Continuing on my theme of products that rule, I've just got to blog about my spiffy little D-Link DWL-G730AP. It really is the "little router that could." 

First of all, it's terribly cuddly. Every time I see the little guy I just want to hug it. The router itself is about the size of a very thin/small cell phone, and it comes in a spiffy 'leather' case that takes up the space of about two mice sitting side by side.

It comes with an external power source, as well as with a BITCHIN' little USB power-source, that lets you draw juice right out of one of your USB ports (which is a very killer feature that I've used a few times in the past). And, of course, it also comes with a sleek CAT5 cable.

On the back this little guys has a VERY cool little switch that lets the hardware act as either a full-blown ROUTER, or as an ACCESS POINT, or even as a WiFi 'card' for boxes that don't have their own WiFi goodness. (Just plug it in, set it to 'Client', and then run the CAT5 from it in to your box's NIC (I think)).

You can take a test drive of the router and access point's firmware/interface on the D-Link site via their emulator, and for a pocket router/ap, you get quite a few configuration options. More than enough to keep the average geek from going through complete withdrawals when forced out of the office on 'vacation' or some other such horrible thing.

In terms of application, I just love this little guy. The Access Point functionality is awesome for sharing a single CAT5 port/cable with multiple people if they've all got WiFi, and the Router Goodness (or sometimes AP functionality) is to die for in hotels. I don't travel much (that would require leaving the house/office), but when I do, I rarely if ever use non-secured wireless. (Not because I'm worried about my machine being compromised, but because I'm afraid I'll do something dumb and check email or something (many of my email accounts don't allow SSL/encryption)). With this little guy, I can hook in to the Hotel Room's wired connection, and beam it, with full WAP-PSK throughout the hotel. It's the best of both worlds.

I've even used this little guy as a DHCP router for my VPCs/VMs on a few occasions (though I could have just configured my own virtual networks on my box, etc - but using this little guy was a bit easier than messing with all that mess..)

Throughput with this little trooper is FINE. I've never really noticed any slowdown with it at all - other than when working with the configuration/management interface (where it's slow, but not unbearably so). It's been a tiny bit flaky to me on one or two occasions, but a quick reboot fixed that with no issues.

If you're comfortable with Routers/APs and know how to use and set them up correctly, you'll love this little thing, and wonder how you ever lived without it.