Wireless questions

Thu Jan 30 19:42:42 PST 2003

>From: "Brian Street" <brian.street at bayarea.net>
>Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 18:59:22 -0800

>I wonder how many of you out there have experience in wireless networks. I'm
>being asked by a client if it is possible to set up a wireless network for
>125 tenants in an apartment complex. Of course, I said it was but wasn't
>very sure as to the costs involved. Unfortunately, I don't have any
>experience with wireless networks.

I suggest you take a look at the Bay Area Wireless User Group (BAWUG;
Web site http://www.bawig.org/).  I'm at one of the BAWUG meetings as I
type this.

>....

>Of course, the questions I have are:

>1.) Does it make a difference how big the router is (duh?) for 125 users?
>2.) Is the T1 sufficient for the internet pipe?

A lot is going to depend on usage patterns:  if the net is idle except
for 10 AM - 11 AM on odd-numbered Tuesdays, and then all 125 users are
trying to download ISO images at once, your average utilization will be
low, and you'll likely have 125 unhappy former customers.

>I thought it probably should be because most of the bottleneck might be in
>the wireless side anyway since it can't operate at 10 Mb yet, right?

It's true that the wireless generally doesn't get to 10 Mb/s; but the T1
is only 1.544 Mb/s -- and 802.11b definitely can swamp that, no problem.

>I presume I would need a server, with user accounts, as well though to keep
>freeloaders off the network.

You could probably do a lot worse than to research "NoCat
Authentication".

Cheers,
david       (links to my resume at http://www.catwhisker.org/~david)
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
I have no confidence in results obtained through the use of Microsoft products.