4. Wireless Setup

Setting up the 2521 involves launching a similar, but different Windows-based utility. That's right, there's no Web-based admin server built into the 2521, so at least for setup purposes, the 2521 is a Windows-only product. The Device, Network, Security, Advanced and About screens are essentially the same as those on the 2502 utility.

The main difference is that you get a Diagnostic button on the Device screen. Clicking it brings up driver, MAC and IP Address, and connection status for each network interface. But pretty much every time I brought it up, the Status came up "Disconnected" until I clicked the Recheck button on the Diagnostic window which changed the Status to connected. This behavior didn't exactly inspire confidence in this "diagnostic"...

Figure 4 shows the Wireless knobs you can twiddle, which aren't very many!

Figure 4: AP Utility - Wireless screen

As you can see, all you can do is set the (E)SSID and channel. Siemens is working on a new version of the utility that will let you disable (E)SSID broadcast and adjust the Beacon period. But they have no definite plans to add MAC Address association control, bridging, monitoring or other features that you might find in Ethernet-based APs.

Figure 5: AP Utility - Wireless screen

Figure 5 shows the WEP settings. Authentication method can be set to Open System, Shared Key, or Both, and you can select 64 or 128 bit WEP keys, entered as either Hexadecimal or ASCII (alphanumeric) characters. The negatives, however, are that the keys are not stored in cleartext for easy reference, and they're lost as soon as you disable WEP. A minor, but potentially confusing, point is that the Key Index selector is numbered from 0 to 3 and the Keys are numbered 1 to 4.

In the end, I managed to get my router and the 2521 talking, but discovered two things that may or may not bite you during your setup:

I (eventually) figured out that my SMC7008BR router really wasn't connecting to the 2502. Even though the link lights were on at both ends, there was nobody home in the data transfer department. Once I switched to a different router, data started flowing. I reported this problem to Siemens, who will be trying to reproduce it.

I had problems on one of my wireless notebooks running WinXP Home and the 2521 AP Utility. I could see the AP on the Device Tab, but could never manage to see any powerline devices in the Network tab. Worked fine on another WinXP Home wireless notebook. This same notebook also couldn't connect via its Ethernet interface with the 2502 that it was plugged into. Go figure! (Although this is XP I'm talkin' about... a never-ending source of quirky "amusements"...)

Finally, to wrap up the complaint portion of the review, let me touch on documentation. The User Documentation is limited to the Quick Start guide which you get both in printed and PDF format on the Utility CD. One could argue that all the essential info is there, but first time networkers may want more general networking setup information, and specifically info about powerline networking. Also, the explanation of how to use the Advanced Tab to set the Network Password is way too cryptic and should include a step-by-step example (which you'll find via this FAQ).

So, enough already! Time to drill down into Performance!