[dba-Tech] MIMO-G router

Santa dropped off one of those new routers (Netgear WPN824v2) which have a
bunch of antennas and dynamically selects the one picking up the strongest
signal and uses that for talking to the wireless computers (mostly laptops).
I have to say that it kinda sorta works.  I bought it specifically because
Mary's laptop, down a floor and a couple of rooms over, has poor reception.
I use Network Stumbler to test signal strength.  After the install, with the
old router still out there, her laptop gets roughly the same, or slightly
poorer reception via this new router in her office.  However if I take her
laptop on out to the dining room at the far end of the house, the signal
strength is definitely higher, by about 6db on average and sometimes more,
than the old router.

I am looking to buy my wife a Tivo Series 2 and will need the usb wireless
to do the phone home stuff.  It will be in the living room at the far end of
the house, so it is encouraging that I get that much better reception down
there.  I already have an old Series 1 Tivo down in the bedroom directly
below my office, and am buying a bridge to put on it to get the wireless
down to it.  Currently I am running a cable down the stairs and manually
connecting it to the Series 1 once a week to phone home.  Yuk!

I am looking to keep the old router in place however and put the new one "in
parallel", i.e. I will place a plain old vanilla 10/100 switch immediately
behind the cable modem, then plug BOTH wireless routers in to that.  Thus I
can have a wireless system (the new one) that talks to the internet, but not
to my internal (business) LAN.  The original router will talk to the
internet as well but will have its firewall between the internal LAN and the
new router.  All of the Tivos and my wife's laptop and my son's laptop will
all talk to the internet through the new router and not be behind the
business firewall (the old wireless router).

The hoops we jump through.

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com