Adrift at Sea —Dan’s blog on dankim.com

There are two WiFi gadgets I carry in my laptop bag. They are the D-Link AirPlus G DWL-G730AP and Apple’s AirPort Express. Either would be useful in a hotel room, if there was a wired ethernet connection, and I wanted to use my PowerBook wirelessly. But together, they give me a flexibility that either alone wouldn’t give me. That’s the reason I carry both of them, even though they can serve similar functions.

The AirPort Express is a compact 802.11g router with a USB port. This USB port is the key to the flexibility of the two working together. The AirPlus G is a very small box which can server as a router, an access point and a WiFi client. It comes in a nice case, which holds the router, an ethernet cable, a USB power cable, and a AC power supply. The case is about twice the size of the AirPort Express.

The place the two of them really shine is when I have access to a wireless connection but I need to either extend it or create a new network off of it. An good example is a meeting I was at earlier this year. The meeting’s sponsors were charging $25 per day for WiFi access, and would only only register one MAC address for the subscription.

I was with a group of six other people—we all needed brief WiFi access to check e-mail and such. I registered and gave the MAC address off of the AirPlus G as my WiFi client. I used the AirPlus G in WiFi client mode, plugged the ethernet and power cables from the AirPlus G into the Airport Express, and plugged the Airport Express into the wall. I gave the SSID and WPA password of the Airport Express to my six colleagues. All seven of us were able to then use the WiFi connection provided by the AirPort Express, and we split the cost of the WiFi access. Even better, I only needed a single outlet to power both devices.

I’ve also had to use it this way in some hotels which have WiFi high-speed internet access in their rooms. Sometimes, the signal is too weak for a good connection in some parts of the room. I can place the connected AirPlus G and AirPort Express where ever the connection signal is strongest and then use the Airport network any where in the room.

Another use of the AirPlus G is as a WiFi bridge for connecting computers that don’t have WiFi capabilities. There are a lot of older notebook computers that don’t have an internal WiFi card, but do have ethernet. In many cases adding the drivers to them isn’t worth the effort. Wndows XP is pretty flaky when it comes to WiFi. If you have the security turned up on a wireless network and turn off the SSID broadcast, Windows XP will often disassociate from the stealthed WiFi network for one that is broadcasting it’s SSID. Using the AirPlus G, I don’t have to worry about XP’s flakiness or installing drivers. I don’t even need an outlet, since it can power off of a USB port.

Another good use of the Airport Express is printer sharing. There have been times when a few of us were working with laptops, and we had a single printer. The USB port on the AirPort Express is designed to be a network printer server for USB printers. It works pretty well and supports a pretty wide range of printers.

One last use of the AirPort Express is as a charger for my cell phone, iPod, PDA and bluetooth headset. I normally carry USB charging cables for all four devices. Many times, I need to charge one or the other, but don’t want to drag out my notebook to do it… especially if I’ve gotten to a hotel late at night and just want to go to bed. I can plug the USB cable into the AirPort Express and plug it into the wall and charge whatever needs to be charged as easily as if i was carrying the four separate AC chargers… but my bag is a lot lighter for it.

If I had to carry only a single travel WiFi router, it would be the AirPlus G. It is the most flexible, versatile and well-thought out of all the portable travel WiFi routers. While there are other small, portable WiFi routers, I haven’t found one that is so well suited to travel, and that gives me the flexibility and options of the AirPlus G. Adding the AirPort Express, gives me an even greater range of options and flexibility.