Most common way to connect your Amiga to Internet in 2021?
 

There are quite a few way to connect the Amiga to the Internet, depending on Amiga model and if you prefer wired or wireless.. But what is the most common way among active users?

Since I mostly used my A1200 over the years, after the dial-up modem era, I used Wireless PCMCIA but those can sometimes be a pain to get working..
Just recently I ordered a PlipBox to check that option out (with Ethertnet), mostly out of curiosity and because its probably easier to get working properly (most sellers provide a miami dx cfg file)

What are the most common combinations among still active users that actually access the internet on the Amiga?

A500 + Plipbox? A500 + ACA + Xsurf?
A600/A1200 + PCMCIA Wireless and Wired? + Plipbox?
BigBox Amiga + X-surf 100?
Other less common.. (Warp/Vampire + wirelss etc)

What is the most common TCPIP stack these days? PlipBox still recommends the "20 years since last update MiamiDX" but it probably works just fine with e.g. Roadshow. etc..

Is there a "clear path" to the optimal solution for every Amiga model or is it mostly down to personal preference?

For me:

A1200 - wired PCMCIA card
A500 - wireless via A314
A4000 - RTL8139 PCI NIC on Mediator
A3000 - USB ethernet via Deneb
AA3000+ - ethernet on ZZ9000

All using Roadshow

Wired ethernet on all machines.

ZZ9000Net, Ariadne II (multiple), X-Surf 100, PCMCIA ethernet cards (I have some 3c589 and ne2000 compatible cards), X-Surf 500plus depending on the machine.

Was often thinking about getting a plipbox, but never did. It might come in handy for one off situations on A500s.

In my opinion the clearest path is to have an ethernet controller somewhere on the CPU bus, but it is definitely also a personal preference thing. Many are happy with the aforementioned plipbox, but I know I wouldn't be. I tried wireless, but almost immediately decided to ditch that method, originally due to the lack of support for modern encryptions. If I need a wireless Amiga, I connect a small chinese usb powered multi function router to my wired ethernet card and have the router connect to the wifi network.

For the TCP/IP stack I've gone AmiTCP -> Miami -> MiamiDX -> RoadShow. Now I'm happy with RoadShow.

A4000 = USB NIC on Deneb
A2000= Hydranet board
A1200 = ethernet on PCMCIA
A600 = ethernet on PCMCIA
A500Plus= Plipbox, yet to be set up.


Miami not Deluxe is fine.

A1200 D-link Wireless PCMCIA
A600 Kingston EtheRx to PC Bridge

I use a ZZ9000 on the Amiga 4000. I've used a serial link with pppd at the other end on a Rasbperry Pi before that. I use Roadshow for the ZZ9000, I used Miami on the serial connection prior.

A1200 wired PCMCIA ethernet through router using AmiTcp3.

A1200 vamp , using ethernet PCMCIA card and roadshow.
A500 , vamp ethernet
A500 checkmate , Zorro 2 card ( forgot name)

for my Amiga 1200 I use ethernet on PCMCIA.
I connect from a wi-fi extender with ethernet out.
For software I use MiamiDX. Nice GUI and easy to set up.

My towered A1200 is using a standard PCI 10/100 ethernet card, my A2000 has an Ariadne II card, and my various other A1200s are occasionally connected via a couple of LAN or WLAN PCMCIA cards. I'm actually using the Genesis / AmiTCP setup from OS 3.9 on most of them. I previously used MiamiDX when the A1200 tower was on a rather elaborate network that AmiTCP couldn't handle (and even PCs got a bit funky about), but on a basic home network like I have here AmiTCP was significantly faster. I really should upgrade to Roadshow at some point...

Im now using wired PCMCIA ethernet with Roadshow on my A1200.

1x towered a1200 using wired pci ethernet card
1x checkmate a1200 using wired pcmcia card.

Both using roadshow.

3000D - Ariadne 1
3000D - Xsurf100
AA3000 - Xsurf100
3000T - Ariadne 1

Is there any point. Just as quick to use PCMCIA CF transfer kit, lot less messing about. Big box amiga's I would use USB.


Amiga is to slow to do anything decent online.

I like to pull stuff down from aminet on my a1200 directly rather than have to copy stuff over, and also use it to update the clock, check whdload slaves are up to date, and sometimes to pull down music cd information. But yeah not for surfing....

I use it for backups, and for shuttling data back and forth between my machines via a NAS without having to have expensive USB on all the machines or constantly plugging and unplugging things.

It is also nice for FTP. I use DOpus megellan to download anything I want from my Linux Laptop.
There are a couple of recent games with online high score. Reshoot-R and Tiny Little Slug.
This is even some module player and for sure chat, IRC is good.
Yesterday I used IBrowse to download a couple of Amiga scene releases from pouet.net
Works great.

In order of speed...

A500 / ACA500+ with X-Surf-500
A1200 with PCMCIA wired
A600 with PCMCIA wired
A600 / Vamp with SDNet
A500+ with plipbox
CD32 /TF330 with esp8266/slip

Even though the CD32 is using serial, is sufficient for running NTP at boot up and grabbing the occasional thing from aminet. Plipbox is OK, does the job of basic file transfer.

A600 with PCMCIA wired

Seems most (so far) prefer PCMCIA wired to e.g. PlipBox. What speeds are you getting on the PCMCIA card vs those who use (newer versions of) Plipbox?