two wireless access points

[Chatterjee]

Okay, here's the situation...

Two apartments. One has cable modem access and is using Sygate ICS to share the internet connection inside their apartment (using a 5-port switch). The other is using dial-up right now.

We want to get the second apartment on the cable modem connection using wireless networking.

From my little knowledge of wireless networking, I'm thinking that we could have a wireless access point hooked up to one port of the 5-port switch in the cable-modem apartment. This Access Point would broadcast to another Access Point in the dial-up apartment which would be hooked-up to another switch feeding the connection to any computer in there.

Will this work? I want to circumvent the use of Wireless lan cards somehow and use Access Points.

Is there a cheaper setup? Thanks in advance.

-S

 

[Eug]

Wireless access points generally are NOT able to receive signals from other access points. Won't work.

 

[JackMDS]

New type of Wireless A/P Bridges that are capable to communicate were announced few week ago.

It is expensive. You can get one here:


SMC2682W EZ CONNECT WIRELESS BRIDGE 11MBPS

 

[Chatterjee]

any idea whether the D-Link 1000 AP can do it?

-S

 

[JackMDS]

The D-Link 1000AP has a bridge mode (that is the way D-Link calls one of it functions). I don't think it is the same as been a Wireless Bridge.

In reading the review of the product I did not see any mention of "Real Bridge" capacity. Call D-Link on Mon. they should know.

D-Link 1000AP Review:

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/reviews/dlink_dwl1000ap.asp

 

[Eug]

Jack is right that these access points exist, but they aren't meant for us home user types... yet. These solutions are in the 4 digit price range.

The D-Link does not have the mode you're looking for either.

 

[mobly99]

I just got 2 of the SMC 2682W wireless bridges last week and they work great for this purpose. The bridge that is the "Bridge Master" can also act as an access point. I ordered them about a month ago when Gateway's web site had them incorrectly priced @ $158 each (they corrected the price now they have them @ $480).

 

[HansXP]

Can I ask why you want to avoid just using wireless LAN cards? They're usually cheaper than access points, and just as easy to configure.

 

[Chatterjee]

well the goal was to provide a simple wireless bridge between the apartments and have regular cat5 cable running around the networks in *each* apt... that way, instead of each pc needing a LAN card, they could just use their existing ethernet cards plugged into a switch which would be plugged into a AP...

-S

 

[ScottMac]

If you put a wireless NIC and an Ethernet NIC in an NT/Win2K system (one for each remote apartment)and turn forwarding on, you've essentially bridged (well, routed to)each apartment via wireless.

Each Ethernet segment will have to have it's own network address, the wireless spans will all be on the network served to the inside from the cable/dsl router. Hard-code the addresses on the wireless branches all in the same network, keep it simple.

Of course, the simplest (and legal) solution would be for everyone to buy their own connection.

Good Luck

Scott

 

[HansXP]

I'd recommend doing what Scott said.

Another idea would be to put a cheap wireless gateway in one appt. and wireless LAN cards in all the computers in the other apartment. Eventually you could even move to a totally wireless network using that method.