Question about Wireless 1

[Kcwiro]

Hey I am hoping someone out there can solve my reasoning delima here. I have a wireless network that I want to setup at the place of buisness and I have come into a problem that I can't get around.

Right now we just have regular linksys 11b routers passing out to PDA's inside our trucks that come into the service yard. GPS data is passed from the trucks via wireless network(when they in range) vs the wireless modem inside the truck(when out of range) to the directed server.

The problem I have is that the linksys routers can do the job but aren't reliable to be cost effective for us. We use two units because we have one unit serving as a gateway for the wireless router I have passing out address's. I did this because for some reason when I use a single unit connected to the network via wan port the pings can't go both ways.

That issue asside I am looking at getting the aironet 1100 series access point and a cisco 1720 router to solve the reliability issue. What I would like to know is if anyone thinks I will have the same problem with pinging and what I might be able to do to solve it prior to getting it and having surprises.

thanks for your input

 

[bcastner]

See your issue discussed in this article:

http://www4.tomshardware.com/network/20030716/index.html

Essentially you need to connect the router to the LAN using the uplink port and not the WAN port.

 

[XRJoe]

Is the Cisco router going to be strictly for the wap? How many users would you say you have? I take it you already have a router at this location, is there a reason you would need a router for your wireless alone?. Cisco equipment is a whole different animal than your standard BestBuy brand equipment, which I'm sure you probably know.

 

[Kcwiro]

bcaster - The uplink port suggestion you gave me unforunately will not work for this situation strictly becuase I have a static address I need to assign to the WAN port on the router's WAN port hence simply uplinking it will not do since I won't have control of the IP address for that one port with linksys routers

Hint: they aren't that smart =)

==============================================

XRJoe - The cisco router is going to be strictly dedicated for the access point to tie into given the Company LAN since WAP don't have DHCP Servers on them to assign address's for the PDA's

I need the router so I can subnet the truck network from the rest of the network and using static address's for those in place of DHCP won't work since the trucks travel to different sites with wireless and I need a universal application for this to work. I fortunately inherited this network from another person and I am now on the job of trying to stabilize it for them.

At Present, I will have a max of 50 trucks on the wireless but this number will change as we get more trucks outfitted.

Linksys is mostly meant for home use and some small buisness outfits...they aren't meant for enterprise level...and I want to avoid those calls on the cell saying... the router is down again and Cisco I feel is the best choice for that pup so I don't have to focus on such trivial things...I don't mind configuring it, and its rather fun... I just want to make sure it works before I apply funds towards it. I'm open for suggestions.

What do you think?

 

[XRJoe]

We recently installed 6 of the Cisco 1200 AP's in our plant. One issue we are having seems to be that all of the windows 2000 machines are not able to find the wireless connection at the Novell logon. With Windows XP (and I would assume Pocket PC) there doesn't seem to be an issue. When using the Cisco wireless client however, the XP machines can't find the wireless connection until after the Novell logon.

This appears to be a known issue with Cisco's wireless client (for use with the PI21AG pci cards). I think we're looking into another brand of cards or a third party client possibly.

 

[Kcwiro]

When I talked with cisco they suggested the 1721 router for me to use with my access points. I know I will have to configure the IOS but that shouldn' be difficult.

You think there is another alternative I have available..if so I'm all ears

 

[Kcwiro]

bcastner - I did take time to look at the link you gave me and that suggestion was a good one, though I don't think I put this comment in my original reply. I do want to use only one unit so I want to use the Cisco 1721 with the required WIC cards in it (1 for the static IP from Local LAN and 1 to connect hte access point)
which will then use the DHCP on the router to get the IP's to the wireless boys and seperate the two networks.


Hope that clears the picture of what I am doing up