Thank you, Alec.<br><br><br>

Well for one you can't hack the airport easily and turn it into a $600 commercial router like you can the Linksys. ;)<br><br>Secondly, the Linksys plays fine with Macs and is $100 cheaper. While it's true the Airport is currently 802.11n, but since he doesn't have an n client, that doesn't matter.<br><br><br><br>Hey I'm an F'n Jerk!®

i have 2 broken linksys routers sitting here so i am pretty much done with them. they have had times when their support for Macs was quite lacking -- perhaps it's good now, or perhaps your hack makes it unnecessary. <br><br>forgive my ignorance, but what i am missing by using the Airport base station and not the hacked Linksys? what will the "commercial" router do?<br><br>

You're forgiven.<br><br>Anyway, I've had 2 different Linksys routers for about 7 years now (first one was hard-wired, upgraded to the 2nd one which was wireless) and they've never had a problem running a home network with 2 Macs, 2 PCs, a Wii and an Airport Express. <br><br>So why spend $120 more for the Apple name? Personally, I didn't see the point. <br><br>

You won't get increased speeds with an N router unless you also have an N client.<br><br>Of course, you can hack the Linksys N routers too, I believe. ;)<br><br>Also, take into consideration what you're going to be doing with this. If you're just surfing the web, then wireless G is far faster than any internet connection you can get. If you're going to be copying gigabyte sized files between computers, then go for wireless N, but you'll also have to buy a new airport card for the laptop.<br><br>Alternatively, you could get an airport card for the Mac Pro and just share the 'net connection using point to point. Easier and cheaper still.<br><br><br><br>Hey I'm an F'n Jerk!®

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>forgive my ignorance, but what i am missing by using the Airport base station and not the hacked Linksys? what will the "commercial" router do?<p><hr></blockquote><p>The DD-WRT firmware (which BTW is available for many routers now, not just the WRT-54's) just has overall more robust security, DMZ options, time scheduling (i.e. turn the radio off in the wee hours of the night to save electricity), adjusting radio power output, etc... features that are in the chipset of the router (and likely in the airport too since it uses Broadcom chipsets), but aren't enabled by default.<br><br>In actuality you're probably not missing anything because you probably wouldn't use those features to begin with. But there are a lot of features I use, like the radio scheduling, that are just nice to have.<br><br>Although, it does make the router more reliable too.<br><br><br><br>Hey I'm an F'n Jerk!®

I was pretty sure Jashue was talking about N but I had to make sure.<br>The only thing I am concerned about is the range. Can the card find the router between floors.<br><br><br><br>

I've got an 800 G4 iMac upstairs that gets its internet connection from my APE. No problems-- aside from the fact that the machine itself seems underpowered in every way a machine can be underpowered (next to my new MBP it seems unusable). Funny how fast I remember it being when it was new! Funny how spoiled we get!<br><br>But to answer your question specifically... yes<br><br>

Well as an example, I have 2 of the linksys routers, hacked them both with DD-WRT and run in WDS mode, one in my house, one in my in-laws garage 300 feet away, and then was able to get 4-5 bars in the airport menu of an original airport equipped ibook in their house which was about 200 feet from the router. That was running in mixed B/G mode, if you force the router to G only, signal strength just about doubles.<br><br>That's the nice thing about the DD-WRT firmware though, you can put the routers in WDS mode which lets them talk router to router and use one as an access point.<br><br>Also, my wii is on the opposite end of the house from the router, on the same floor.. but it's going through about 8 walls and the signal meter in DD-WRT is telling me 42% on the signal. <br><br>If I'd put high gain antennas on it, that would probably increase dramatically. I think the airport base has an antenna port, but I'm not sure.<br><br><br><br><br><br>Hey I'm an F'n Jerk!®

Does the base station have a port to add an external high gain antenna?<br><br><br><br>Hey I'm an F'n Jerk!®