Wireless, WiFi, and the Cisco E3000, a bedtime story

Once upon a time a product came out that started a bit of a revolution in my computing life. It was called the Airport, and it was made by Apple. It was so cute and silver and unassuming, but with my two state-of-the-art wireless multicolored iBooks -- you know, the clamshell variety -- I was now able to surf the Internet without wires. I finally felt free. 

Don't get me wrong, I know Apple didn't invent WiFi, as it became to be known. I know Apple can't take credit for it. But to me, it was more miraculous than when microwave popcorn was invented.

88 miles per hour

Jump forward to today and the spectrum of WiFi -- again, just 802.11 -- is really, really crowded. And insecure. You can go just about anywhere and find an "open" or "unsecured" hotspot. That, my friends, is dangerous stuff. Most routers these days come shipped with a standard, insecure setup. Only the people who my mom calls "computer people" who know what they are doing have known that having an encrypted, secure wireless LAN is absolutely necessary.

Worse yet, if a network is encrypted with WEP  -- the "other" default configuration -- instead of something more secure such as WPA your network could be owned in less than a few minutes. Everything on your local wireless network could be up for grabs by a wardriver or sneaky neighbor. "But I have security turned on!" some people say. Sure. But there's a big hole in WEP...and and even bigger false sense of security.

I've always liked the Linksys products, especially my favorite of all time, the WRT-54G. Little known fact: you can turn this little cheap router into a firewall with the feature set of systems costing in the thousands by just upgrading your firmware. But the wireless is still wireless G (802.11g) at 54Mbit/s.

I needed more speed. A lot more...so I "upgraded" to a (name omitted but it starts with TRE and ends with net) 802.11n 150Mbit/s access point. Unfortunately, my life then became very sad. I am a "computer person" but I just couldn't get this thing to work reliably. I don't mean to belittle the brand, they make great stuff. It's just that in my experience this one model certainly wasn't amongst any of it.

It interfered with just about everything in my house, and everything interfered with it. It dropped connections constantly. The administration interface stopped working an hour after reboot. After reboot. After reboot. I couldn't go over near the bathroom on the other side of the house without losing connection completely. I began to wonder if I'd ever feel right inside again. It was a costly mistake for me, 'cause this little piece of equipment was pretty pricey.

Yay! A zoo!

I almost gave up on the Internet. Then I thought of my little friend the WRT-54G and did a little research. I know that Cisco bought Linksys and rolled the Linksys name into their product line. Looking up Cisco's offerings, I found the Cisco Linksys E3000. I had heard about it before, but the more I read about it the better it seemed to be. This little $149 baby is an 802.11n, dual-band (2.4Ghz and 5GHz simultaneous), media-serving, file-sharing, secure-out-of-the-box, 300Mbit/s pill of tech Prozac in a nice shiny plastic shell. And it has blinky lights. Oh, how I love blinky lights.

I'm not one for hyperbole, but I am truly impressed with it. I do like blinky lights, though, ask anybody.

Out of the box it requires you to use their setup software. Not my cup of tea. I just like using the Web interface to configure all my stuff ; but the software was cross-platform -- Win and Mac, no Linux -- and easy to use. At no point during the setup was the router exposed as an insecure "hotspot." -- I like that. I thought of the non-computer people and how this approach really was a necessary evil. I give it a big win for that.

It even names your network in a nice, zoo-like way...mine was "Green Bear" by default. When I reset the router to reconfigure it, it magically turned into "Purple Whale". I think somebody over there at Cisco is smoking something wacky.

Once you're done with the setup, there are a host of features you can set up through the software or through the Web interface. One of my favorites is guest access -- you give a (separate) password to visitors and they have no access to your local network; they can only access the Internet. Now that is a fantastic idea! I hate having to give out my router password to people who visit me, and I doubly dislike it when anybody is behind my firewall and able to access my machines from the wrong side of the drawbridge. Call me paranoid or prudent, your choice.

There is also an option to attach a hard drive (or drives if you use a USB hub) to the router for an instant file server and/or media server. Even better yet, you can create a separate backup partition on there and back up any computer you have to it wirelessly (provided you have the proper software). And you can add storage at any time as well, which is a big bonus.

10p.m. on a Saturday

I originally had a problem with the storage feature recognizing a hard drive was attached, so at 10pm on a Saturday I decided to contact Cisco support. I was in a chat with a support specialist within three minutes, problem solved in six. At 10pm on a Saturday. I can't even get Verizon on the phone after 5pm any day, even if I want to spend more money with them. Cisco even sent me a transcript of our chat session automatically just in case I needed to refer to it later.

For future Googlers: I suspected it was a firmware issue, and it was, but it was easily solved by upgrading from 1.0.01 to 1.0.01.006.

So I know, all three people who are reading this are probably saying "but there are other routers and products out there that do that." Perhaps. I'm sure there are ones out there that do it better. But for now, I've been happy with my experience with the Cisco Linksys E3000, and when I'm happy about a product or service I like to give it some play.

Plus, as you can see from the photo, it's pretty darn good-looking.