Slashdot Mirror
Linksys WET11: Bridge 30 Devices To Any Wi-Fi Network
eggboard writes "The Linksys WET11 lets you bridge a wired network with up to 30 devices to any wireless access point that uses Wi-Fi. The utility is enormous: you could build a pseudo-mesh network by pairing cheap Wi-Fi APs with this cheap ($129) Wi-Fi bridge. Before this, the only generic Wi-Fi bridge was proprietary: you'd buy a bridge from Alvarion that paired with one of their hubs, and spend several hundred each. Even the dual-WAP11 bridge approach of last year was wonky and required extra gear (although it can handle more devices than 30 since it's a protocol bridge, not a MAC bridge). I review the WET at O'Reilly's wireless developer's site."
I hang out at the WISP message board on broadbandreports.com ( http://www.dslreports.com/forum/dslalt ) and it seems that many WISPs are using these to connect customers to their wireless network. The WET11's antenna is detachable, so you can use an external one. It can also be configured to use POE (power over ethernet) by changing two jumpers.
0 109~roo t=dslalt~mode=flat
r oo t=dslalt~mode=flat~start=0
There have been some cool mods like:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,422
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,4123612~
There is lots of traffic that doesn't really belong on wireless networks. Isn't the transfer rate bad enough without unneeded traffic clogging up the airwaves? Also, how secure is this system, will this make networks easier to break in to?
why is this on the front page of slashdot? Yea its a useful consumer product but the review is lacking and the device is entry-level. It would be a much more interesting read if someone setup a linux (or any other OS) box with a wifi card in it and a wired nic that feeds a hub/switch and NAT'd a bridge. You could actually use the Linux box for some professional applications since Netfilter is now being used.
There have been some cool mods like:
r oo t=dslalt~mode=flatu m/remark,4123612~roo t=dslalt~mode=flat~start=0
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,4220109~
http://www.dslreports.com/for
I can't make out that tiny chip on the board. But the peltier circuit cooler seems like overkill. If that puppy turns out not to be a major heat source I'd try just putting the bare module in a NEMA enclosure by clamping the PCIA board to the inside of the enclosure gooped with a layer of heatsink compound. For any environment where the card would work in a laptop (like maybe anywhere but a desert, Antarctica, or inside a diesel-electric locomotive) this stunt should work in a NEMA.
If dissipation on that chip is a problem I'd still try it but with a heatsink on that chip or a block of aluminum and two layers of heatsink compound between it and the enclosure.
Now if there's something dissapative UNDER the card it's another matter. But in that case it would probably have trouble on your desk inside that plastic box.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
[from Australian slang] Yet another approximate synonym for broken. Specifically connotes a malfunction that produces behavior seen as crazy, humorous, or amusingly perverse. "That was the day the printer's font logic went wonky and everybody's listings came out in Tengwar." Also in `wonked out'. See funky, demented, bozotic.
By Walt Mossberg's substitute Nick Wingfield in his
Personal Technology column
Cool funny t-shirts for geeks, gamers and everyone else
I have been looking for a WiFi bridge to help a friend get cablemodem access: the cable company will not lay the cable to his house (cost > $1K), and it is about 300' from the road. One possibility I am considering is to use a pair of WiFi APs to bridge the gap. But they need to be rugged, to withstand temperatures from -30F to +100F, and rain/snow. None of the cheapo units comes in a weatherproof enclosure. Anyone know of any? I've looked around. Of course, the cost can't be more than $200 or so (each); the .com days are gone. :-(
It's a great little unit. Been playing around with it for about a month. It can use an external antenna (RP-SMA connector) also. It's also 70mW, which helps out on the transmissions.
r oo t=dslalt~mode=flat
r oo t=dslalt~mode=flat
There are a few current threads about the WET-11 for Wireless ISPs here:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,4123612~
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,3915738~
Dirk
Motorola do a system called Canopy which is designed as a last mile solver. It's expensive, but is already fully ruggedised for outdoor use.
Deleted
I was one of the early customers for the Linksys WET11. My hope at the time I bought it was to be able to hook it up to my Xbox game console and use it to play Xbox games online while running Gamespy or or XBConnect on my primary PC, and therefore not have to run any unsightly ethernet from my entertainment center into my computer room (I rent an apartment, and the landlord would appreciate me returning it eventually without too many extra holes).
1 3 - this is the forum for XBC. Look for anything in there labelled WET11.
Obviously, nothing is ever that simple. I discovered that the WET11 performs some wonky MAC addressing translations when forwarding packets. Seeing as Xbox System Link games depend entirely on ethernet addressing schemes, the WET11 proved to be useless for this - despite Linksys advertising it as a solution for Xbox gaming.
Correct me if I'm wrong - something labelled as a "Network Bridge" should pass packets from one side of the bridge to the other unaltered, and simply keep a table of what addresses are on what side so as to pass packets when necessary between two broadcast segments. WET11 converts all MAC addresses on its "wired" network into it's own address. The reverse is different - it'll reassemble incoming wireless packets based on what I guess was their original IP source, and place the MAC address it replaced with its own back in the packet. Go figure why they go through all the trouble. Of course this behavior is undocumented, so this took several hours of packet sniffing (so blame me, I don't deal with Layer 2 issues every day).
Now, Xbox Live is expected to work at the IP level, but that is'nt out until December. Existing System Link game like Halo only work on a local broadcast segment, using ethernet for addressing while sending out some horribly mangled non-RFC compliant ethernet packets that look like UDP but aren't.
The ethernet mangling caused problems with Gamespy and XBConnect, but I was able to get in touch with the developer for XBConnect and over a nice weekend hacking session we were able to cobble together support for the WET11 in his program - essentially it now has the option to look for the MAC address of the WET11, and retranslate that to that of an Xbox. The funny bit is on the return path from a remote Xbox, it needs to again translate the address of the local Xbox back to a WET11 so your average Access Point knows who to retransmit your Xbox packets to. Every Xbox game needs to go through four translations: two on the WET11 and two on XBC.
http://www.xbconnect.com
http://www.apoxx.org/community/viewforum.php?f=
-Jack Ash
I suppose you could hack the signal but the main concern with most WiFi setups is if you actually do hack into a network (in some cases theres no security implemented at all) is that you are behind the firewall if you get in. This means you have full access to anything that local LAN useers have, most people (in homes) don't run much stuff on the LAN side so the general use is to get internet access. To secure a WiFi network you can do a number of things such as enable WEP encryption, turn off dhcp, only allow specific MAC address's to have access, change the ip ranges off the default, and to place your WAP in place that limits the range of its signal so it doesn't travel further than necessary. If someone wants to they can still gain access to a nework implementing those security measures but the idea is to make it so time consuming that the typical Wardriver won't bother. In my network scenario I actually segment my WiFi Lan from my wired by placing a linux box between them that directs all the traffic and blocks everything except the stuff I use my Wifi lan for (mainly webserving, email, etc.)
I hope you view anonymous replies..
We've had a pair of Linksys WAP11 access points mounted in waterproof plastic electrical enclosures on top of our chiller towers at work for about 18 months. These chiller towers release slightly acidic moisture that coats everything. I the winter they don't run much so the access points are exposed to everything a michigan winter can dish out.
Open the phone book, find a local industrial electrical equipment supplier and pay them a visit. I think we paid around $30 ea for an approx 12x12x8" ABS enclosure with a thick rubber seal and stainless steel screws to hold the hinged door shut.
I used homebrew power over cat5 to simplify wiring. Make sure to run all wiring out of the bottom of the box and use a product called marine goop to seal it. Never had a moisture or connectivity problem the whole time. We are using 24dBi grid antennas to span a 3/4 mile gap.
Can you point me toward a source for those antennas? (Antenni? doh)
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
This would be perfect with the Big microwave tower bunkers mentioned last night. If there was one of these in microwave towers across the country we could build our own national wireless network.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Ok, the price is pretty cheap. No argument from me there. But, I still can't see the "technical greatness" of this device. Symbol, Cisco and probably Lucent have always had bridges capable of both bridging and AP mode at the same time.
Also, they can all be configured to talk with each other so, I don't understand the proprietary reference. Sure, Symbol et al don't speak Cisco's enhanced WEP but, the Cisco can be configured to use standard WEP so it will speak with the others.
So, besides cost, whats so special about this device? Something else that I am missing is the power output of the Linksys bridge. What is it? Historically, the cheaper Linksys Wi-Fi products have had a lower power output that the others. Is this also true here or does this latest Linksys bridge put out the full 100 milliwatts, as the others do?
Perhaps because it's early in the morning....
but how is bridging a wired to wireless network some kind of 'new' thing?
isn't this what an access point usually does?
I know it's what my linksys AP does...
Wouldn't this work equally well in linux or *BSD if you turn on bridging between, say, eth0 and wlan0?
If you are using WAP11 APs already it is actually cheaper to buy another WAP11 and put it in "client access mode". That's what I did. The WET11s were going for $130 *IF* you could find one, but the WAP11s were going for $105 shipped from buy.com.
I just bought another WAP11 and put it behind my home theater, set up bridging mode, and plugged in a hub. Works great with my Rio Receiver, XBox, PS2, etc.... So, it was cheaper and can be used as a full AP later if needed.
I read the articlet his time, and I'm STILL confused.
How is this different than the myriad of AP's out there?
Even my little linksys (no, I don't mean the NAT features).... if I use the builtin switch, and some wireless devices, I end up with one layer 2 network that works just fine.. what am I missing here?
OKay.
Now I get it.
Beneath all the hype... they are pushing this as a way to connect devices that can't normally take wireless cards.
So it's not necessarily even a bridge. It just does some funky layer-2 stuff and the net effect is that it is like your normally wired device has a wireless card.
You could do this with access points, it's just cheaper.
So really the only new thing here is that it's cheap and tiny.
said it only passes a single MAC to the remote network. Isn't that bending the definition of "bridge"? If true, won't this cause trouble in some environments?
I think the author of the O'Reilly article isn't really a network engineer, since he uses some terms very loosely. WAPS are not bridges in the ethernet sense at all, they provide a different set of functions which are tailored to specific wireless needs. One significant difference is that WAPS are not protocol agnostic, since they have to do network address to wired MAC translation.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
These are two great questions.
First, which kind of wireless networks doesn't it belong on? It might be a bad addition to certain topologies that lack redundancy or are already crowded or rely on community cooperation. But it's a great addition to many kinds of networks in which you're looking to span or create a loose, fake mesh (it doesn't have mesh routing protocols, but i wouldn't be surprised to see hacks when mesh routing becomes an open-source reality).
Second, security is definitely an issue because you're beaming a ton of network traffic over the link. But because it's a client association session, someone can't just tune into your WET11 and monitor traffic; they have to get access to the AP that it's connecting to.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
I'm sure this sounds confusing. If you're already running a wireless network or setting one up, you need at least one AP running infrastructure mode. If you wanted to add a WAP11-based bridge, you had to add TWO WAP11s--one for each side of the bridge. You cannot run a WAP11 as an AP and a bridge; it's essentially too separate modes. Many, many people wrote me asking why they couldn't associate to the WAP11 as an AP and have it bridge, and I said, ask the firmware makers.
So the WET11 reduces your equipment needs and also allows you to go generic: you don't need a Linksys on the other side.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
This is why you pay by credit card. If they sell you something under false pretenses (it helps to have it documented), and refuse to take responsibility, dispute the charge.
funny munging
This may be obvious to some people, but I've had a whole pot of coffee this morning, and my brain is running past concepts too fast to actually figure anything out.
Is this doing anything special with the access point to make this work? I'm in the process of reconfiguring my wireless network at home because I have a need now to have wireless access to my internal network from a bridged lan, instead of the current setup which has the hub in a DMZ.
Right now its basically Linksys firewall/gateway onto a DMZ network, through a locked down linux box to the internal network, so I use SSH to get to internal boxes, and a couple services are accessed via SSL links using port forwarding. The wireless hub is in that network, so I have to SSH to internal boxes, which is fine because I don't use the wireless for anything but surfing 99% of the time.
In my new house, however, I need to bridge two different seperated internal networks, because its turned out to be a huge mess to try to run ethernet cables between my second floor office and the devices on the first floor that don't support wireless (Tivo, WebPlayers, Rio Players, etc). My plan had been to use FreeSWAN to run an IPSEC VLAN between the two subnets, so all the boxes in the office sit behind a wireless gateway, connected through the firewall thats plugged into the access point downstairs, to get access to the internal network on the first floor.
So my question, related to this article, is this... Would a box like this be easier to use, or would it be better to just find a linux-compatible PCI wireless card and pop it in whatever box is running the IPSEC tunnels upstairs? Has anyone seen any write ups of building a network with this sort of topology? (I'm wondering about any gotchas I'm not thinking of right now...)
This would be a lot easier if the joists between floors in my condo weren't two sandwiched 2x12's, preventing any possibility of running wires between floors through the walls...
But where are you sniffing? You can't associate with the WET11 and sit actively on the network. You could sniff traffic going by, but the WET11 is likely to be used in short-range point-to-point installations with some sort of antenna unless it's entirely within someone's home.
I don't buy "WEP is crackable in a few days." That's a canard. It's absolutely crackable with sufficient data samples. From my reading and talking with security folks, home networks don't generate the amount of traffic necessary over short periods of time, like days, and corporate IT managers should be boiled alive if they're letting non-encrypted data pass over wireless links.
So we agree!
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
I used to work at a PDA dev shop that used 802.11a, and when people complain on various forums about the WAPs, the underlying problem isn't the WAP, it's the cards in your laptop/computer. Get ones based on the Orinoco, they may cost slightly more, but their range, performance, and speed were far superior to the, for example, Linksys PCMCIA cards.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Alvarion (formerly BreezeCom) equipment: in particular their BreezeNet/BreezeAccess bridge units mentioned in the article are not proprietary devices. They are 802.11 FHSS devices, and as such they do not operate with 802.11b DSSS devices. Granted, they have extra non-standards-compliant features on them such as RADIUS authentication, but these will simply be disabled if they are talking to a non-alvarion AP.
Frequency Hopping is still a very good way to go onto unlicensed 2.4GHz bands for the last mile from carrier-grade ISP's and the business WAN's that do not want to worry as much about interference from consumer-grade DSSS equipment.
Honestly, have none of you out there actually tried (ie failed) to DEPLOY any 802.11b for WAN in a densley packed downtown area? I mean, you can't even do it. 3 non-overlapping channels makes it hard enough to deploy it for seamless roaming in a two story building! You can get about 26 concurrent cells in FHSS without significant problems.
You know a lot of the terminology, but I'm having trouble believing you read the article or looked at what the product does.
The WET11 can be used for a single device (hence the ad hoc mode option) or to bridge up to 30 devices to an AP wirelessly.
If you've got a bunch of wired devices plugged into a switch and want to connect to another wired network somewhere else that already has an AP attached, you can use this to bridge those devices onto the other network.
Very simple idea, very simple product. Most of what you're complaining isn't something the article does.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
No, the WET11 can handle up to 30 devices and bridge them to any access point. The WAP11, when turned into client mode, replicates a single MAC address as a single-device bridge. If you've figured out how to bridge multiple devices with a WAP11 to any access point, call the newspapers!
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others