On Sat, Jan 26, 2002 at 03:01:41PM -0800, Andy R wrote:
> Next door to me means about 100 to 150 feet, max.
> There are cinder block walls between, so we'll see how
> it goes.
> 
> 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". 

Andy, 

I just had a discouraging 802.11b experience you might want to hear
before you decide to try to go through cinder block.  

The client is a W98 desktop with a 3Com PCI card holding their PCMCIA
wireless card.  The WAP is a Linksys, which we substituted after
finding no joy with 3Com's.  We're in a 2nd floor Bronx 3 BR apartment, going
from my friend's daughter's bedroom (the client) to the other end of
the apartment (his office).  Total distance might be 75 feet,
probably more like 50, measured in a straight line.  (Where I come
from, we say, "as the crow flies", but I wouldn't want to be that
particular crow!)

The good news is the two vendors' products communicate; the bad news
is, not fast and not far.  

We wound up running 25' of Ethernet, because the wireless link
wouldn't go the distance.  From the bedroom, down the hall to the
living room, a little around the corner, and that's it.  From there
it's wire or nothing.  Well, I didn't happen to have any Pringles cans
around, and your message arrived a few hours too late.  Thanks,
though: it's a hoot!

3Com's site says 802.11b doesn't go through walls, not even
sheetrock.  They say the signal bounces off walls.  That conforms to
our experience.  His 50-75 feet would be considerably longer as the
carpet lies, and would include a hard right turn.  

It's true, the Linksys setup uses a Windows application via
USB/Ethernet.  They provide a .MIB file you can use to set it up via
SNMP, but that's way outside what I know how to do, so I ran the
Windows schlock. It got the job done; she's online, albeit at <1 Mb/s,
measured by NetBSD ping (1KB packets, 17% loss rate).  

Given that we couldn't even flood the apartment with 802.11b packets,
I decided WEP was beside the point.  

Diagnostics are lousy where they exist at all.  It's impossible to
know anything about the signal strength or link level status beyond a
stupid green/yellow/red Windows widget on the client.  

Thought you might be interested....

--jkl