802.11G access point recommendations?

Sat Aug 7 12:37:51 PDT 2004

On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Chuck Yerkes wrote:

> Quoting Michael T. Halligan (michael at halligan.org):
> > I'm looking to throw a couple of ap's at each end of my apartment to make
> > sure we have good wireless throughout.  I'd rather not spend more than
> > $200-$300 per access port (preferrably 1/2 that).  My thoughts on
> > security are I'd just like to use WEP, and limit MAC addresses. Does
> > anybody have a good recommendation for something like this?
> 
> 2 quick options:
> a) The Apple Airport (extreme = "g") was non-ugly enough for my
>    ex-architect/currnet system admin parter to allow it in the
>    living room.
>    An Apple Airport Express (wired in or no) ($130) allows you
>    to EXTEND the wireless.  And it lets you plug it into a stereo
>    to stream music.  Still figuring out if BSD and the "daap" stuff
>    can speak to it because I don't want to control it from a mac.
> 
>    You likely want an external antenna option.  http://www.netgate.com
>    has been a great resource - small knowledgable and responsive
>    company (except a week when they went on vacation).  I buy
>    antenna and cards from them.

Question on the apples.. Can the airport express act like an 802.11g  bridge, so
I could put an airport base in my office, then an airport express in my
living room and hopefully get total coverage (1800 square foot
apartment) ?  Apple's site isn't very clear about that. One of my
reasons for using 802.11g is I want to toy around with streaming video
to laptops, I've got a couple of fibre channel jbods I'm thinking of
throwing 14 146gb drives into, and using it as an overkill media server
(I'd like to put my entire dvd/cd collection on my lan and not have to
worry about using/finding media).   

> 
> b) mentioned was the Soekris box.
>    I have a couple, I've thrown them out as dedicated DNS appliances.
>    As secondaries, they boot from a readonly compact flash and run
>    unix.  I've gotten it down to 8MB as a wireless AP.  With 64MB
>    of CF (the smallest CF's I readily find), you get ssh, a little
>    web serving and what not.  From a readonly Unix.  Lose power?
>    Who cares?  I used a little battery jumpstart thing as a UPS
>    on it for a while.
>    2-3 Ethernets + 1-2 wireless.  You won't pass more than 40mb/s
>    through it in practice.
>    Clearly I like my Soekris a lot.
>    They all have a miniPCI slot, some of them have PCMCIA slot(s), others PCI.
> 
>    With a good pair of antenna, I can get pretty solid coverage.
>    (and one was throwing about half a mile to a neighborhood uplink
>     at full power/speed).
> 
> SPEED:
> 54Mb/s (or 11Mb/s for b) is the amount of data that leaves the
> radios under ideal conditions, not the amount coming INTO the card
> or leaving the card.  The DATA within is about half that.  So the
> actual DATA throughput you get from a "G" is around 25mb/s (b=6Mb/s).
> 
> Both of these are faster than my Internet connection.  So that's
> fine.  On occasions, I need to sync a big laptop with a house machine
> (eg.  hurl all the mp3s onto the laptop when making a trip) so I'll
> just use a wire and use GigE (~300mb/s > 25mb/s).
> 
> 
> WEP:
> WEP is clearly crap as david mentioned.  Like speaking piglatin in
> a restaurant to keep people from listening.  LEAP helps a little
> (spins keys faster).  IPSec or even PPTP to the "house server"
> provides actual security.  The house server can do IPSec math just fine.
> 
> Until I messed up my IPSec setup (on the do to list), I allowed a
> slow port 80 to strangers and everything if you were coming from
> an IPSec connection.  SMTP always requires authentication.
> 
> 802.11i has been ratified and I know nothing about it except it
> supposedly deals with the WEP flaws.
> 

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