My friend Nick Martini from GCF has been reading about my new home office wireless network and asked, “What kind of access point should we get for our office?” As is the case with a lot of small and mid-sized businesses, he’d like more security and accountability than you can normally get when you buy an access point that’s suitable for home use.
As you know, I have a D-Link DI-624 AirPlus Xtreme G Wireless Router, which offers WEP encryption and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) support for both 802.1x and WPA-PSK. The DI-624 is also capable of supporting government-grade AES encryption and the proposed 802.11i standards. These technologies encrypt communication taking place between the computers and the wireless router. At most, they provide what’s called “shared secret” password capability, meaning that all authorized users provide the same password(s) to gain access. If you want to fully control access to the router, you have to limit access to authenticated users.
Tom’s Networking reported that Gateway has developed an inexpensive wireless access point with a built-in 100 user RADIUS server. The Gateway 7001 802.11G Wireless Access Point costs $299, but it lets you deny users who are not authorized to access your network. Other systems that allow you to do this cost more and generally involve system integration.
The Gateway 7001 is a brand new product, so keep a lookout for more information about it. But, it’s definitely a step up from the low end access points.