Speaking of wireless

[Tom Buskey]

"Kenneth E. Lussier" said:
>Hi All,
>
>There has been some talk lately about wireless devices, and I may be in
>the market for some shortly. However, I can honestly say that I know
>nothing about wireless. All I want to do is connect a Dual-boot
>Win32/Linux PC and a Linux laptop to a wired network via a wireless
>access point. What brands/models should I be looking at? I don't need a
>wireless firewall/dhcp server/router/etc., since my firewall, mail
>server, etc. will remain hard wired. Thoughts, comments, suggestions
>welcome....

I got addtron because it was the cheapest I could find.  It's PRISM
based.  The AP (access point) is based on a 486 clone and someone has
ported Linux to it.  http://opensource.instant802.com

I had to got from Mandrake 7.1 -> 7.2 to get the card to work. But it
worked out of the box.  I don't use WEP but I can go 128 bits FWIW.  If I
wanted security, I'd go VPN.

I'd look for a card that Netstumbler, kismet, or one of the other
sniffers could work with. It could be useful to find a publicly
available net.

When I got my AP, they didn't have those combo units.  I've since set up
a few of them.  They're very slick.  Many cost about the same (or less)
as a standalone AP and include an N-port switch and print server.

I'd think about one of those combo units.  If power is an issue (or
outlets), you can consolidate your firewall.  I'd like to have a print
server runnining; the parallel ports on my sparcs aren't well supported
under the BSDs and linux.  Stand alone print servers typically run
$50-150.  You could set up the combo unit as a reverse firewall to your
WLAN.  I'd would check to make sure you didn't have to use the NAT
feature.

I bet there are some that have Linux running/ported to and you could do
stuff with that.  Look around for Linux support.

Another option for the AP is to turn a PC into one.  You already have a
server running.  Get a card with a PCMCIA -> ISA or PCI adapter.  This
is one advantage of a PC over my sparcs :-)  FreeBSD does it in this
article: http://www.samag.com/documents/s=7121/sam0205a/sam0205a.htm It
should be easy to do with Linux using the same techniques. It'd be real
easy to VPN too.






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Tom Buskey