--- paul beard <paulbeard@mac.com> wrote:
> I am using (right now) a cisco aironet 340 PC card
> in my laptop 
> with NetBSD 1.5.2: works fine most of the time. The
> card whines 
> about signal quality and I do get slow connections
> some times (I 
> have heard rumors that aironets are not fully
> 802.11b compliant: 
> anyone?)
> 
> If you're with 150 feet of his access point, you
> should be OK: 
> depends on your defintion of "next door." In urban
> Seattle, it's 
> about 15 feet . . . ;-)

I have what I think is a resolution to my problem.
After reading the hilarious article provided by Mr.
Stump in an earlier reply about an Egyptian guy trying
to connect his house to an internet cafe, I have come
up with some answers. 

(That article is good reading even if you aren't
interested in wireless networking. These guys have
figured out how to make an 802.11b device talk for up
to a few miles by making an antenna out of.... ...get
this... ...A Pringles can! Too funny!
Here's the link:
http://www.d128.com/wireless/)

Next door to me means about 100 to 150 feet, max.
There are cinder block walls between, so we'll see how
it goes.

I have discovered the Linksys WAP11 (from the
hilarious article) which has plenty of setup info
here:

http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=22

The online manual describes how to connect two regular
hubs together quite clearly with 2 WAPs. You set them
so that they will only listen to each others' MAC
addresses which should help to keep out snoopers. Then
you can set up to 128 bit encryption, and away you go.
The downside is that they only support configuration
of the WAP with Grimdows, but they do provide an
unsupported way to do it with "Linux". 

When I get it all up and running, by the end of the
week hopefully, I'll let everyone know how it works.
Sharing internet service with your neighbor rules!

Andy

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