[LUNI] Wireless & wired router recommendations?

[bradbosch at comcast.net]

Gerald Guglielmo writes:
 > Hi,

 >     The second router seems to have developed a more subtle problem. The 
 > HP printer uses a 169.* private network address, while the router gives 
 > out DHCP addresses in 192.* range. Until last weekend everything was 
 > fine and both wireless and wired addresses could ping the printer and 
 > print files. The wired connections can still ping the printer and have 
 > no problems printing files, however the wireless connections cannot even 
 > see the printer. At first I thought this was a Windows firewall issue 
 > and I spent a long time trying to figure out what McAfee might have 
 > done. However it now appears the problem might be that wireless 
 > connections in general cannot see the 169.* addresses but the wireless 
 > ones can.

Assuming you have the 169.* printer on one of the wired connections,
it's not clear to me how this *ever* worked unless your old router
explictly supported Microsoft's horrible auto-configuration kludge.
Since your hosts are on the 192.* subnet, presumably properly
configured via DHCP, they will most likely direct packets in the 169.*
range to the default route.  Unless you have a route manually
configured for the printer, the router *should* direct the packet to
the default route *it* was given by the cable modem.  It most likely
knows nothing about a 169 network.  Does the new router support
manually configured routes or a second wired local subnet?  If not,
I'd reconfigure the printer.

If you want to avoid the problem of lack of support and bug fixes as
your router ages and your network evolves, I suggest buying a router
that's capable of running one of the open source firmwares.  There are
several good Buffalo and Linksys choices.  Pay attention to the
specific revision numbers supported and the amount of flash and RAM
memory when you shop.

--Brad