The Cisco valet series of products claims to be the simple way to connect
your PC to a wireless network however I haven't really had a chance to put it to
the test yet so I've got a couple valet
series products here first of all I have the valet valet valet however you prefer
to pronounce it I'm going to say valet or valet I don't know I've got the valet
router right here so this is a wireless end router it's got 4 1000 Ethernet
ports and then it supports Wireless obviously that would be without wires
okay so here's the back of the router that's basically what it looks like and
then I have the little USB key that comes with the valet so I'm going to do
two different scenarios first I am going to connect the valet to a computer
running a thirdparty wireless card okay
and then I'm going to use a linkis valet
connector so this is their own valet
branded USB Wi-Fi card and I'm going to see how much different the process is if
at all versus connecting to a third party one this is the networking corner
so what I'm going to do is I'm going to unplug my DGL 4500 plug in the Cisco Val
and then we'll go from there okay the indicator lights we've got on here seem
to be indicating Wireless is working our internet connection is active and I have
one Lan Port plugged in so that is the
one that goes to uh as per the label the
side bedroom so that's where I'm on my way back to okay that didn't take nearly
5 minutes but it did take about three um so congratulations you are now connected
to the internet remove your easy setup key and keep it in a safe place you will
use it to connect other computers so the easy setup key is basically just like uh
WPS button as far as I can tell because
it did manage to connect me to the network but I don't think it really did
anything advanced like along the lines
of what in the heck okay hold on maybe it did some more
advanced things it changed the name of linkis 36 whatever whatever to shiny
cheetah and also created uh a guest
login as well that's kind of neat so
they've generated some kind of okay well hold on let's open up the network check
so it set it as a work Network which is
interesting rather than as a home Network and it's name change the name
okay so let's let's dig a little deeper and let's find out what exactly the easy
setup wizard has done for us here so connect another computer or another
device to Your Valet so you can add
devices say for example another computer in your house okay so basically this is
just a a wizard to walk you through
walking down there and connecting the easy setup key okay uh here we've got
wireless printer what if I wanted to do this
refer to the printer's documentation okay so these are just little Wizards
let's say oh Apple iPhone smartphone what if I were to do that I have an
Apple iPhone smartphone here right in front of me okay so what would I want to
do okay so here's the security key and the security type that it gives me and I
can print these settings and then I can connect my smartphone I'm not going to
bother doing that I know that'll work okay back back what else do we got we
got guest access so allow guest access yes or no so I could turn that off I can
set how many guests so I could say only one guest is allowed I can change the
password it looks like the password by default is kiwi 52 which is not bad they
should connect to the wireless guest Network listed above open a browser and then enter the guest password Neato well
that's a cool option so you can set it up so that they have to enter a password
besides just haering into your uh your
shiny cheetah guest
Wireless account neat okay so I can
finish that I'll go back I actually I really like
this the Cisco Connect software is looking pretty good to me right about
now because this is the kind of this is the kind of layout that like my Aunt can
use and um that is really my Benchmark
for anything that is supposed to be simple is if my aunt can do it then it's
probably simple don't tell her I said that but uh what else do we got here so
valet settings so I mean telling her open up a browser and type in 192 .16
8.1.1 and then go to the advanced and then there's no way there's no way
she'll be able to handle that so this is the kind of thing that she can actually handle so safe web surfing aler see if
you're about to visit a potentially harmful website here's your Valley name
and password update or create an easy setup key okay looks like you don't have
to use the one that's included here's advanced settings what do we got so this
is for expert use only so stay away this is exactly the kind of thing I would be
pretty happy for it to tell my aunt before she goes in and messes up with
things so admin I copied the password aha so now we're going to
192.168.1.1 I don't have a password on it now or apparently I don't I don't
know that's odd because it gave me a password to use okay so this takes me to
how to actually set up sorry about that my memory card filled up uh so this is
where you can actually control the router the way that more advanced people
would be able to do it okay so we'll close that close that all right so then
we'll okay we're finished in here and last but not least let's have a look at
the parental controls so parental controls password let's make it uh
oops let's make it Muffin Man five
okay all right and the secret question will be do you
know Muffin Man and the answer would be yes
Okay so we've set that up let's have a look at what parental controls does for
us okay restrict access on test PC block
internet access here you got times block sites and appropriate for Block specific
sites need o and then finish so thank you for checking out my uh my one way of
doing things actually no you know what let's uh let's do it with the valley
connector now and see if it's any different all right so when we install
the Cisco uh valet USB Wi-Fi thing so
there it is okay we get a similar wizard
okay no not that not that this and we
get a setup guide so why don't we try that setup and please wait this may take
up to 5 minutes okay well I'll be back then well after a couple seconds it
prompts me uh to tell it whether I have
an easy setup key which I do but let's pretend for the sake of making
things more difficult for ourselves that I do
not after a couple more seconds it comes up with a list of which wireless access
points there are around me which I can select one and then I can enter the
password for shiny cheetah okay well I don't remember what
the setup or what the uh password is and
uh other than putting in the easy setup key I don't really know of any way that
I can figure it out at this point but it looks like here basically this is my
conclusion on the valet the router is the big one so if you get the valet
connector obviously you are assured that it'll be compatible with the router
which can be a bit of a problem for wireless devices but the router and the
easy setup key seems to be where the magic happens so I would definitely
recommend based on what I've seen so far from The Cisco valet router getting this
for your less uh well technologically
inclined relatives or friends and it
looks like it should be quite a simple way for them to set up not only just
connecting to the internet but also managing some basic configuration stuff
like parental controls and guest networks and stuff like that thanks for
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