Labels

Monday, October 17, 2011

U.S. Robotics 802.11g Wireless Turbo Multi-function Access Point reviewed

| Wireless Driver & Software

Features

The AP comes default set to be a DHCP client, so as long as you already have a DHCP server on your LAN, all you’ll need to do is check its client list, see which IP address the 5450 grabbed, point your web browser to that address and log in. You’ll be greeted with the Status screen shown in Figure 2.

USR5450: Status screen

Figure 2: Status screen
(click on the image for a full-sized view)

As you can see, the rather long Status page contains info about the 5450′s setup, WAN and LAN packet statistics, and a list of connected clients with MAC address and connection time. The Disconnect button works with the MAC address function which I’ll describe later.

The interesting feature on the Basic Setting screen shown in Figure 3 is the dynamic checkbox next to the Channel selector. Enabling this setting grays out the channel selection (with IE, not Mozilla) and lets the 5450 do its own channel selection to avoid other in-range APs.

USR5450: Basic Settings screen

Figure 3: Basic Settings screen
(click on the image for a full-sized view)

I enabled the feature and turned on a second AP set to Channel 6. After 30 seconds or so my test client found that the 5450 changed to Channel 1. However, the 5450′s Status screen still showed Channel 6 even though the log entry properly showed the change to Channel 1.

The IP setting tab contains controls for a built-in DHCP server that can serve both wired and wireless clients and allows you to set the client lease time in days, hours and minutes.

Most of the wireless settings are located on the Advanced page shown in Figure 4.

USR5450: Advanced wireless settings

Figure 4: Advanced wireless settings
(click on the image for a full-sized view)

No comments:

Post a Comment