Connect Two Wired LAN's with Wireless 1

[XmortuisX]

I just moved into a new apartment with my brother and his fiancé. We don't want to run wires along the floor because this place looks nice, and there is no infrastructure for an Ethernet built into the walls, nor could we add one without tearing open the walls. So we figured we would use wireless to share an internet connection.

Because we have 2.4ghz phones, our 802.11b goes down every time we get a phone call, so we want to move to 802.11a as inexpensively as possible. What I was thinking, since the computers are in two general areas, is use our old routers to make two LAN's, then connect both LAN's wirelessly with an access point taking one slot on each router. This way we don't need to invest in several cards.

What I'm wondering is:
1) Is this feasible?
2) What product would you recommend? I'm confused as to what is a WAP and what is a Bridge, and what is both?

- John

 

[skotman]

How about solving the problem instead of buying new hardware? I had that same problem with my wireless network, drove me nuts! Anyway, depending on the type of your AP you can go in there and change the channel it uses. Cordless phones use channel 1, I changed my AP to use channel 7 and it works great. Give that a try before you go out and buy more hardware.

Scott Heath

http://www.scottspad.com

AIM: orange7288

 

[bcastner]

AP to AP bridging is possible but there are usually some restrictions that need to be researched. Most common restrictions:

. Only some APs support a bridge mode;
. Those that support bridging usually require the identical model on the other side of the bridge;
. Only some versions of some AP models support a bridge mode;
. You likely will need a firmware upgrade (no big deal) if the first three requirements are not prohibitive.

But you end up with Skotman's concern. If you lose connections from your cordless phone now, so will your Bridges.

I agree with Scot that trying different channels can help, and it may be true that no bridging will be needed. But before I went to wireless bridging I would use powerline adapters from Siemens, Netgear or Linksys. You can usually purchase two powerline-to-ethernet adapters for less than US $100 online.

The newer adapters are just flat out amazing. See Fred Langa's review of them:

http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20030108S0003

 

[XmortuisX]

Skotman, your solution doesn't seem to be working for me. While altering the channel was able to make it so that the phone in my room doesn't disrupt the signal, the phone in the kitchen disrupts the connection regardless of which channel it is. This is disturbing because phone phones are the same make and model, so i'm hoping the greater frequency range that 802.11a provides will circumvent this problem since it will compleatly conceed the range our phones are capable of.

bcastner, I had considered the powerline adapters, but am concerned that it won't provide enough bandwidth to enable the computers on it to be competative in games, as well as provide decent videoconfrencing ability, but i'll defenitly look into it. In any case, are there any WAP/Bridges that you would recommend?

- John

 

[XmortuisX]

Well, my brother is going to kill me. That article you posted was very helpful, and alleviated my fears about the speed. The only thing I'm concerned about is if the outlets we need are in the same power structure since this is an apartment complex, but my grandfather uses X-10 devices to control the lights in his home, so I could borrow a couple of those units to test it out. Thank you very much, this has greatly simplified things.

- John

 

[bcastner]

These tend to more aggresively work than the older X-10 units that often could not cross panels. If the apartment complex has its feeds from the same transformer (almost assured) the powerline units will work.