[geeks] Cheap wireless APs

[Lionel Peterson]

On May 21, 2009, at 5:57 PM, Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>  
wrote:

> On May 21, 2009, at 15:30 , Lionel Peterson wrote:
>
>
>> Very small market for consumer access points, I have an old  
>> Motorola 802.11b/g AP that runs great, but has been off the market  
>> for years...
>
> If it were market size, seems they would just sell the exact same  
> unit with a production cripple/flag change to make it one or the  
> other, removing most worries about volume with any competent  
> manufacturer.
>
> It's 2009: this is a solved problem.

Shannon, if they did that, they wouldn't sell any router/AP devices,  
just the soon-to-be-hacked crippled AP devices.

Think X-Boxes running Linux, AppleTVs running OS X, etc...

> Therefore, it seems to me it must be one of those things they do  
> because they can, not because of some technical reason.

Who says they aren't doing this? They have to make special packing,  
manuals, etc. specific to each model. They need to price them to cover  
additional packaging/production costs.

>
> What is interesting is that small "router" boards are starting to  
> get so cheap you have to start considering them even for really  
> small projects.  A little more work, but one day someone is going to  
> say "Ah... business opportunity..."

These are advertised by many mfg. in Linux magazines, hoping for just  
such an "ah-ha!" moment.
>
> I keep hoping that someone besides Linksys and friends will get into  
> the market and make something that doesn't suck and whose feature  
> set and support make sense.

The Linksys hardware I use is fine, suited my needs for 5+ years...

Lionel