If memory serves me right, Manuel Kasper wrote:

> In any case, if you want a decent, reliable and fast access point,
> consider buying a real "hardware" AP instead - this whole hostap
> stuff just never matches the features and reliability that a good
> commercial AP can offer (I'm not necessarily talking about Netgear,
> D-Link and Linksys).

Yes.  IMHO, it's kind of cool to be able to say "look, I can make an
access point" but in the vast majority of cases, it doesn't gain much
else, and as you pointed out, a lot of times you lose out on
flexibility and reliability.

My recent success story: I use a Cisco 340 access point at home.  I
wanted to figure out a way to have an internal network that was
WEP-protected [1] and a guest network that doesn't require WEP, but
requires some other kind of authentication that I can hand out to
houseguests.  It turns out the 340 supports multiple wireless networks
(with different SSIDs and WEP parameters), which then get bridged onto
different VLANs on the single Ethernet port.  So I set up a couple of
VLANs on a m0n0wall box and turned on captive portal support for the
VLAN corresponding to the guest network.  As Emeril Lagasse would say,
*BAM!*

Thanks, Manuel and Dinesh, for making this work.

Bruce.

[1]  Yeah, I know WEP sucks.  Humor me.