I set up my Netgear router rather easily today (a nice upgrade from a 10Mbps 3Com hub), got the Ethernet and WiFi LANs to work quickly (though it helped to turn on the WiFi button on the front of my Tecra notebook to get it to pick up the signal!) only to discover the Netgear MR314 doesn’t support Universal Plug and Play, which apparently is necessary to allow voice and video chat in Windows Messenger through Network Address Translation.
NAT is a broken "technology" from hell, and it shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg to get fixed IPs. One step ahead, two steps backwards… Let’s hope Netgear will come up with a new firmware, they’re supposed to support UPnP, and updated their F-series routers. And I thought I had done my homework on that purchase.
The guy running the white box shop on the floor below mine had an open WiFi signal that I was surprised to pick up. I went downstairs and told him to watch out, he even admitted he hadn’t changed the default admin logon and password which I could have easily found online (he named his WLAN "linksys"). I could have locked him out of his router!
