B3 Wifi Overhead

[uberteck]

I just found out about the B3 and it seems exactly what I've been trying to find for a while now and is clearly my new "can't live without" gadget - what I can't work out is which one I should get: B3 or B3+wifi.

Can anyone tell me what kind of overhead using it as a router and wifi access point causes?
I'm assuming the main processor has to do all the work for the wifi (encryption calculations etc.) or does the mini wifi card have a seperate co-processor?

My main interest is in using it as a low powered server I can leave on. I spend a lot of time travelling for work and being able to access my media etc. remotely (file server, stream music etc.) and vpn into something to 'wake on lan' other machines in my house as needed would be ideal. The fact that I can use it as a router/firewall etc. is a bonus and means I could decomission the ancient (inefficient) PIII linux server I have doing that currently.

I already have a seperate wifi access point, so I could feasibly just plug this into the B3 and offload some of the work. I realise the impact may well be minimal, but I do tend to hack stuff a fair bit and will probably end up installing a number of things on there, so with limited resources I wouldn't want to uneccesarily slow it down. If it is negligible I'd like to consolidate if I can - just looking for some data to help me make my mind up.

Does anyone have both experience of running one as just a stanalone server and one with router+wifi roles and can tell me what kind of impact it has?

(btw. I found out about it from a review in Linux User magazine in the UK - in case anyone from Excito reads this and is interested from a marketing point of view.)

Thanks in advance,

Nick

[RandomUsername]

Hi. I have a standalone B2 so can't actually answer your questions but just want to point something out. For me, buying the wifi upgrade for my B2 would be pointless as I'd still have to run a separate network switch thanks to the lack of LAN ports on the Bubba. As most people will have a wifi router provided by their ISP, If you're going to have more than one wired network device you may as well offload the wifi to said router and utilise its switching capabilities at the same time.

[fairhair]

I bought a B3 for purposes similar to yours, and has had it for just over a week now. I chose one with wifi to be able to use it as a router and have one gadget less. However, I wasn't satisfied with the reliability of the B3 as a router and wifi access point. I occasionally lost routing between LAN and WAN and at the odd occasions wifi was lost too. So now I've reinstated my Netgear router, which has never failed me, and use the B3 only as a server including VPN server, which works fine.

[philgaskin]

Sadly, this is my experience too. I have yet to revert back to my router and using the B3 as just a server on my network (which will be disappointing for me). I had been watching the Bubba for several years and thought that the B3 had the power to manager all functions of a router and server; however I am coming to the same conclusion as fairhair due to routing unreliability (can't even ping the internet from the B3 let alone from the LAN/Wifi at times).

[uberteck]

Thanks to everyone who replied and shared their experiences!

I've just ordered a standard B3 (without wifi) as just a standalone low power server - should do everything I wanted it for. I've currently got an ancient Cisco 800 series router which never skips a beat and a netgear wifi point hanging off it, so I guess the old adage of don't fix if it ain't broke applies...

I would have thought if most of the other server functions were turned off it would be way overspec'd for a router, so the issues you guys have had are worse than I was expecting. I hope for your sake it turns out to be something simple they can fix with an update.

I may have a play with using it as a router just out of curiosity anyway, do some profiling - if I do I'll post my findings back here.

Thanks again all,
Nick