[C.J. Moof]

My office has it's wireless covered by 4 original Airport base stations. They work seamlessly and perfectly, allowing users to move around the building and grab the strongest signal.

Their downside is that they're limited to .b speeds and 40 bit WEP. It's time to upgrade to WPA and .g speed, as the office has enough neighbors that could have enough time on their hands to crack WEP.

What 802.11g routers on the market

• Don't look like they belong only in a server room (some of these are in public areas)
  Have centralized management software over an internal web server- I have to maintain 4 of these
  Maintain the transparent roaming I have in place.

DHCP, NAT, routing and all that will be handled separately from these access points- I just need them to be wireless hubs with better speed and security. There has to be a better value than the $800 in Apple Airport Extreme bases....

[tooki]

For one thing, the closest Apple hardware to the original graphite base stations is actually the Airport Express, at about $130 a piece.

But any good-brand wireless "bridges" or "access points" should do (NOT "wireless routers" -- those seldom allow their internal DHCP/NAT to be turned off to the point that other ones can be used reliably).

tooki

[C.J. Moof]

Originally posted by tooki:
For one thing, the closest Apple hardware to the original graphite base stations is actually the Airport Express, at about $130 a piece.

But any good-brand wireless "bridges" or "access points" should do (NOT "wireless routers" -- those seldom allow their internal DHCP/NAT to be turned off to the point that other ones can be used reliably).

tooki

That's an intersting detail on the verbage of "bridge/access point" vs "router"- I wouldn't have thought to check that. Being stuck with DHCP and NAT isn't acceptable.

What about the transparent roaming between bases? Should I expect any good bridge / access point to maintain the ability to move between base stations?

[ghporter]

In theory you should be able to use any access point to build an Extended Service Set. You hook up all the access points to the same router, give them all the same SSID (network name), and set them all to different channels. That's the theory. I haven't tried to do it myself, so I can't tell you that it will work, but it should.

I would try to stay with all the same brand and model of access points for two reasons. First, they should all have basically the same transmit power level, so each one's coverage area should be pretty much the same. And second, if you use all the same model, any wierdness about how they interact should at least be known by the manufacturer, and thus findable information. Not that this is a common thing, but it could happen. You'll also have a common and consistent interface to use in configuring them, which can't hurt.

I'd also stay away from ANY model that boasts any "speed boost technology" or whatever else they may call it, since this stuff is always proprietary, and will only work with that vendor's specific products, i.e. NOT Apple products.

[C.J. Moof]

I think I'll go with the WRT54G. I've got one at home with 3rd party firmware, and it works nicely. It's only downside is that it looks like it belongs in a server room (nothing looks as cool as Apple's designs), but at $60, I can get 3 of them for the price of one AP Extreme.