[KLUG Members] Wireless

[Adam Williams]

>>>>Because these are X-terminals (and a jetdirect printer), I
>>>>cannot buy a wireless network card, nor a wireless PCMCIA card.
>>>>I want to know if I can use two access points???
>You are supposed to be able to use two linksys access points as a bridge,
>but good luck. I helped "try" and set two of them up last weekend. First
>you'll need the newest firmware and configuration software from linksys,

Translation: "We don't have it working yet".  In other words,  continue to
avoid Linksys products.

>it'll open up a bridge mode on them. We tried for a few hours on saturday
>and ran into some wierd issues. When the access points were plugged in we
>could ping any ip address and get a response even though the ip addresses
>didn't exist on the network. We got tech support on the phone and confirmed

Wow,  did you happen to check what your arp table looked like?  To the
access points themselves recieve an IP (for web console, etc...)  I've
fiddled with a couple of Linksys "smart" devices in the past and they
behave very strangely in response to DHCP,  like they only implemented
enough of the protocol to get it to barely work,  rr else the internal
DHCP servers couldn't be entirely turned off and were busy screwing things
up inside the machine.

>that we could bridge the two units, and that it should "just work". The guy

Yes,  just like sendmail should "just work. ;)

>I was helping, Bob, messed with them awhile longer saturday night and sunday
>morning and got tech support back on the phone and went through a bunch of
>settings with them for about a 30 minutes, the tech support guy ended up
>telling him to return the units and buy a couple of cisco wireless bridges.

30 minutes worth of settings for a ***BRIDGE***?  What is there to
configure....  you can config a Cisco router in that amount of time.

What do the Cisco units cost relative to the Linksys units?

That little voice inside my head tempting me to buy wireless stuff for my
house keeps getting softer and softer.

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