Have SIP-enabled WiFi, will travel

The past couple of trips I have made to California, I have brought along my Linksys access point I bought several months ago. The only problem with the Linksys is that it takes a lot of room in my suitcase.

Enter the Intertex IX66 with a Compact Flash 802.11b card. Aside from being a pretty nifty firewall (which has a DHCP server with the ability to reserve IPs, DNS server, Dynamic DNS support, and custom rules), it is also a SIP proxy. It basically eliminates the need for many of the NAT workarounds you need to employ with SIP.

With the optional 802.11b card, it also becomes a wireless access point. Okay, it’s not 802.11g, but I don’t have a single 802.11g card so it’s a non-issue for me. It doesn’t support all of the latest features in this regard, but it supports WEP, MAC filtering, and the ability to disable SSID broadcasting. Good enough for me.

The other important consideration: it’s a hell of a lot smaller than the Linksys. It’s about the size of a small paperback book whereas the Linksys device is about the size of one large hardcover book. That size difference can make a world of difference in a suitcase.