Router Companies are ripping us off!

Right, because aparently the only thing you need to make a router is a $60 wifi card. There is no additional hardware or software required. If you have a wifi card your shouldn't bother buying a router because the wifi card can, aparently, do everything that a router is expected to do.

I've taken apart quite a few wifi routers and have never seen one with a PCMCIA card in it. What router do you have?

Oh, and TStrimp has a point there.

Heck most of th linksys routers are running a version of linux iptables to do their routing. Even the bioses were open source, so you could modify them if you really really felt like it.

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Also remember that a real comerical router only tends to have 2 ports on it. It has the WAN port and the LAN port. What is in the retails stores are just routers with a switch integrated. So it wouldn't take a whole lot to just slave a wireless bridge in was well.

I, too, am furious at manufacturers who integrate off-the-shelf components into their products!

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Original post by tstrimp Right, because aparently the only thing you need to make a router is a $60 wifi card. There is no additional hardware or software required. If you have a wifi card your shouldn't bother buying a router because the wifi card can, aparently, do everything that a router is expected to do.

So you see why he's so upset then?

CM

I actually thought it was pretty cool when I figured this out some years ago. If the router dies, you can replace the WiFi card with the same brand at it should work. There were a few isolated cases where replacing the card with a different brand also worked, but it was very specific (I think Intel and US Robotics were swappable) and it didn't work 100% (it wasn't very stable, would stall after about 5 minutes of use).

So, stock up on cheap WiFi cards, buy a bunch of broken WiFi routers, and get crackin' on a money making scheme!

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Original post by Conner McCloud Quote: Original post by tstrimp Right, because aparently the only thing you need to make a router is a $60 wifi card. There is no additional hardware or software required. If you have a wifi card your shouldn't bother buying a router because the wifi card can, aparently, do everything that a router is expected to do. So you see why he's so upset then? CM

Err... Of course, if that was the only thing it was. In that case it wouldn't be a router at all and wouldn't be capable of serving as a router in any form since it wouldn't be able to route traffic, provide DHCP, or act as a firewall.

I think CM outsarcasmed you.

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Original post by Sneftel I think CM outsarcasmed you.

I fail at forums...

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Original post by Rattrap Also remember that a real comerical router only tends to have 2 ports on it. It has the WAN port and the LAN port. What is in the retails stores are just routers with a switch integrated. So it wouldn't take a whole lot to just slave a wireless bridge in was well.

eh?
Routers are like switches++

High-end modular Cisco routers are certainly spangled with more than two ports, but calling them "switches++" is incorrect. Each of those ports is a separate network interface, and there's no layer 2 interconnect, switched or not. You could probably configure one to act like a network hub, assuming you configured every single computer for a different subnet, but the bang for your buck would not be good. [grin]

EDIT: Heh, looks like the router you linked to actually has an ethernet switch module you can plug in. I wonder if it has a cupholder too.

For the cupholder you need to upgrade to the 7500.