[Cu-wireless] Realtek RTL8181, "access point on a chip"

[David Young]

On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 01:49:01PM -0600, Jon Dugan wrote:
>   That looks very interesting.
> 
>   There is another board I have been looking at lately, which will be shipping
>   in January for about $120 a pop.  It has two mini PCI slots and two
>   ethernets ( or 1 mini PCI and 3 ethernets), can be powered over ethernet.
>   233 MHz Geode processor.  It also has a compact flash slot.
> 
>     http://www.pcengines.ch/wrap.htm
> 
>   They have manufactured one round of boards and sold them.  The second round
>   is supposed to be available in mid January.  Combine this with a mini PCI 
>   radio or two and you have a pretty nifty little platform.  Netgate carries
>   the mini PCI radios:
> 
>     http://www.netgate.com/soekris-miniPCI.html
> 
>   Looks like the Minitar is cheaper, but in quantity it may be possible to get
>   a better price on the PC Engines boards.

Peter Folk has shown me the WRAP, and it is a nice board for a great
cost, but you've still got to add to it a $25 CompactFlash card and
a $95 MiniPCI 802.11b/g card from netgate.com before it is a rooftop
router. That's $240 per router, even before adding an antenna, enclosure,
and power injector.  Compare with the Minitar AP, which will sell for
about 50 U.S. dollars with flash memory (granted, very little of it!) and
a radio built in.

Nevertheless, the WRAP is probably worth the extra $190 in the long
run. You don't have to reverse-engineer it, memory is not so tight,
and it can be upgraded.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung at ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933