Best wireless setup?

M

Max|m

n00b
Joined
Mar 7, 2005
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Hello everyone. I have kind of taken it upon myself to update the network over the past year at my fraternity house and it has finally come down to setting up wireless. We really don't have a huge house but the way it's built is not very compatible with wireless. I have cinderblock walls, poured concrete on top of sheet metal supported by large metal beams. The house is a nightmare for interference and 3 floors of it. My best guess for the number of users who would use the wireless is maybe.... 20 at most. I have a machine running ipcop as our main router in the house so DHCP for the wireless is taken care of. I am looking for 4 or 5 wireless G access points that are cheap but will allow roaming, SNMP, WPA and WPA2. I looked around and access points cost a lot more then a router does. Is there any way I can use a linksys WRT54G or similar router as a simple access point? If there are suggestions for any other make or model of router that would be appreciated too. I have read about using DD-WRT to "beef up" routers per say. Would this maybe be a viable option for this task? Any help and suggestions that anyone can offer would be very welcome, even criticism if it’s constructive.

Thanks for your time,
Max|m
Delta Sigma Phi - Beta Pi
 
..A wrt54g is a router and an access point. Linksys wrt54g's have excelent range and are high modifyable becuase they run liunx. You can install dd-wrt firmware on any wrt54g router but it is slightly harder to do on version 5 and up wrt54g routers.
 
If you're pinched for budget...try some old wrt54g units with DD..running in AP mode. Maybe put 1x per floor...assuming you have wire to each floor. Different LAN IP for each outside the DHCP pool.

If you can just do 1...I'd try a WAP54gx4 from Linksys. Or holdon another month..they have a new small business grade of products coming out..one of which is a series of N APs that allow roaming.
 
Roaming isn't allowed or not allowed. There aren't any AP's or Router/AP combos that wont allow roaming. Enterprise class wireless gear handle roaming much better but all wireless will roam. Just how well it works is the question. At the consumer level roaming really depends on the client device, not the AP.
If you go WRT54 then just make sure it's v1-4. v5, IIRC, will not allow you to flash the device with 3rd parth firmware. v4 or earlier with wrt-dd firmware make pretty good budget AP's. And yes, all wireless routers are AP's. If you want to dedicate an AP/Router combo to wireless functionality then disable DHCP on that device, assign the local interface an IP on the existing LAN subnet, and don't use the WAN port.
 
Ok for happier verbiage..."allow for more seamless". Whatever..point is..many don't do it well. In practice..won't make a rats arse of a difference for some people..as many actually don't "move around their homes/offices" with laptop running in hands..so most won't notice that drop/pickup.
 
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