[CLUE-Tech] Linux 802.11b

[Nate Duehr]

On Monday 12 January 2004 12:02 pm, Timothy C. Klein wrote:
> * Dale K. Hawkins (dhawkins at cdrgts.com) wrote:
> > For the desktop, I took a much, much easier route.  I bought a
> > wireless ethernet bridge.  Very slick and easy to use.  Sure you have
> > to have a regular ethercard, but those are easy!
>
> I have regular ethernet cards up the wazoo.  Hubs and switches, too.  I
> have never ran across a wireless ethernet brigde.  What brand do you
> use, where did you get it?

I have used the Linksys WET11.  

The early ones had power supply problems and I had to RMA at least one of 
them, but for the price, they're neat little boxes... especially if you'd 
rather a bridged environment than a routed one.  (i.e. you want to 
connect a hub/switch that's away from the wireless AP and the wired 
network and put multiple machines on it.)

I put one of these out in my garage for a while, and it worked spiffy... 
plug a machine in on the garage workbench and DHCP took care of the 
rest... when the power supply died and I RMA'ed it, the only thing I 
could find in stock locally at the time was another WAP11, so I replaced 
it and the WET11 went to a friend's house after it came back from RMA.

Cool gizmos.  I think a few other manufacturer's make them, and the newer 
WAP11's also support two modes (which I found after I swapped the WET11 
for a WAP11) that are similar -- one is a truly bridged mode (only to 
another WAP11 you program in MAC addresses of each side to each other) 
and also a "client" mode where the remote WAP11 logs in like a client to 
the wireless network and then handles DHCP requests for local machines 
and NAT's for them, and/or can also act as a standard router for a 
network range and you can just route back to your existing network 
through it.

These little cheap boxes have really come a long way from a few years ago.  
They do everything but butter toast!  

Word of warning, the WAP11's and the version with the 4-port switch in 
them (BSFR??) both seem to have packet-loss problems when they're 
configured to do remote syslogging... lots of reports of this from owners 
who have them and try to do the VoIP/Ham-Radio stuff I'm involved with.  
Turning off logging altogether clears it, indicating that the CPU on 
board just doesn't have the horsepower to "do it all"... logging and 
encryption and all... at least on the Linksys side of things.

The Netgear I installed for my relatives in Houston also seemed to have 
some nifty features for bridging, but I didn't have time to play with it, 
as we were leaving in a couple of days.  I set it up to do the PPPoE 
login for their DSL and disabled their PPPoE in their router from the 
local DSL provider (SBC) and haven't had any complaints from them after 
heading home... they seem to like surfing from the old Pentium-I laptop 
in the living room more than going upstairs to the "big PC".  :-)  They 
all use webmail services for their mail which helps, of course.  

-- 
Nate Duehr, nate at natetech.com