Watch your Routers

So, I'm in Chicago right now. Very cool city and just a wee bit bigger than Seattle. The architecture is really cool! The good news is we're out collecting data for the next version of SBS. If you're in Chicago, good luck trying to find me, the room that I'm in, has no windows!

Anyways, we managed to visit a small business site today, I always like going to visit a site, they had a very small (but seeminly highly effective) office, a number of printers, a number of new Dell computers. While they weren't running SBS, they did have an SBS like setup, a domain, in a single-nic environment.

One thing I noticed, was they had a hardware firewall router as their gateway to the Internet, then in addition, they had a Wireless Router/gateway device that provided wireless access to their network. One of my major concerns is people who put their routers in their network, and then don't use them in bridge mode.

Of course, both Bridge mode and router mode are ok, just keep in mind that if it's not in Bridge mode, you're desktops won't be able to "see" the wireless computers, as they will be behind a NAT/Firewall.

This information might help when you setup your Wireless Access Point, make sure you choose what's best for your network.