I have an MN-700. It sucks. It offers me wireless 54G networking in a small and affordable package ($25 on w00t shipped) plus routing capabilities and a built-in 4 port 10T/100TX switch. I wish that it delivered. Don’t get me wrong, it works beautifully as a switch. That’s about it. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Microsoft probably didn’t design, build, or write the firmware for the switch that is integrated into my AP. You know why I think that? Because it’s the only part that works flawlessly.

Ryan and I were trying to play Scrabble 2 across the network the other day. Actually, we weren’t trying so much as were were actually playing it. Well, for a while, anyway. I had my laptop on the couch in Ryan’s room, connected to my wireless, so that he and I could talk to each other while we played our game without having to raise our voices from room to room. Sure, there was the in-game text feature, but I like to use my primitive vocal cords from time to time. You know, for the sake of novelty?

Let’s outline a few important details:

• My laptop and wireless router were separated by a grand total of ten feet
• In that ten feet between them, there was only two sheets of drywall (thank you, whoever constructed the Naeseth townhomes)
• I was using the Microsoft Wireless Zero configuration engine to establish and maintain my wireless connection

Ryan and I got about thirty minutes into a game, and it was pretty heated. The scores were close, the end was near, and the words were quite good. Suddenly, my computer told me that he had dropped out of the game. His computer told him that I had dropped out of the game. I minimized scrabble to find the “Wireless network connection is now connected” tooltip balloon protruding from my system tray. I had been disconnected from and subsequently reconnected to my router. As a result, some packets were lost that caused our game to be ruined. So, we tried to play again. About thirty miniutes later, it happened again. So, we ran a patch cable from my room to his room and played over a wired LAN. Problem solved.

I guess when my laptop says this:

What it really means is this:

I know that my wireless card works fine, because I have used it at length on other access points with no problems. Ruling that out, the only other things involved were Microsoft-based: my AP and the Wireless Zero Configuration Service.

Go figure.