
encryption and IP settings. The encryption itself was easy to set and
worked as it should.
The one issue that we
ran into using the Gigabyte GN-A17GU was actually a problem with the AP
management software. When connected to a PC with multiple network adaptors
(two in this case) we lost the ability to communicate with the access
point, as AP Manager was no longer able to find the device.
We figured out that this
was because it was searching for the access point on the
wrong network adaptor. The adaptor that it was searching was connected to our
ISP, so of course it found nothing. The resolution for this
problem was to set both network adaptors to ‘obtain an IP address automatically,’
as we were informed by Gigabyte technical support (and quite promptly too).
Of course, this is contrary to the setup instructions
in the manual, which explicitly state that a static address should be used, but
the manual does not cover multi-network adaptor setups. Given that a
popular wireless network setup tactic is to connect the access point to a
computer running some sort of software firewall or security program (like
Microsoft’s ISA server) then connect that computer to the rest of the network
via a second network adaptor, this is a good thing to know.
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