Allan Duncan <amd2345@fastmail.com.au> wrote:

If you have a gigE port you could also use a router such as the Linksys 
E3200 (and friends) in AP mode.  Dual band concurrent, 3 aerials per 
band (a big advantage over sticks).
Runout price $89 at PCDIY - claimed to be "in stock".

Thanks. I'm actually hoping to avoid an extra device/power supply, though that
might be inevitable. There isn't much room on the desks here anymore. I'm also
looking for something with a command line interface so I don't have to deal
with Web interfaces for consumer-grade devices, i.e., bad when you want to
administer them remotely, usually not wonderful accessibility and painful to
use in general, in my experience.

Getting a router and flashing OpenWRT onto it would be another
possibility.
However, the desktop machine is handling all of my networking - ADSL, DNS,
DHCP, mail, SIP, etc. I haven't looked hard yet, but my quick searches didn't
identify any device with enough memory and CPU for all of these functions that
offered a small form factor and lower power (with a PCI slot for the ADSL card
and another slot for wireless). Such a device would be tempting, of course, as
I could then move all the networking out of my primary workstation.

A friend is in a similar position (though with cable and ADSL), and thinking
that a small form-factor system capable of running a typical Linux
distribution would be better than OpenWRT on consumer-grade hardware.
Apparently, you can't upgrade OpenWRT in place from one release to another -
you have to re-install, at least on some routers. That's annoying, to say the
least.

If anyone reading this has any ideas, suggestions are of course
welcome.

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