Wireless *switch*?

[Fred]

On Tue, 2004-12-07 at 11:24, Cole Tuininga wrote:
...
> DSL -- firewall/NAT -- switch -- wired ethernet boxes
>                          |
>                         WAP -- wireless devices
> 
> (hope the ASCII "art" comes through ok)

Yep.

This represents my home setup pretty much -- just replace "DSL" with
"Cable Modem" -- but I also do port forwarding from the "firewall/NAT"
to various wired boxes for specific services. For instance, two of my
boxes has running web servers I use for testing, so I have to map a
different port to each. Same for ssh, etc.

As far as the DHCP server, I don't have the firewall/NAT doing that -- I
have one of my Linux boxes doing that. Reason being is that I have
greater control over how the NAT addresses are distributed, and I can
tie specific NAT addresses to specific MAC addresses so I can map names
to these boxes with the name server, also running on the same box. You
could also use this technique to set off a specific range of addresses
for your wireless connections.

What I want to do in the future is this:

CModem -- [Linux Firewall NIC1 -- NIC2 NAT] -- switch -- wired boxes
                                                |
                                               wireless -- WiFi boxes
                                               router

As this should give me the greatest level of control and eliminate the
sometimes flaky wireless router at being so heavily loaded. Yes, I've
had it fall over on me during high demands such as when I am copying
gigabytes of files from one wired box to another.

Along with that dream setup is rewiring my house for gigabit LAN. But
the current 100Mbit setup is fast enough for everything I do, including
watching movies across the lan.

And added benefit to my "dream" setup is that I can simply power down
the wireless router when I'm not using it, thus removing any concerns of
that becoming a security hole.

Oh, there is much more to my dream setup than you see here. The above is
no big deal, actually. One of the biggest parts of this is having a
dedicated file server that can handle up to a TB of storage or greater
to serve all the other computers on the network. 

-- 
Fred -- fred at lrc.puissante.com -- place "[hey]" in your subject.
The mass of humans on planet Earth -- regard them as the ebbing 
seas in the winds of change. They ebb, they flow, they know not 
where to go.