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In the Forums... |
Posted: April 8, 2002 Written by: Davey McWatters Asanté FriendlyNet FR3002AL Performance Depending on your home, a wireless router may work good or bad for you. My house contains just about everything you can imagine to interfere with a wireless network. However, the router still performed well. I was able to go anywhere in my two story house and keep a connection to the router. In an aluminum clad enclosed patio room off the rear of the housewhere cordless phones operating at the 2.4Ghz frequency often have terrible reception. The signal strength dropped to around 25% and kept at least a 5.5Mbps connection, which is still very useable for the Internet. With the router placed in my basement ceiling, there wasn’t a single place in my house that totally lost connection with the router. I am very happy with the performance of the FR3002AL and would recommend it to anyone looking for a router with wireless networking support. Conclusion The FR3002AL performed very well. I was able to use the Internet anywhere in my house with no wires attached. Even though the signal strength dropped drastically in some areas, it was still able to keep at least a 5.5Mbps connection and an 11Mbps connection in most areas. I was surprised to see that the router actually worked in a room where cordless phones have so much interference they are unusable. Installation of the FR3002AL also proved to be very easy. All that was required was to install the wireless PCMCIA card into the notebook and plug the router in and it worked. It was as easy to install as a wired network. One of my favorite features of the FR3002AL is its ability to use any wireless technology. The PCMCIA port on the router is a great feature for upgrading when a new technology that is faster and supports greater ranges emerges. Even the ability to add an 802.11a/b hybrid card will be a nice improvement of the FR3002AL. That was a very smart way to include the wireless support from Asanté’s engineers. The only negative with the router is it only has 2 Ethernet ports. I would like to see Asanté include 4 ports on their future wireless routers. Even with only two Ethernet ports, the FR3002AL would be my pick of home cable/DSL routers on the market today. Asanté has done a very good job in designing the FR3002AL. At a cost of $289 for the router and a single 802.11b PCMCIA card to use in the router it is fairly expensive. But, as the technology gets more sophisticated prices will begin to fall. All new technology’s are expensive but eventually drop in price. If you would like to use your notebook anywhere in your house cord free then wireless networking is for you. It is a very nice feature to add to your network and is worth the steep cost. Pros:
Cons:
Overall Score: 9/10 |
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