Wireless Access Points

D

dewhite

Gawd
Joined
Sep 13, 2002
Messages
812
I'm generally pretty well informed about wireless and wired networking, but I can't seem to wrap my mind around a simple problem I want to solve.

I run a standalone firewall router (a piii-600 running smoothwall linux) and would like to add 802.11g wireless clients to my network.

Right now my cable modem goes into one of the NICs on my router, then the other NIC is uplinked to a 16 port 10/100 switch. The 6 wired clients in the house are then plugged into this switch and assign an IP in the 192.168.42.X range (42 is my favorite number).

What I want is to plug an access point like this into that same 16 port switch and have any wireless client (who can authenticate) be assigned an IP in this same range and act as if they were on the wired LAN somewhere (thus allowing for seemless samba sharing, etc).

Is this going to work, or if not - how can I make it work?

How about this can it be made to work in the same way without doing routing and DHCP? I can't see how, but maybe it has some mode I don't know about or something...

Any advice, comments, suggestions, criticisms, etc are welcome. Thanks.
 
the first one you should just be able to plug in and go.

the second one, just turn off dhcp and plug it in on the lan side, not the WAN side.
 
^ what he said... although I prefer the d-link dwl-g800ap as an access point.

QJ
 
Tent-Hen said:
I wouldn't. D-Link wireless kit is awful.
Click to expand...

Whatever... I've used almost a dozen of these... and they all have worked great. I trust d-link over belkin.

QJ
 
Question:

"how can I make it work?"

Answer:

"....plug an access point like this into that same 16 port switch...."

The end.
 
ktwebb said:
Question:

"how can I make it work?"

Answer:

"....plug an access point like this into that same 16 port switch...."

The end.
Click to expand...

OK thanks to the original poster I've got my 802.11b router fuctioning as an AP. Now that I have a proof of concept I'm ready to buy something to give me 802.11g access.

I only have one remaining question before I just go buy the cheapest namebrand 54mbit router out there.

As I've been looking around I've noticed that proper APs cost about 20 bucks more than Routers. Is this a matter of supply and demand, or do APs actually do something that Wireless routers can't/don't? Anyone have a suggestion for a cheap solution?
 
AP's will typically be able to bridge as well as repeat. Very few Router/AP combo's have that ability enabled in the firmware. If you don't need bridging functionality then getting a Router/AP is an easy choice financially. If you do and still want the routing capability then Buffalo makes a combo WDS unit that will bridge both PtoP and workgroup bridge as well as repeat. Actually I believe Belkin does as well.
 
QwertyJuan said:
Whatever... I've used almost a dozen of these... and they all have worked great. I trust d-link over belkin.

QJ
Click to expand...


Their wireless equipment is notorious for being poor... You must just be lucky :p
 
So is Linksys, SMC, NetGear and yada yada yada. Very cheap gear so it's all somewhat of a crap shoot. You see people complain, you very seldom see people praise budget gear unprovoked. DLink is no worse than any of the other consumer grade network equipment vendors and I'd tend to believe better than many or most. That would just be percentage points though. Nothing worth pumping their chest about but they are easily as reliable as any other generally speaking.
 
ktwebb said:
So is Linksys, SMC, NetGear and yada yada yada. Very cheap gear so it's all somewhat of a crap shoot. You see people complain, you very seldom see people praise budget gear unprovoked. DLink is no worse than any of the other consumer grade network equipment vendors and I'd tend to believe better than many or most. That would just be percentage points though. Nothing worth pumping their chest about but they are easily as reliable as any other generally speaking.
Click to expand...

I've always had pretty good luck with D-Link myself. I did go for the Belkin 54gRouter that was on at Walmart for $39 yesterday. Breeze to setup, good signal strength - no reboots thus far. Had a neat option in firmware for AP and for bridging/repeating. Easy setup.

I'll report back if the thing gives me any major shits down the road...
 
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