In the age of high speed connectivity... Everyone who's anyone is now on DSL, Cable modem, T1 (I wish). With this kind of technology at our fingertips... it seems that many of us our getting wired. Pink, yellow, green, white, blue patch cables are surfacing all over our homes. A computer in little Bobby's room and a laptop in Suzie's room along with a desktop in grandma's room and the workstation in the office... the need for internet access extends far beyond the days of the 28.8/56k. Alas, we have an answer... WIFI technology now lets us live our lives wirelessly without having to play jump rope around all those patch cables.

One day I was out in the backyard and decided to purchase a 100 foot patch cable which I threw out my second story window and plugged into my laptop sitting on my patio set. What a wonderful idea I thought to myself... Then the notion of wireless networking crossed my mind. I searched for various types of packages and narrowed it down to Linksys and 2Wire. Hearing great things about 2Wire and it's ease of use along with the fact that my internet provider (Pacbell DSL - SBC) had a package deal that came with a 2Wire 100W unit... I decided to give it a try.

My occupation as a Database Administrator made me confident that I could accomplish this wireless setup without too many snags. The box comes in the mail and I immediately go to work. I follow the step by step instructions. My unit came with the Silver Lucent Orinoco card. First thing right of the bat... I installed the Home Portal software without any problems... then plugged in the card into my laptop, running Windows 2000, as the directions stated. My card was not connecting to my unit and therefore I could not authenticate out to the internet. Long story short... I figured, through trial and error, that you need to plug in the card first before doing the home portal install and have the system recognize it then install the drivers for the card. Now you install the home portal software and it will configure the cards channels and encryption key.

By the way... during the trial and error piece of this article I tried calling Pacbell about my issue... they reply back with, "Sorry sir, but that product is to recent for us to support... no one in our staff is trained in helping you out. Please contact the 2Wire manufacturer for support." Totally disappointed with Pacbell's service. Anyhow, I figure out how to make the Lucent card talk to my 2Wire 100W unit. Now it was time to authenticate... entered in user name and password and before I knew it I was on the net and walking around my house like a kid in a candy store. I was surfing Yahoo on the stairs, Cnet in the kitchen, MSNBC in the bedroom, Epinions in my backyard. Basically I was a walking internet connection. This is GREAT!!!

Well before I get too excited over my new found freedom I decide to network my other PC's... I purchase another Lucent card and plug that into my other laptop, running Windows 98, and did the same thing I did above to setup the card. Now I had two machines on the net using the same DSL connection and I was flying!!! And better still I was able to access files off of the other laptops as though they were on a network because essentially they were on a network. The home portal software configures the machines to recognize one another on it's network. Of course, permissions must be set individually on each machine. Now I am able to swap files between my two laptops with the greatest of ease. The file transfers are surprisingly quick. I transferred about 700mb worth of data in about 5 to 10 minutes... not bad.

So now that I was running wireless I wanted to hook up my desktop (Dell Precision P4). However, I was not about to spend more money on another wireless card so I used my ethernet. That's right... the 100W comes with wireless capabilities, ethernet, and USB. So basically the unit has it all covered... which is very handy. So I plug in the ethernet and setup my desktop and BAM! I now have three networked PC's in a matter of 2 hours!!! So now I am thinking that with all these systems hooked up and networked an all my data transferring from here to there to here. What about security? Well the good news is that the 2Wire 100W has a built in firewall that is resident on the unit. No need to mess with firewall settings... the install program handles it all for you.

So by now I'm thinking this product rocks! And it does... I have 3 systems hooked up, a printer hooked up to my desktop which is on the network which my laptops can now print to, and I have a firewall setup... what more could I ask for right? Well like most of us... the internet has opened up the possibilities of working from home. VPN or Virtual Private Network is a tool my company uses to connect our machines at home to our network at work. So basically, I can access all the files, emails, reports, and projects I have on the network at my company while I am sitting at home in my PJ's. Well for some reason my VPN software conflicted with my Lucent cards... This part of the story is very long and detailed so if you'd like more info please contact me and I will be happy to share. But, to make a long story short... With VPN installed I could not access the internet nor could I access my VPN network. Calling the 2Wire support line I received EXCELLENT service. I was never on hold for more then 5 minutes... These guys are GREAT! They helped me determine if it was an issue with Win98 or 2000, but it happened on both machines so that wasn't the issue... so next we checked out settings and MTU settings and blah blah... bottom line I could use my VPN software on the machine that was hard wired to the unit. So my desktop with the ethernet connection worked... for some reason the Lucent cards where having problems. I'm trying to contact Lucent about this issue.

Soooo... All in all this product ROCKS! Support is very very helpful and quick to answer the phone and they are all super knowledgeable. Now here is the inside tip: 2Wire is located in San Jose, Ca. (in fact they are 5 min. away from my home) When I had issues with the VPN and internet connectivity a support rep actually visited my home and brought in another 100W unit with a Lucent card to try it out... same results... Now this is what support should be about. Now the BAD news is that due to the economy they are moving the support guys to Arizona... Sadly, most of the individuals that make up this group are not going to make this transition. So ulitmately the kick butt support people that helped me with my situation will not be helping you by the time you've finished reading this article. I can only imagine that 2Wire has taken the time to educate the new people who will support the 2Wire product... but from what I hear... they are going through a one week crash course and then they go live. Good luck!

So what have we learned? The 2Wire 100W has blazing fast transfer rates at 11Mbit/s, a built in firewall, network capabilities, USB-Ethernet-WIFI connections, and can give you the freedom you've always dreamed of. VPN may be an issue... but definitely not enough of an issue for me to not recommend this product. Overall, I give the 2Wire 100W two enthusiastic thumbs up!!!!

Sinatra X5

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 499.00
Driver Availability: Windows, Linux, and Mac