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Ask Slashdot: Wireless LAN Options?
fiji asks:
"I am contemplating a wireless LAN for my house and was
wondering if anyone had found a cheap, reliable, Linux
solution. I have been looking at the
Linux WLAN page and the ZoomAir cards but was a little
put off because the price is $250 for the ISA and $230 for
PCMCIA (at buy.com). Also the support matrix at the WLAN
driver page shows the ISA as untested under Linux."
Has anyone tested the ISA ZoomAir cards yet? What other
driver options exist for Wireless LAN?
Too bad cordless phones don't have ethernet jacks built in. Where are all the posts? Am I second?
I want to wireless network a few buddies of mine who live about 150 yards away from me so we can share a high speed internet cable modem connection.Price wise anything below $1200 to set this up would be cool. So far I know that zoomair has 1000 feet coverage. Are there anyother products I haven't heard of. We live in apartments and mostly this wireless connection would be for gaming purposes as well as internet for the seven of us.
thanks,
nicky tesla
The present is theirs.The future, for which I really worked, is mine. [Nikola Tesla]
Expensive? Just don't buy it new. I got over a dozen WaveLAN 900MHz cards for $5. Not to mention I also picked up 4 Cylink Airlink radios for $5 each. Not a bad deal if I do say so.
I wouldn't normally use wireless stuff in a building. Copper or fiber (use scraps) would be much faster, reliable, and easier to maintain. Wireless stuff is excellent however for building-building point to point links or multi-point links. In many areas this is really your only choice if you want fast internet access since some places don't reasonably price their services or either that or their service is of very low quality (example- SSSNET cable) and is thus unusable. D.I.Y. is usually the best way to go. Even if you don't make anything happen in the long run you still at the very least gain some knowledge.
Unfortunately, you cannot do that. 10Base2 runs on 50ohm RG58... Cable television runs on 75ohm coax. Not to mention the issues of termination...
While I don't *think* this would lead to hardware damage, it is a poor idea. Please do not attempt it.
Ethan (At work w/out his password)
This would be excellent for building to building links over a cable. It uses 75ohm coax (RG-6 or RG-59, etc) and has a maximum segment length of 2.26 miles if I remember correctly. It runs at a full 10Mbps and the equipment, while rare, can probably picked up insanely cheap. The 10broad36 transcievers I have take a baseband input and convert it to a broadband signal. These are somewhat similar to "cablemodems" except that these are better, much better.
Issue #56, December, 1998, on wireless networking in Africa.
See http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue56/index.html for the cover, and a TOC.
Do you have any links to these companies? I am interested in setting up a lan in my house, but I would probably have to drill holes in the walls to run cat5 cable. If I could use the existing power wires in the walls, that would be great.
um, you totally missed the geek spirit here. sure, a 100mbit network is cool, but part of the point of something like this is the challenge of setting it up, and the "ooh"s and "aah"s you will get when you're done. I recently set up a scanner attached to my linux box, and it took me quite a while to get it working... but once I did it was quite a sense of accomplishment. Sure, i could have attached it to the windows 95 machine lying around here somewhere, but I didn't want to... thats the point.
Are there any "home grown" linux drivers for the diamond homefree or intel anypoint telephone wire based sytems to work with Linux????
Are there any happy Anypoint or Diammond users out there that would like to relate their experiences????
These systems look cool, by using your exisiting phone wiring they avoid the "dangers" and security risks of constantly saturating your home with radio waves while providing many of the benefits of the wireless solutions.
Check them out at:
http://www.diamondmm.com/products/current/homef
And
Unfortunately I have yet to find Linux (or even NT) support for these beasts:
http://www.diamondmm.com/products/faqs/homefree
And
http://www.intel.com/anypoint/home.htm
Here are the companies positions on Linux:
Q: Is HomeFree Wireless supported on Windows NT, Linux or the Mac?
A: HomeFree is designed to work on Windows 95 and Windows 98. Diamond will continue to monitor interest in other operating systems.
http://www.intel.com/anypoint/guide/faq/
Q: Does the AnyPoint Home Network work with Windows* NT or Linux*?
A: The AnyPoint Home Network requires Windows 95 or 98. Windows NT and Linux are not currently supported. Intel research shows that Windows 95 and 98 are by far the most widely used operating systems in multiple-PC homes. Intel is committed to expanding the AnyPoint Home Network product line. However we do not have immediate plans to support Windows NT or Linux.
motjuste@briefcase.com
I'd try running some multimode fiber to do 10BaseFL. Fiber to ethernet transceivers run about 200 a pop.
Having used breeze hardware, I have to say it kicks butt. Using two directional microwave "dishes" we got over 1Mbps transmissions between two buildings over a mile apart. (CBC building to the Raleigh Convention Center in Raleigh, NC.) [That's 711 Hillsboro St. to 500 Fayetteville St. for those wishing to play with mapquest, et. al.]
Of course, it wouldn't transmit 100ft from my desk to the break room inside the CBC building. (The building is RF damped.)
I havent used the other two of those, but we use the Aironet series here at work. The 2.4ghz flavor. We use them in several Gateway 2k 2500 series laptops and a vew old AST Laptops. The environment the antenna/hub and the pcmcia receivers are in have a lot to do with how well they work. Usually if I stayed within 200 feet of the antenna (in an office setting, cubicles) I was okay. I think I consistently pulled about 5mbps. (Aironet's Win95 drivers, and likely their Linux drivers, have a neat little plot that diagrams signal strength vs quality for you) In the harsher environment of our hospital barn (outdoor atmosphere and concrete walls) I would usually have to stay within line of sight or be with 50-75 feet of the antenna.
/. sends my confirm password. : )
Kelogasi
Kelogasi@hotmail.com
(Yes, an anon coward until
I'm wondering if more people could do a serious dig into their links and stick them on site. This stuff is really interesting.
What I'm wondering about is a laser system. It has it's pros and cons. (line of sight, weather, etc) With a decent $20 laser, you can get up to almost 1.5km in the city, 2km in the country. The concept is there... you dont need any high power reciever either. Has anyone ever seen it on a site somewhere hooked up to a nic etc... perhaps a college link ?
Onei
I know that zoom air says range is 1000 feet, but in my experience most other wireless devices ranges are MUCH shorter in practice.
Anyone out there have a Zoom air set up now, and has tested the range? I'm wanting to network 2 buildings together (about 180 yards apart). Anyone know of an inexpensive long range solution, if Zoom air wouldn't handle it?
AC
Watch this space over the next few weeks:
http://www.qsl.net/ke5fx
-- jm
BNC = Bayonet Neill-Concelman connector, after its inventors. Nothing to do with the British navy.
do you need wireless networking? ask yourself that...
you cant run the wires... that is the lamest excuse I have ever seen.
"but I live in an apartment,condo,space station" you have a drill, USE IT!
what your landlord dont know wont hurt them and it's easy to hide. and it dont take a brain surgeon
to run a 10 baseT or 100baseT network. in fact any moron can do it. you can get NE2000 compatable cards for $25.00 each (PCI 100base T)
a hub for dirt, and cable is so cheap right now I connected my sons friend down the street (same side as us) into our network (190 feet away, midnight networking run, the neighbors never noticed the thin slit that was cut through the lawn)
nope, the ONLY legit reason for wireless lan is that you're a rich lazy turdand like to spend money on crappy networking products.
Note: wireless networking cards really SUCK. we tried 2 and any metal/brick drops the range by 90%
Dang! no wonder those guys overprice that real stuff, they're gouging us by
charging $250.00 to $300.00 for a radio-shack walkie talkie!
Note: before putting an idea out think about why your idea that might cost $3.95
would work to replace a $300.00 item. chances are if someone else didnt think of it first then the idea is silly to begin with
"Computer? BAH! buy a slide rule and compile the source code yourself!"
http://www.jolt.co.il
motjuste@briefcase.com
Acording to the press release these units connect to your computer via parallel port cable. That's really too bad since it'l hurt performance and slow down the rest of the computer while it's in use. That's not a big deal with modern machines but it pretty much eliminates the possibility of a house full of old 386/486 based X-terminals. It also means that it will require special drivers.
I really wish they'd just connect to an ethernet card.
Where are you finding this stuff soo cheap?
--
Ray
cmos@sonictech.net
There are devices that allow the trasmission of video and audio from on TV to another. A set of these run about $50. Is there a way to use 2 sets of these and trasmit data over them? Would this be faster than a few mb a sec?
For those interested, they can have a look at my web pages :
. html
http://www-uk.hpl.hp.com/people/jt/Linux/Wireless
Jean
I do have a slashdot account, but i'm too lazy to get off the sofa and go upstairs to my gateway machine and look for the password. Why you ask? cause i'm typing this from my laptop with just the diamond wireless network. It rocks (if you can live in a Win98/NT world) .. no drivers for linux/freebsd. It was the best 181bux i have spent for a computer product. I can sit out on my porch and surf the net. The 1 mb has never really been a problem since i only have 56k modem, and don't do a whole lot of file transfering between machines. I do have wired network in, but that is such a pain in the ass! Oh.. one last thing, don't buy a 2.4 ghz phone if you are going to get this.. the phone signal drowns out the ethernet when it's in use.. translation : i loss network connectivity if i'm on the phone near the laptop. Most ppl are happy with their 900mhz phones.. i had to be a smartie and go get a 2.4ghz....dumb me..
I've used several of the cards to set up a wireless masquerading firewall for a bunch of laptops. I've actually found the linux support to be better than the Win9x support for these cards, but they have problems with nfs mounts, and sometimes will break an ssh connection. Also, I've run into problems using the cards with a 2.2 kernel, so I'd recommend using 2.0.37 if you use these cards.
Yes, Virginia, there really is a CowboyNeal.
Gaah. Wait till the first lightning storm comes.
Posted by 2B||!2B:
I've been looking at getting a similar 802.11 unit.
At: http://www.ndclan.com/Wireless/wireless.htm
they sell 2 Mbps units which cost less (around $200, I believe). But no Linux drivers on the site (yet).
http://www.sohoware.com/Products/CableFREE.htm is another.
My favorite of all (which I will probably buy; only around $150 per unit, 2Mbps) is: http://www.webgear.com/
It's cheapest of all, but has the problem that they have 3 different product lines, 2 of which are 2.4 GHz (but it isn't really clear whether the 2 are compatible with each other). Besides using it to hook up my laptop, I may set up a network with some neighbors so we can share my wireless Internet feed (which is > 1.5 Mbps; very cool, since I can't get DSL where I live). Like the rest, no Linux drivers on the site.
Posted by twojciaczyk:
...along with the fact that the cable is already live and has modulated signals that will interfere with Ethernet.... it'll never work
Even with the use of a balun to match impedence, you still have the issue of 10base2 termination and distance limitation. On 10base2 you have the 100 meter limitation, with 100base5 you have a 500 meter limitation; All of this and not to mention that your cable must be terminated at all endpoints and must be a bus configuration, and not a star configuration like most cable companies run.
Can we say ground loop anyone? Don't run cat-5 from building to building, it was never intended to do that, and so while it might work you are asking for trouble, such as destroying your computers.
The orginial 10base5 ethernet was designed to run builing to building (if the trnascivers will do that I don't know. For that matter, I don't know where you would find it as nobody has done 10base5 since the mid 80s at least, other then to fix the old already installed systems.
Best bet: fiber. Glass is immune to a lot of electircal probelms, and the cables are cheaper. You have to look, but you can pick up some cheap 10baseFL cards for nothing, and linux supports the ones I've got.
Please folks, if you don't know how to prevent ground problems don't run wire from building to building. Glass fiber is cheap enough, and it avoids a mess of problems and won't destroy your computers.
Probably too late for anybody to read this but I will mention it for posterity's sake :)
Not sure about 10BaseT (origional question) but the coax I am sure about:
10Base2 = 200m ~ 600ft max length (between terminators)
= 1m between nodes
= 30 max # of nodes
10Base5 = 500m ~ 1500ft
I've found that I can get the Symphony ISA card in a computer with a wired ethercard for only a little more than what you'd pay for the bridge, and get a lot more functionality (SSH tunneling to get around the fact that Symphony transmits in the clear, for one thing, interests me).
The Symphony is cheap, and as such is limited in range (they advertise 150 feet indoors, 300 feet outdoors) and speed (A good speed over a solid link seems to be about 60 kilobytes/sec). The driver is also not fully open-source; there's a binary-only library file that it links against. Fortunately, sufficient source is available that upgrading your kernel doesn't break the driver.
Someone please tell me if I'm way off the mark here.
The ZoomAir ISA does work with the linux-wlan package because the ZoomAir ISA is a PMCIA card with an ISA adapter included.
I'm not an expert on the other cards....but if they're not 802.11 compliant, avoid them. Each of the non-802.11 implementations is vendor specific. I can't tell you how many times people have talked to me about being stuck with orphaned wireless products. With 802.11 compliant products, your investment is safe.
-Mark
PS: If the guy from Great Britain notices this...check Nokia. Their cards will work with linux-wlan and were developed in Great Britain.
CBC = Capitol Brodcasting Company, used to own Interpath
Not to mention the geek factor of having ethernet jacks in the walls.
Actually, a Beowulf cluster using wireless would be pretty interesting. You could have nodes that automatically joined the group computation when they come into range, and disconnect when they leave range.
There, I actually did a follow-up to a Beowulf troll.
radiolan
AiroNet
ShareWAVE
Me, I still use POC (plain old copper)
> chances are if someone else didnt think of it first then the idea is silly to begin with
Not that I disagree with your analysis of the previous post as a DRASTIC over-simplification, but that aside, your quote above is almost as laughable... you must not be very creative, every time you come up with an idea a Pavlovian response inside must tell your that it's just silly.
Binary Boy
-- Not afraid to have new, and occassionally silly, ideas.
I also tried the Aironet card at USENIX. It worked very well and I was considering buying some for home use, but they are just a bit too pricey. The access points are $1,200 and the cards are $400. (And this was with the conference discount.) If these prices would come down by 50%, I would probably consider them more seriously.
The literature that I got from DSI (Dynamic Solution International) show that they have ISA and PCI cards for desktop machines in addition to PCMCIA cards for laptops. One access point will cover 60,000 sq. ft at 11Mbps, so this does seem like a good solution in environments where running cable is impractical. (It'd be an even better solution if the price would come down.)
I had the fortune to use a ricochet modem with my linux box about a year and a half ago. Setup was ridiculously easy. I just plugged it into my serial port and treated it like a modem. Speed was only fair (about 19K), but I was in the middle of a big concrete apartment building, so I figured the reception was to blame. Unfortunately, I had to give the demo unit back when the school I worked for refused to allow the ricochet folks to use our rooftop for an antenna.
I had a thought the other day and would appreciate comments from those who understand this stuff better than I do.
It occurred to me that your average BNC jack equipped NIC card only knows whether or not there's a load of the proper impedence and trermination attached for it to work into or whether or not there's a recongnizable (right voltage, right duty cycle, right waveform)signal present across its input. So instead of coupling cards together with RG-58 or whatever, what about just sticking antennas (antennae?) on them instead? I realize that your average UHF, 2 meter, whatever, "rubber duckie" would probably be all wrong impedence-wise at baseband frequencies, but with the right antenna design could this work over short distances?
I am also accepting opinions (informed, humourous, and otherwise)as to the meaning of BNC.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I've seen plans for a satellite TV dish made out of concentric plywood rectangles, but the idea of an antenna made out of a rooftop sound even more intriguing.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
How about coupling the RG-58 to the RG-59 (or RG-6) and back again with transformers? Impedence matching and DC isolation in one. Of course, if the cable company is doing their own base band signalling over those lines your system and their's will probably keep crashing each other, and I'm sure there's some fine print somewhere in your lease or cable contract that says they get to sic their lawyers on you if you use their cable for anything.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
At first I thought you meant Central Carolina Bank, but that's CCB. What does CBC stand for ? (Haven't been through the Cap city in a while)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
As one who has braved under the house to run catagory 5, I can say that there is MUCH more geekyness in running the wire, putting together the little panel-boxes, etc than buying premade preboxed kit. And live video from across the house gets more oohs and aahhs than an ftp session.
The other problem, unless they've come out with something pretty new lately, is that the connection over a powerline ends at the transformer outside of the house, so setting up a house-to-house network is not an option (which would, I believe, be the real killer app for this in suburbia, where millions of kiddies are planning the destruction of their school WAIT! I meant playing Quake/Doom over the phone wasting perfectly good ports on the ISPs modem bank.
What's the limit on CAT5 cable anyway?
Would that require a repeater of some sort?
------------------------------------------
Reveal your Source, Unleash the Power. (tm)
If you can find them, the older ISA WaveLAN cards (~2Mbit/sec) are pretty cool, and had decent support under RedHat 4.2 (to give you an idea of how long support has been around in a commercial distro). I had problems with one under Windows95 (transmit lockup) but no problems on a P120/32 RHL4.2 system.
:-)
I don't have all the spec's handy, but they're full-length ISA cards with a type-F connector on the back, and an external square pancake antenna (white). NCR was the manufacturer at the time. They are -not- compatible with the currently shipping WaveLAN systems (different encoding schemes and operating frequencies), so older cards are much cheaper.
-Phyxis
I actually use a Ricochet "SE" series TA every single day at work. I have another "classic, Phase 2" Ricochet unit at home for personal use.
/can/ fit certain specific needs extremely well.
:-)
My overall review of the equipment:
Very very cool stuff. ~100kbit/sec burst packet radio, behaves just like a standard Hayes command set serial modem.
My overall review of the service/coverage:
On my linux box (P133 laptop/RHL 5.0) I get best results with MTU/MRU manually set at 576. I found that interactive performance is _MUCH_ better than with the stock 1500. Don't expect this to be like a land-line... it's packet-based, so even though you can sustain 28.8kbit/sec throughput, it's burstier... and latencies are a bit longer.
Metricom/Ricochet market this device as a "wireless email/web-browsing link"... which is exactly what it's best at. Think carefully before you invest, they're not cheap, but they
I haven't had a chance to play with unit-to-unit or STRIP modes, but I use standard (virtual PPP Terminal Adaptor -- lets you have a PPP link into Ricochet's network) and TMA (virtual land-line dialout modem -- lets you dial a local land-line modem wirelessly) extensively... although I'm not quite happy with their newer 100hrs/mo, 4hrs consecutive policy on TMA, I do understand the need for cost-control.
Just my $0.02 in the bit bucket...
-Phyxis
PS: There's rumors of a 128kbit sustained "Generation 2" Ricochet network being built. *hope*hope*hope*
In addition to the phone-line networking products previously mentioned, Intelogis makes a power-line networking product, PassPort, which is promising because they've open-sourced their code and are working on Linux drivers. And, they're cheap! $109 for two PCs and a printer isn't shabby. Of course we're only talking about 350Kbps, but when you're sharing 56K or ISDN (128K) who cares. Plus, I don't know why, it appeals to me to be able to have only one thing to plug in. The brick IS the jack. cooool.
bp
This Intelogis news release indicates that power-line networking may be getting faster (10Mbps) and more reliable. I wonder how they're doing that, spread spectrum perhaps? Also noteworthy: Intelogis software is open source.
bp
Hmmmmmm. seems like you could go way cheap if you didn't mind doing some soldering and whatnot. Modulate the outs/ins on cat5 so that you could hook up both modualted signals (10baseT, 4 for 100) to cheap walkie talkies. Splice the the wires in the cable and hook them up to a squelch, so that the "talk" button is pushed when a packet goes out (you'll probably lose the first packet, but tcp/ip should send it again) and releaed when not sending. One tranciever recieves, one sends, have this setup on each device.
I am by no means an electrical/radio engineer, but it seems to me that this would be a cool hack if somebody pulled it off.
dan
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Two other options that come to mind would allow you to use a regular NIC. There are numerous wireless products that will let you plug a NIC into a wireless transciever or hub. However this is probably about as expensive as what you've been looking at already. At the moment, it seems that cheap and wireless are mutually exclusive, at least in the LAN arena. However, another thing to look at is using your home wiring. There are products out there that will allow you to connect 10Base equpment via your existing electrical wiring. This will likely be cheaper than wireless equipment.
I had a chance to use the Aironet 11Mb card at the USENIX Technical Conference a couple of weeks ago, and the Linux driver worked very well. But those guys had several access points for a hundred or so cards--they were loaning them out to conference attendees. Definitely not the typical home-network setting!
:-)
My question is, if I were starting a new installation for a home network, which cards are easiest to set up? I notice that with the Proxim Symphony, you must have a Windoze machine available to configure the thing, as it must already be configured when you try to use the Linux driver and the configurator's only available in a Win32 GUI.
Also, do any of these have a NAT built-in? Most high-speed access solutions such as ADSL and cable modem only give you a single IP address, and charge steep rates for additional ones. So, you want a NAT (Network Address Translator) to make all your machines look like a single machine to your service provider.
If you wanted to NAT but the wireless access-point didn't do it, it seems to me you'd have to have two ethernet cards on a PC that would have the wireless access point on one card and your high speed connection on the other, running NAT software (ipchains would work, but there are other options) to translate between the two. That seems like a lot of work to me, and too many things to go wrong!
I don't know if it's offered elsewhere, but in Austin you can get an ISP that provides 3Mb/s both ways. It's about $3 more than basic cable modem in the area, however, you must live within 10 miles of their site (near downtown/campus). Look at http://www.nobell.com
I have seen some DIY on the web about creating your own wireless lans using 900mhz and 2.4ghz technologies. Most of them are college projects.
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
The trashy solution, not using wireless is just to run cat 5 from roof top to roof top...
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
It would take a lil' more than that, but I don't think that it would be that complicated nor that expensive. What you needs is baiscally a box with a an antenna, transeiver, dsp chips and a 10bT out port, so people don't need drivers. Like the Lancity Cable modems do, cable runs in, the out to a 10bT port so you can put it on a hub or directly hook it up to the computer. The post I did, being the first talking about diy stuff would be the best way for the geeks like most of us on here. I haven't been able to find any of the projects that I have found in the past about diy wireless connections and all that.
If any one has done this or has any link to place that have done this like mentioned above, please add the link. I hate being ripped for $30-$50 worth of parts and labor.
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I also was contemplating a wireless LAN for my house a month ago. I decided against it because:
(1) Wireless LANs are expensive as hell
(2) Speed over wireless LANs sucks
(3) There are few standards and it's not a well-understood technology. There is high probability that you'll spend all that money and end up being locked into some proprietary suboptimal solution with limited upgradeability.
So I sighed, and spend a weekend draping cat5 cable all over my house (primarily outside over external walls). It isn't aesthetic, but for $80=Linksys hub + 3x$25=NIC cards + ~$40=patch cables I have a 100Mbs Ethernet that works very well. If anything goes wrong with it, there are zillions sources of information on how to deal with it. And there is a cable modem, hanging off it, as well {grin}.
So, my point is, think carefully whether you *really* need a wireless network.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Hi
Does anyone know what set-ups which work with Linux are OK for using in the UK (frequency wise) and where some web sites might be for buying kit in the UK?
Ta
Check out MKDoc a mod_perl CMS
Since the apartments are cable ready, you might be able to get away with just putting a 10base2 NIC in the computer with the cable modem attached and hooking the NIC up to the 'regular' cable coax outlet. Ethernet is all broadcast anyway. If you are close enough (1000 feet?) it will probably work. The neighbors might complain about snow on some of the channels though ;)
--- A Jesus Fish eating a Darwin Fish only proves Darwin's point.
I'm using the ZoomAIR-4000 (PCMCIA) on my Thinkpad 770Z and the ZoomAIR-4005 (ISA) on my server to send this reply, so it definitely works.
The ISA version is an ISA/PCMCIA adapter card with one PCMCIA slot, plus the PCMCIA card. So you have to install PCMCIA card services on your server. You need pcmcia-cs version 3.0.9 (or later I suppose) to use wlan driver 0.2.6.
As for price - the ZoomAIR is by far the cheapest IEEE 802.11 solution I've seen. It uses the Harris PRISM chipset, and several other vendors also use that chipset, so there should be good interoperability. I know there are cheaper wireless network cards out there, but they're not 802.11 and I think they only do 1 Mbps. And I don't know if there are Linux drivers.
One more note - I believe Harris is supposed to start shipping the PRISM II chipset in quantity this month, which is supposed to support longer range, lower power, and 11 Mbps (instead of 2 Mbps). So you might want to wait a month or two and see if Zoom releases a new version. I'm okay with 2 Mbps because it's still 16x faster than my ISDN line.
Drivers are at www.absoval.com .
How close together are you buildings? Are they literally 150 feet away or is the building only 20 or so but you two live on opposite ends of your buildings? A Apple Systems Engineer helped wire our building a few years ago. He had a nifty algorithm that he used to calculate whether or not he would have to use fiber or could just use cat5. It also involved nearby trees or other tall structures, ground composition, roofing material, etc... We ended up running fiber fromthe main school 50 feet out to the middle of 3 portable building (glorified trailer houses). From there we ran cat5 out to the two other portables on either side. Its worked flawlessly. He passes away shortly after that so I can't ask him what the algorithm was though. You might consider putting an inline cat5 surge supressor on those outgoing cat5 lines. We have lost 2 nics, 1 inside and one out. I believe it was a building and not a netowrking one, but you can never be too sure. Good luck!
Justin
I have a friend that lives in an apt building close to me. We thought about wireless but that was a little steep. I'm satisfied with just running a cat5 cable over there. Its close enough and the buildings are tall enough that the risk would be nominal. A few inline surge supressors and all would be great. But he's now moving so...bastard... We'll just have to both get ADSL. ;-)
Justin
I was told it stands for "British Naval Connector"
One of the things that's kept my roommates and I from adopting wireless, is that most wireless options (Diamond's, Intel's, etc) run 1 Mbps. We at least want 10 Mbps, and we'll probably wire it and buy 10/100 cards so that we can switch out the hub in the future and run 100Mbps. Please let me know if anyone has found a reasonably-priced wireless solution that will do over 1Mbps.
+--
Given infinite time, 100 monkeys could type out the complete works of Shakespeare.
+-- (Score:-1, Moderator on Power Trip)
After a lot of analysis, the BreezeNet series of devices bubbled to the top of the heap. They are NOT cheap, but they will plug into any ethernet NIC and provide totally transparent 1.5 mbit to 2.5 mbit connectivity between a wired LAN and wireless nodes, or between wireless stations only. Details are at http://www.breezecom.com/Products/brz nprd.htm.
Unfortunately, a 2 node set-up (for example) will cost well over $1000. The access points (wireless hubs if you will) are around $1000, but you only need one of them. The "stand-alone" stations for individual ethernet interfaces are about $400, if I recall correctly.
The stuff has fantastic range (well over 500 feet through walls between 2 buildings with little signal loss in my case), requires absolutely no configuration, and works with any 10baseT ethernet device. My only complaint is the expense. If someone made similar hardware at a $200/node price point, they'd own this market.
FWIW, I have no connection with BreezeCom other than as a satisfied user of the BreezeNet hardware.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
I have a Lan at home with 5 SG servers (2 on 100baseT, 3 on 10base2) and a Telxon/Aironet 2Mb/sec radio Access Point so my laptop (with PCMCIA Aironet card can log on to the network. In my Technical Consultant role at work I also use Symbol wireless kit, which is good but as yet they have no plans to port to Linux -
Telxon are working on the Linux port now!!!
You can limit their kit down to 802.11 if you want, but it currently runs at 11Mb/sec although due to the protocols used 2Mb/s on the rf side gives you greater throughput than 10Mb ethernet, and in the UK, where total output power is restricted to 100mW I have set up reliable distance tests over 1/2 mile outdoors (running Quake 2 happily), although indoors it is reduced a lot. My whole house and garden is served by 1 AP (and I can connect from a neighbour 5 houses away!!)
Price is coming way down - admittedly not down far enough in the UK, and we still have very restrictive rf guidelines over here...still never mind.
Philip Greenspun wrote an excellent review at photo.net/wtr/radiolan.html
And if you haven't already, have a look at the rest of Philip's site. He's a professor at MIT and most all of what he teaches there can also be found on his site.
Does anybody know about any IR-based LAN solution?
I am looking to connect 4 or 5 stations to a single IR 'hub'. Radio-based is out of the question in this application.
The only info I have is about this product in Israel.
http://www.irlan.co.il/products.html
iam currently looking for cheap wirlesss lan will
pay up to 300 bucks but i need it to go 5 miles
and the cheapest thing that i found which could hack it cost a grand www.wavelan.com/oemkits.html
cards are cheap i.e 259 bucks but the amps cost 500 bucks got dam it if any one has any info on this mail me @ pyroskie@hotmail.com
They are:3 6248.htm
IEEE 802.11 compliant
Work better over longer distances than the Zoom Air
Have a great Linux Driver
From Onsale.com, it is very inexpensive..
http://www.onsale.com/category/inv/00000214/018
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http://www.onsale.com/category/inv/00000214/018362 48.htm
It works much better than the ZoomAir. It is also cheaper.
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FWIW, MaximumPC (magazine) did a review and
liked Webgear's Aviator Pro the best of the
cards it tested, which were the Aviator Pro,
Proxim's Symphony, and Diamond's Homefree Wireless.
The Aviator Pro did about 2MB/s for 500 feet.
It is a PC-card that comes with a free ISA
PC-card interface.
www.radiolan.com
They have real 10Mbit/s wireless. No drivers for linux, but if someone seriously wants to write them, let me know, and I'll see if I can hook you up with their developers. (Is Mr. Becker listening?)
-Pete-
petert@ncal.verio.com
I talked to an almost clued sales rep from Ricochet when those things first debuted back in 1997 (in San Jose, CA area). I asked them about interoperativity of those devices with various UNIXen, and apparently, those things are just "ppp nodes" to the computer. So basically, those buggers just look like a modem. Therefore, in theory, they should work with anything that you can find/build a connector for.
Granted, this isn't something that's from my experience, so YMMV.
There is a wireless coop in its infancy out here in Northern Colorado. Apparently, with a decent gain antenna, you can stretch those devices into a metropolitan area network.
They are using the 11Mb/s AeroNet devices, but I fear they may be stretching things a little too much.
On another note, two local ISPs here are sharing a NNTP server through a 1Mb/s link. It is running line-of-site between their two buildings, and works great -- it was much cheaper than buying a T1 line from US West, too.
But what do I know... I'm still impressed that I can bounce 1200 baud packets over the Rocky Mountains...
--N0ZAP
Under *nominal* conditions:
CAT5 Ethernet = 100m
Thicknet (10base5) = 175m (I think)
Coax (10base2) = 150m
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Whizzmo