Bridging Floors With WAP
There's no doubting that wireless networks are an absolute godsend. When they work that is! Since I set it up for the first time I've had no real bother from it. That was made easy though because everything was in one room. I was lucky enough to live in a flat where my bedroom had its own ADSL enabled phone line. All I needed was one Access Point and I was rolling.
When I moved in to Karen's house it was at the back of my mind that it wasn't going to be that easy. The problem being that me and the network would be at the front of the first floor and the only phone socket would be at the back of the ground floor. I knew I would need another switch but, in my naivety, I thought I would only need one more Access Point to bridge the gap. How wrong I was. It turns out that I needed two more!
The trouble with having the phone socket so far away is that I had to bridge both parts of the network. To bridge with Wireless Access Points (WAPs) you have to have one either end and once in bridge mode they are closed off to normal Wi-Fi activity. Hence I needed two WAPs to make the bridge and one more to let me roam. Here's a revised diagram:
And in actual pictures, here's upstairs:
and here's downstairs:
I share this with you in the hope that you will learn something it took me a while to figure out. Funny that the manuals assume that all scenarios begin with a network in close proximity to phone socket. Maybe there's an easier option you guys know about. Go on, rub the salt in.
Tomorrow I have an even more painful lesson to share and one that you might find quite funny. Sometimes you have to laugh to stop from screaming. There's a clue that's something wrong in the downstairs photo. Notice one of the WAPs is unplugged (Read: Out of service). Netgear should be ashamed of theirselves. They better be prepared for some negative publicity coming their way!
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You can subscribe to an individual
Your place is full of wires, why not use them?
{Link}
I had 'cold spots' in my home, so I made my own Cylindrical Parabolic antenna: {Link}
May look funny but it worked great and took about 20 minutes.
You can go a nicer route by building a "cantenna", for more distance (and privacy) {Link}
or if you don't want to have a focal point, use an omni style (Vertical Collinear) here:
{Link}
Why didn't you just get an ADSL Wireless Router, then you wouldn't need 3 wireless access points. Just Wireless lan ports on each machine.
All good points. Where should I start?
Carlos - as far as I know the products aren't generally available. Or are they?
Warren - It scares me that there are so many microwave emmiting devices as it is. I want to keep my health at the least amount of risk possible. Also, keeping some machines on a 100Meg switch makes it a bit faster when I'm not on the internet.
Michael - I like the look of the parabolic thing but I've heard that the Pringles method is a serious threat to your health!
Jake -
My own opinion is that the health risk of these devices is overblown... but even if I didn't - I still don't see what's wrong with Warren's plan. Both plans include four transmitters (laptop and 3 WAPs, or laptop, server, desktop, and 1 WAP)... but Warren's plan is cheaper.
Am I missing something?
Sean
You're right Sean and so is Warren. It's just all so confusing.
The thing we the three transmitters I've got at the moment is that two of them are downstairs and I don't have to spend all day in close proximity to them.
What I don't understand is why you can't have two WAPs as a bridge and still allow access to the channel.
You can't have 2 WAP's as a bridge and allow access to the channel as they are operating in adhoc mode - effectively the same as a peer to peer network consisting of 2 PC's and a crossover cable. Your third WAP is operating in another mode the name of which escapes me at present.
Your set up would have been a lot simpler - cheaper - if you had run a phone extension upstairs and located the ADSL modem there - one decent WAP should then have given you roaming abiliy throughout the house.
I presume you have secured the WLAN with MAC addresses as a minimum. The need to do this was brought home to me when I plugged a USB WAP receiver into a PC upstairs which detected and connected me to my neighbours unsecured WLAN !! The kit he was using was netgear and {Link} let me straight into the combined ADSL/WAP router with no password - apparently the default.
Jim - trust me - WEP is the first thing I setup ;o)
The trouble with running extensions upstairs is that I live in a girl's house. Can you imagine!?
Also, I remember reading that the ADSL modem had to be within 5 metres of the main incomnig socket. Is that true?
My ADSL modem is about 15 metres away from the master socket - so it would seem I'm living proof of that point.
Besides - judging from the pictures - you'd have less wires with a single phone extension... :)
Can you imagine what she'd say if she came home to an extension cable draped up the stairs ;o)
Jake, you will not increase the microwaves MAN. Check out this
{Link}
It is a link to an example of an ADSL Wireless Router/Modem. This would plug into the phone line and a local power supply and then your machines would each have a wireless network card in them. Another bonus of this is that you do not need a machine permenantly on to route internet traffic through.
True - she would probably not be so happy - that's why mines routed outside the house and through the loft. It only cost £30 too!
Just run the cable under the carpet... it's that easy!
The phone line extension would have been the best option by far - women permitting. The 5 metre myth is just that - provided the cable is good quality 20 metres should not represent a problem.
IMHO a combined wireless acces point and modem/router is not a good buy. Far better is a single ethernet port ADSL modem/router, a switch and a WAP - reason if one part breaks you just replace it. If a combined device fails then everthing does and replacement cost is much higher. Also with my setup you can easily add a full 2/3 NIC firewall at a later stage - a must if you are running serious kit / services over ADSL as we do.
Hmm, all interesting. I'm looking to embark on the same, and I was considering using the existing ADSL modem, connected to a wireless router. The theory was then just wireless cards in laptop, desktop & server, similar to Warren's scheme. I'm looking to go 11g rather than 11b, not quite ratified yet but fast. Or will that fry my brain even faster?
I am currently using 11g,Belkin 54g Wireless cable\DSL gateway router at home (as of 2 months ago reports indicated this brand was the best performer). I have the router at the front of the house and I can go to the back of the garden and still get a good signal. It's where I get my best work done! Every magazine review said, don't worry that g is not ratified, and I didn't. I've had ZERO problems so far. I travel quite a bit and my laptop connects to every access point. I find NetStumbler very simple to use to pick up access points, you can also get MacStumbler. I love it.
sorry to shatter your thought that netgear is the only "bad" WLAN vendor.
never never NEVER <NEVER!!> buy a linksys product, especially if you have a heart condition. (the only reason i ever did is because in early-to-mid '91 they were the only game in town).
i had horrible luck with a belkin USB WLAN adapter, but only because their tech support and documentation are quite pathetic (product seems fine once you find a way to get it working - in my case, download the original drivers they tell you to avoid). i ended up finding a solution to my problem and shared it with them, something which they didn't seem to care about (which now makes me angry that i shared it with them - after all, why should anyone help a vendor who doesn't care a lick about customers?).
so anyway, for future purposes, maybe folks here can suggest some good 11g products, since that'll be my next purchase, and they WON'T be from Linksys or Belkin (and maybe not Netgear - i'll have to read on :-)
Re: my last post. Seems you've had bad luck with Belkin in the past, but...{Link}
Lotta work there... If the main AP is in the back of the house you probably have perfect conditions for this:
{Link}
{Link}
Well... I may have gotten it right that time...
Possible to use a device that allows the phone line to be extended upstairs through existing power wires? You insert the phone line into one end, then plug that unit into an outlet. Then plug a receiver unit into an outlet upstairs that can be used just like another phone jack. Like this - {Link}
Not sure if this is/was an option for you, but I know many people that use them with great ease, success (here in the states).
Just read this in the owner's manual {Link} - Note: The maximum baud rate for the Wireless Phone Jack is
14,400. Best results, however, will be experienced at 9,600.
Probably not an option - sorry about the misleading info.
Well, eventually got my Belkin 54g router up and running. The 3 minute easy setup took an hour or so, as it says supports W98, but the small print at the back say SE. The install Wizard fell over as it couldn't detect the network cards. Still, manual install is more fun. Works great once I'd worked out how to put the WEP key in the notebook. Sunny days in the garden here I come. Anyone got any work?