3. Wireless Details

• FM114P Cable/DSL...
• • Compuvest
  • $42.99

The FM114P uses a ZCom XI-325 PC card radio, which is based on the Intersil PRISM 2.5 chipset. The radio is completely self-contained and is plugged into a connector in the router's main board, and cabled to the removable single-dipole external antenna via a miniature snap-on RF connector.

The external antenna connector is a reverse SMA type, which will mate nicely with many of the antennas that D-Link offers as part of their wireless line. (NETGEAR does not offer any accessory antennas.)

As Figure 1 shows, the wireless feature set is very basic, letting you set just( E)SSID, and channel. Security features include 64 or 128 bit WEP, MAC address Association control, and the ability to disable bridging between wireless and wired LAN clients.

Figure 1: Wireless settings
(click on the image for a full-sized view)

This last feature is something I haven't seen in other Access Points or routers and would be handy for folks who want to wirelessly share their broadband connection with anyone within range, but keep them off their wired LAN.

The latest firmware (1.4 Release 06) also adds the ability to disable SSID broadcast, which will keep the FM114P from showing up in WinXP's "Available Wireless Networks" display in most cases (assuming you change the SSID to something non-obvious!).

Note that wireless client monitoring features are pretty much non-existent.