| Bridging on a Budget |
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| Written by The Dude | |
| Thursday, 19 April 2007 | |
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Quick Addendum: Due to problems with obstructions & distance, I actually had to employ an amplifier to achieve a satisfactory signal to/from each end of the wireless bridge. I only had to use a single amplifier (employed on either side, depending on the desired functionality [AP Broadcast range VS. bridge range]), but it effected the final costs of my original project by approximately $200. Amplifiers can be purchased from a variety of online vendors (Amazon sells Proxim a model for a fairly high price), but I actually bought from a [relatively] local vendor called SharperConcepts out of south Florida. My final purchase entailed a generic 1-watt indoor amplifier with a few RP (Reverse Polarity) gender changers. The end result was a successful wireless bridge with at least 85-100% send/receive sucsess rates over a distance nearing 1.25 mile(s) with several obstructions. Problem solving at its best: Your boss asks you to provide (temporary) intra- & inter-net access to a building located 150-200ft. away from a remote office already connected to your primary network (via a point-to-point T1 line). You could establish a new T1 line connecting to the building, but that would cost your time, an installation fee ($600+), possibly a contractual commitment (1yr.+), and the price of two routers with T1 interfaces ($700-800 each). That's an assload of money for a temporary network extension! Of course, you can also go the IPsec VPN route... But we're still looking at establishing a new internet connection to the building, along with the high prices of certain VPN routers ($700+ each). Now, it would be feasible to implement an available VPN client solution, but that also involves a standalone internet connection, installing & configuring the client on each machine, establishing QoS or split-tunnel settings (if required), and (if required) editing your LMHOSTS file to map certain network IPs to normal host names... That's still a significant amount of configuration for a temporary network extension... Now for a third option... Wireless Bridging.I was originally planning on using this idea for a future network extension project, but it came into play earlier than expected... The original idea required a hi-gain directional or omni-directional antenna that was to be used for providing a long-distance signal (up to 2 miles) to a remote office. I went ahead and purchased the hi-gain antenna now, but it was not required for the project at hand... All I needed for the wireless bridge were two D-Link 2100A Access Points and some generic cabling. Depending on the distance between the two locations, you might need that hi-gain antenna, but note that it may cause undesired interference with surrounding wi-fi networks and radio signals.
My setup utilized the latest firmware from D-Link's site (v2.10) and I'd recommend upgrading (and staying updated) if you wish to correctly setup everything. I set the primary AP as an "Access Point with WDS" (Wireless Distribution System) and disabled SSID broadcast (to prevent unwanted snoops). I also (optionally) enabled MAC address filtering to permit only the other APs and clients (wired & wireless) that I knew would be connecting through the WDS. You don't have to do this, but I'd certainly recommend it... It's not the most secure feature available (EAP/RADIUS with WPA2 would be preferred), but it will certainly discourage intruders and/or script kiddies from infiltrating your network. The second AP was configured as "WDS," with the MAC address of the corresponding AP added to the necessary fields. Reboot both routers & wait for any clients on the "client," end to receive IPs from you local DHCP server. Prior to implementing both APs on your network, it's advisable to issue them static IPs for the sake of convenience. If you already did this and the units have rebooted, try ping the remote WDS-enabled AP using the IP you assigned earlier. If you can ping it, and any other hosts connected to the wired LAN utilizing the WDS, then you're finished! |
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 20 August 2007 ) |
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