[geeks] Wireless Routers

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> Let's try this another way - you want a "box" that is designed for
> purpose, not "whipped into submission" to do your bidding, correct?

Correct.  It really boils down to having too much to do as it is, and
not needing Yet Another Kludge to babysit.

> Now, as I recall, you have to distinct network "clouds", one in
> building A (say, 10.0.0.0) and one in building B (say, 192.168.0.0),
> and you want to deploy a box in each building, and have them route
> activity for the other "cloud" over the wireless network, right?

Also correct.  We could each put static routes in our next-hop routers
pointing cross-cloud traffic to the wireless thing to prevent from using
slow DSL for spammy things like rsnapshot.

> If that is what you want, then these little boxes won't help you as
> supplied by the MFG. They don't have the abilty to direct traffic to
> certain ports, either wired or via wireless. They simply have no
> provision for that.

Well, the ones I'd seen have a "WAN" side and "LAN" side[0].  It
wouldn't so much need to address each port (or even the radio)
separately so long as it could -just- route packets from the LAN to the
WAN side and back again (ie: no NAT, no firewall silliness).

However, Josh brought up a good point.  If a WET54G will DTRT with
regards to acting as a client, and a WRT54G will DTRT with regards to
-just- routing between the two sides, one of the two networks can
"extend" across the road, so rather than having:

   [network a]---unnumbered net---[network b]

I'd have:

   [network a------wireless------][network b]

Given that we'll be using directional antennae, WPA, and an unbroadcast
SSID, extending the network out a bit further won't be the worst thing
in the world.

> This is certainly outside the realm of "consumer" networking, IMHO...

Possibly.  I can't imagine that it's wholly unheard-of for neighbors to
want to pool resources over wireless, though.  I have a tape robot and a
high-speed laser printer, he has a better color printer and a network
scanner, etc.


[0] I effectively use the wireless "router" at my house as an AP just by
     leaving the "WAN" port disconnected and turning DHCP crap off).
-- 
Jonathan Patschke    )   "A man who never dreams goes slowly mad."
Elgin, TX           (      --Thomas Dolby, "Valley of the Mind's Eye"