Apropos of nothing, I bought a Dell laptop and it came with a “free” Netgear wireless router. I got the wireless network set up with little difficulty and was able to access the Internet through Verizon’s DSL service but no matter what settings Netgear and my own corporate tech support helped me with, the Netgear router would not provide a stable connection to my company’s VPN tunnel.
I bought a Linksys wireless router today and with no special settings it logged right into the VPN and doesn’t drop.
I know this may mean nothing to many here, and in fact, most of the phrases and settings that were tossed around, like port forwarding and mac address cloning, by the techies are still mysteries to me.
But for the record, if you’re in the US, Linksys does VPN seamlessly. Netgear does not.
I had a linksys wireless card and I switched to a belkin. Ever since my computer sporadically freezes while I am online. I am certain its not a virus or anything of the sort. The only thing I changed was the card.
I’m getting to really dislike Belkin. When I see Belkin the first thing that comes to mind is overpriced cables and accessories. It seems that all of the big computer stores and office supply stores have switched to Belkin as their primary and in most cases only brand of cables and cable related accessories. It is getting very difficult now to buy reasonably priced computer cables because all you can find is Belkin. Good God, $30 for a USB cable? Is it solid gold? How about a $22 6ft power cable? That is insane.
It is obvious that the stores love Belkin because of the obvious high markups. But I hate it. All it does is force me to buy cables online. Are the brick and mortar stores trying to make themselves irrelevant? Am I dreaming when I can remember buying reasonably priced cables before Belkin cornered the market?
don’t blame Belkin, blame the stores…or don’t blame them, because they will charge what the market will bear, and if you don’t like it you can always shop online (and wait a day or two or a week for your stuff to show up).
On that link for the laptop power cable, I like the “protect this investment” thing–as if any computer related part could be considered and “investment”! they’re money holes, not investments.
btw, I began “learning to rid” today…that is, learning to fall off. If I can just stick with it for a couple weeks I might turn into a unicyclist yet
I’m glad the Linksys works for you. When my first non-wireless D-link router died a couple years ago, I tried Netgear and Linksys, but neither would maintain a VPN connection. The worst part was having to explain to the store clerk that I didn’t want to exchange them because the devices had design flaws.
I finally settled on a Motorola router that I found at Target.
