Tsaiberspace

I bought the TRENDnet TEW-432BRP 802.11g router and wireless access point today. I am probably the last person in the world to finally upgrade from 802.11b to 802.11g.

The motivating reason is my 6-year-old wireless router doesn’t support PPTP VPN passthrough (PPTP is the little-used VPN protocol used at my work). At this point in time, an 802.11g wireless access point is hardly blog-worthy. But these are the blog-worthy points:

• The power supply is the same powerstrip-friendly size as a cell phone charger; the plug only takes up one slot. FINALLY! That alone makes it a winner right there. The palm-sized router itself is also small. The Linksys WRT54G power supply still takes up three slots.
• Only $3.00 at CompUSA this Columbus Day weekend, assuming all the mail-in rebates come through ($20 and $17 from CompUSA and TRENDnet). The purchase price of $40 is still cheaper than the normal $50 one pays for the Linksys WRT54G.

Other notable geek-friendly features:

• It supports port-mapping. This means the router can be configured to expose SSH on some random port to the outside world, but forward those incoming connections to port 22 on my SSH server. Most home routers (like the Linksys WRT54G) only support basic port forwarding, where the public and private port must be the same.
• Mixed-mode 802.11b/802.11g operation appears to work fine (I still have some 802.11b stuff running at home), and they don’t get in each other’s way. The Linksys WRT54G kept hanging when both types of devices were in operation at the same time.
• It is theoretically hacker-friendly, being theoretically capable of running OpenWRT firmware. The new-generation Linksys/Cisco WRT54G models (all you can find at BestBuy, Office Depot, etc. these days) cannot run OpenWRT.

Update(s):

• Dec 16 2007: $20 rebate check arrived.
• Jan 2 2008: $17 Visa pre-paid debit card arrived.

Woo-hoo!