Using a wireless access point?

"Dan Swartzendruber" wrote in message
. ..

I was just reading the docs for the WET11. As another poster said, I
think we had a terminology problem here. Linksys was being more than a
little sloppy in their use of the term "bridge". If you set the WET11
in "ad hoc" mode, it sounds like it expects to talk to another WET11
(what I and the other poster think of as a bridge), whereas if you set
it to "infrastructure mode", it expects to talk to a WAP of some sort,
which is what linksys also refers to as "wireless access point client
mode". Still doesn't support WPA though

I only use in infrastructure mode. Things can get unruly if you let each
device talk to whomever they want. Also, when you need to troubleshoot a
system and see what's going on, the router built in logger doesn't do much
good if some of the traffic is bypassing it.

They haven't ported WPA over to the "B" class devices yet? I haven't really
stayed up to speed on the B stuff as most of my people have moved on to "G",
and I try to discourage wireless whenever I can. I do a lot of linking
people's homes to the office via VPN and all I have to do is mention how a
kid in a car can easily see everything in their office if they have wireless
at either location and wireless pretty much disappears from the
conversation.

In article ,
Seth wrote:

They haven't ported WPA over to the "B" class devices yet?

It depends. I believe that some vendors have upgraded their card
firmware and driver software, and implemented WPA supplicants, but
many have not. Ditto for the access points - I believe it's quite
unusual for WPA support to be added to an 802.11B AP firmware for
APs which didn't support it initially.

On the other hand, on Linux and other open-source operating systems
it's often possible to run an open-source WPA supplicant, a driver
which at least allows rapid re-keying, and use host-side encryption
support. The card itself is put in a "transmit and receive packets
unencrypted" mode, and the host handles all of the encryption. Faster
that way, really.


--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

In article ,
Dan Swartzendruber wrote:

In article ,
says...
My only objection to using a bridge is that you can't use a bridge to
connect to a WAP, it has to be another bridge.

I know thats not true, as I have my Bridge connecting to my Wireless
Router.

This is a linksys router? And it's not in bridge mode? If so, that's
pretty surprising, as their own documentation says you have to pick a
mode to operate the WAP in - and if you pick "bridge" mode, it won't
associate with any roaming clients.

Nope D-Link Wireless Router DI-524, using WAP from the Linksys WET54G
Bridge.

I was just reading the docs for the WET11. As another poster said, I
think we had a terminology problem here. Linksys was being more than a
little sloppy in their use of the term "bridge". If you set the WET11
in "ad hoc" mode, it sounds like it expects to talk to another WET11
(what I and the other poster think of as a bridge), whereas if you set
it to "infrastructure mode", it expects to talk to a WAP of some sort,
which is what linksys also refers to as "wireless access point client
mode". Still doesn't support WPA though

That's true, but I still think you're going to run into a problem
because you won't be able to designate the wireless interface (actually
a particular *client* on the wireless interface) as the WAN source.

RandY S.

In article ,
says...
"Dan Swartzendruber" wrote in message
. ..

I was just reading the docs for the WET11. As another poster said, I
think we had a terminology problem here. Linksys was being more than a
little sloppy in their use of the term "bridge". If you set the WET11
in "ad hoc" mode, it sounds like it expects to talk to another WET11
(what I and the other poster think of as a bridge), whereas if you set
it to "infrastructure mode", it expects to talk to a WAP of some sort,
which is what linksys also refers to as "wireless access point client
mode". Still doesn't support WPA though

I only use in infrastructure mode. Things can get unruly if you let each
device talk to whomever they want. Also, when you need to troubleshoot a
system and see what's going on, the router built in logger doesn't do much
good if some of the traffic is bypassing it.

Good to hear...

They haven't ported WPA over to the "B" class devices yet? I haven't really
stayed up to speed on the B stuff as most of my people have moved on to "G",
and I try to discourage wireless whenever I can. I do a lot of linking
people's homes to the office via VPN and all I have to do is mention how a
kid in a car can easily see everything in their office if they have wireless
at either location and wireless pretty much disappears from the
conversation.

Nope. There is a "G" version that does do WPA and has a builtin 5-port
switch though...

In article ,
says...
In article ,
Dan Swartzendruber wrote:

In article ,
says...
My only objection to using a bridge is that you can't use a bridge to
connect to a WAP, it has to be another bridge.

I know thats not true, as I have my Bridge connecting to my Wireless
Router.

This is a linksys router? And it's not in bridge mode? If so, that's
pretty surprising, as their own documentation says you have to pick a
mode to operate the WAP in - and if you pick "bridge" mode, it won't
associate with any roaming clients.

Nope D-Link Wireless Router DI-524, using WAP from the Linksys WET54G
Bridge.

I think you misunderstood. I wasn't talking about the WAP, but the
bridge. e.g. linksys supports running their WAPs as "bridges", or as
"wireless AP clients", but in the former case, they have to talk to
another linksys "bridge" (by their own documentation). As a different
subthread here is indicating, the WET units work differently (e.g. they
seem to be bridges or WAP clients, and in the latter case, doesn't
matter whose WAP/router they talk to (as is your case it seems.)

In article ,
says...

I was just reading the docs for the WET11. As another poster said, I
think we had a terminology problem here. Linksys was being more than a
little sloppy in their use of the term "bridge". If you set the WET11
in "ad hoc" mode, it sounds like it expects to talk to another WET11
(what I and the other poster think of as a bridge), whereas if you set
it to "infrastructure mode", it expects to talk to a WAP of some sort,
which is what linksys also refers to as "wireless access point client
mode". Still doesn't support WPA though

That's true, but I still think you're going to run into a problem
because you won't be able to designate the wireless interface (actually
a particular *client* on the wireless interface) as the WAN source.

Not sure what you mean by WAN source. The gateway to the outside world?
That's done via the default gateway at the IP level and has nothing to
do with wireless...

Dan Swartzendruber wrote:
In article ,
says...

I was just reading the docs for the WET11. As another poster said, I
think we had a terminology problem here. Linksys was being more than a
little sloppy in their use of the term "bridge". If you set the WET11
in "ad hoc" mode, it sounds like it expects to talk to another WET11
(what I and the other poster think of as a bridge), whereas if you set
it to "infrastructure mode", it expects to talk to a WAP of some sort,
which is what linksys also refers to as "wireless access point client
mode". Still doesn't support WPA though

That's true, but I still think you're going to run into a problem
because you won't be able to designate the wireless interface (actually
a particular *client* on the wireless interface) as the WAN source.


Not sure what you mean by WAN source. The gateway to the outside world?
That's done via the default gateway at the IP level and has nothing to
do with wireless...


That's true for a bridge, but a router has interfaces on multiple LANs
(hence it will have multiple gateway addresses, one for each LAN it is
attached to). In the configuration you are describing, one of those
wireless clients will have to be identified as a member of the external
LAN (i.e. WAN). Typically consumer level routers automatically lump all
wireless clients into a single LAN and don't give you an option to
designate otherwise.

If it is possible to throw the device into "bridge mode", where it is no
longer acting as a router, then your statement is correct, and you
should have no problem. In this mode the device is acting as nothing
more than a translater between wired ethernet and 802.11b/g. In this
mode they don't do NAT. But I've noticed that a lot of consumer level
routers don't *have* a "bridge" mode, in which case you'd be SOL.

Dave Platt's explanation was a good one, but the consumer level devices
try to dumb down the terminology and end up confusing the issue
tremendously when trying to set up more advanced networks. A lot of
times it's even really difficult to figure out which device can do which.

The one thing that keeps confusing me is that most literature defines
"bridge" to be a device that connects two LAN's running the same Layer 2
protocol. I've seen this done mainly to break up collision domains in
non-switched networks, however the inexpensiveness of switches (as
opposed to hubs) now has pretty much removed this need. I more commonly
see "bridge" used in the field to refer to a device that connects 2 LANs
using *different* layer 1 media and or layer 2 protocols, i.e. 10base2
ethernet to 10baseT, ethernet to token ring, or (most commonly) ethernet
to wireless. There the device is acting more as a media and protocol
converter. Dave, what's your experience on this?

Randy S.

"Mark Rathgeber" writes:

Instead of using a USB wireless adapter (for TiVo ToGo), I've read
where you can used a wired adapter and a "bridge." Can a wireless
access point serve as a bridge? All of the wireless bridges I've
found are kind of expensive, and I see that CompUSA has a Motorola
WAP for a good price this week. Will this work?

Short answer: No. Wireless routers generally do not support wireless
bridging, because they are not designed to act as wireless clients.

Long answer: How technical are you?

If you get a Linksys WRT54G (or WRT54GS) and install one of the
firmware "upgrades" from http://www.sveasoft.com/, the wireless
configuration page will have a new option called "client mode". This
configures the router as a wireless client and thus function as a
wireless bridge.

This is what I am using for my TiVo and it works great.

I paid the $25/year fee so I could use the "Alchemy" releases, but the
free "Satori" releases also support client mode. The technical
details differ significantly, though. In Satori, enabling "client
mode" configures the router as a bridge. For a variety of reasons
this does not always work, especially if you have more than one
machine behind the bridge (which I do). In Alchemy, enabling "client
mode" causes the wireless uplink to be treated exactly like the WAN
interface. This is more reliable and efficient, but it also firewalls
off my TiVo from the rest of my network, which happens to be what I
want.

The WRT54G is a hacker's dream (runs Linux, naturally), and the
SVEASOFT developers have really gone to town. If you do take this
route and get stuck, the SVEASOFT forums are a decent resource.

- Pat

"Dan Swartzendruber" wrote in message
. ..

They haven't ported WPA over to the "B" class devices yet? I haven't
really
stayed up to speed on the B stuff as most of my people have moved on to
"G",
and I try to discourage wireless whenever I can. I do a lot of linking
people's homes to the office via VPN and all I have to do is mention how
a
kid in a car can easily see everything in their office if they have
wireless
at either location and wireless pretty much disappears from the
conversation.

Nope. There is a "G" version that does do WPA and has a builtin 5-port
switch though...

Yup. WRT54G (a few flavors, with speedboost, VoIP, etc). That's what I use
myself and my clients.