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Actiontec Wireless G Ethernet Adapter
First Impressions
The Actiontec Wireless Ethernet Adapter is a small box with an antenna sticking out the back. There isn't anything too fancy about it, but then again, there really is no need for it to be fancy; its sole purpose is to bridge the wireless network to the wired one. On the underside of the device are two mounting holes such that it can be wall mounted in any direction, which is always a good thing.    Besides the box itself, you will get a yellow Ethernet cable and an installation CD. Although this product is targeted for use with computers, the instructions do include methods for hooking up a gaming console. Either way, you will most likely need a computer to set everything up before you connect this to anything else. Since this device communicates directly by Ethernet, there really is no need for any drivers on the device you connect it to.  Installation According to the installation instructions, this device is plug-n-play. Inserting the included CD starts an installation wizard which guides you through the process step by step with nice pictures. You will invariably get to a point where the installation will fail unless you happen to also have an Actiontec router set to its standard configuration. The initial configuration the device looks for is an open AP with an SSID of ACTIONTEC. I was impressed with the pictures and the explanation of the install process up to the point where it fails. At this time it tells you that you aren't using an ACTIONTEC SSID and that once you fix that, come back and reinstall. It is at this point I would have liked to see a site survey tool and a security configuration box. That little bit of interface would probably have made setting up this product much easier. Instead, I had to browse the CD and install a separate program that directly interfaced with the Adapter, or so I thought. There was just enough information to keep me occupied, but not enough to get it to work. DHCP and you All the literature on this device tells me that it will pick up DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). Of course, you can't pick up a DHCP signal if you can't attach to the network. The problem comes when you have an encrypted wireless network, which you should have unless you like giving away free internet to your neighbors, which is totally up to you anyway. My problem arose when the list of available access points only showed an AP that didn't even exist. Without a good link to the AP, no amount of security configuration would work. Here comes the rub, if the wireless bridge can't connect to a DHCP server, then the computer won't get an IP address either, which makes connecting to a web page very hard. The device automatically configures itself to 192.168.0.240. Even using this IP, the connection only showed limited connectivity on Windows XP. This was due to the lack of a connection to the DHCP server from the computer. What this all boils down to is a big mess. I was able to get this device to work, but it was by no means a quick fix. To begin with I am not using standard IP addressing that most devices start with such as 192.168.X.X. Even if I used the wireless router, it assigns addresses in the 192.168.1.X range, not 192.168.0.X. For my network I am using 10.100.40.X addressing. Using the installed software to connect to the bridge I statically assigned it an IP of 10.100.40.190. On my test system I also assigned a static IP address of 10.100.40.188. Now that everything is on the same subnet, I fired up IE (it was all I had installed at the time, I know Firefox is better!) and typed in the IP address of the bridge. You know you have it right when you get a box asking for username and password which was "admin" for both. Interestingly enough, the web interface contained the site survey tools I so desperately needed in the first place. From the site survey tool I located 2 connections, one that was coming off a speed boosted router and another off a B and G only connection. Once connected, everything worked as it should. I was even able to switch back to DHCP on the bridge after the WEP key had been entered and it functioned properly.
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Impressions & Installation Page 3: Security & Testing Page 4: Quality Check & Conclusion 
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