Linksys WAP11 802.11b Access Point Probs

[Indomus]

I am setting up a wireless network from my wired office in the back yard to the house, ive already bought the AP and PCI card installed both hardware and software. the office is setup wired to a router and i plugged the AP into a port in the router. for some reason it dosent want to give the computer in the house internet nor do they see one another...... ive set the ips to static, and done pretty much everything....

any sugestions?
thx

 

[sohcrates]

have you checked to make sure you get a signal in the house? i would also keep everything set to DHCP (not static)

 

[ktwebb]

It seems to obvious to believe you wouldnt have but your post does make it sound like you just assume you will have coverage in the house when the AP is in a remote location. These are extremely low power devices that are hindered by any obstacle on top of the distance limitation.

 

[Thor86]

Just how far, distance wise is your office and your home? The WAP11 as the previous poster said, is not very good to cover anything greater that 500 feet, direct line of sight. Any other obstacles or structures would decrease this range significantly.

 

[Indomus]

well i havent measured it id say about 250 feet
the signal monitor ranges from 30 - 55 % in the software for the NIC card

 

[ktwebb]

If you have wireless connectivity then you should start troubleshooting as a LAN issue instead of a wireless one. Ping the AP from a client card. Ping another device on the network. Make sure you have IP to IP connectivity. At that point it could be a DNS issue if you ping successfully.

"nor do they see one another"

Elaborate on that. Using Network Places/Neighborhood. That means nothing. Can you search for a computer by Computer name or IP? Map drives? blah blah blah. Does not sound like a wireless issue at all if you do in fact have association to the AP from the clients cards.

 

[heartsurgeon]

that signal strength should be satisfactory for the wireless connection to work.
have you followed the installation instructions exactly?

first off - which port on the router did you plug the WAP into? did you use a regular cat5 cable (not a cross over). are you sure the cable is good.
next - did you run the setup program for your WAP on your office (hard wired to the network) computer-
you need to select an ssid (a word), and a channel (typically 6). when you setup your adapter card you have to enter the same values for these parameters.

select a wep setting (64, 128, 256 - beware! your adapter card must be set to the same level on encryption - the card may not support all the same levels as the WAP)

select a passphrase (must be exactly the same for the adapter card)

by the way - you may not be able to use wep if the adapter card is not linksys as well.

be sure the WAP is in access point mode (not bridging)


install and run setup on your adapter card - make sure all the values noted above are absolutely the same for the adapter card.

adapter card should be set to infrastructure mode
did you associate the appropriate protocols (tcp/ip) with the adapter card after you installed it?
did you run the internet access wizard.

finally, what operating system are you using in your office, what are you using in the house?

 

[ktwebb]

If you have signal strength in software then you have a AP/client association. SSID is irrelevant. Don't mess with it. And by all means don't start using WEP until you have your LAN issues resolved. Messing with both of these if you have an association is just introducing more things to mess up, doing the polar opposite of the act of troubleshooting - eliminating things that could be wrong. Assigning IP's statically is also something you might try to do without. If you setup the client as a DHCP client and it picks up an AP then your getting to the router. As long as you are assigning IP's then pinging is your first troubleshooting tool.

 

[Indomus]

alright heres what i did i brought the computer from the house into the office and the signal strength went 100% internet worked i put it back into the house and went down to 30 - 50 % wont work.......if there a way to bypass the strength requirments?

 

[ktwebb]

there are no strength requirements per se. If you are associated then you should work. 30 or 100% really only matters as far as speed of your LAN connection is concerned. That is, the better the wireless connection, the better your overall througput will be. That is a generalization but pretty accurate. There is an unknown your either not telling or realizing. IF you have an association to the AP then your IP connectivity will work. There is a variable missing out of this equation.

 

[Indomus]

im aware there there is no strength requirements which is why im having this problem because it SHOULD work, i wrote linksys and they dont help much called and the guy was an asshole. when i ping the ap from the house oviously it dosent work
today im going to hook up my PPC to the wap and walk from the office to the house to see how far i get before loosing internet.

btw thanks for all the help

 

[Devistater]

I read a bunch of stuff from user comments on the practicallynetworked site that said the linksys pcmcia cards suck, while the AP is fairly decent. You said you are using a PCI card, so I dunno about that. You may want see if a differant card helps. Or even a USB card, since it can be moved away from the computer.

Note, I'm clueless when it comes to wireless networking. I want to set up one of my own and I'm just repeating some user comments. So take my stuff with a grain of salt. Seems like the consensus is that the orinoco (sp?) wireless pc cards are the best (dunno about PCI), right now I'm looking for places to buy them.

 

[heartsurgeon]

try returning the pci wireless adapter card, and get a usb wireless adapter.
i have the linksys WAP and a linksys usb wireless adapter, and they work exceptional well.
the usb adapters have the advantage that you can vary their location to optimize the signal strength and your connection.
pci wireless adapyers place the antenna in the worst possib;le location for reception purposes.
good luck getting your problem solved. it should work.

 

[PlatinumGold]

...... ive set the ips to static, and done pretty much everything....

if you've "pretty much done everything" then mb you should just RMA the unit.