Re: wireless 802.11 "relay"

From: Tauno Voipio (tauno.voipio_at_iki.fi.NOSPAM.invalid)
Date: 06/14/05 

Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 16:11:31 GMT

arvind_s@mit.edu wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I need some advice on being able to access my office network from my
> office campus over wireless. Currently, I plug into the wired ethernet,
> and my laptop gets it address over it using DHCP. However, I like
> working outdoors, so sometimes will like to work outdoors, just
> underneath my office. I can potentially take a longer wire and let it
> hang from my office, and plug my laptop into it, but that will be a big
> mess.
>
> Is it possible to have exactly the same functionality using some kind
> of "wireless relay". I can ofcourse potentially setup a small wireless
> network in my office, but that will make the network accessible/open to
> all etc, and will require another IP address for the switch/hub/router
> I may use. I want something much simpler -- just to be able to connect
> my laptop wirelessly into my wired network.
>
> Any other kind of device (USB or something) which provides this exact
> functionality will work as well.

The connection is not much of a problem: an off-the-shelf wireless
access point will bridge your Ethernet to WLAN.

Keeping uninvited guests out is some more of a problem. The common
countermeasures (in increasing order of overhead & difficulty):

  - MAC addres filtering at the access point,
  - standard WLAN encryption in addition to MAC address filtering,
  - encrypted VPN over the WLAN (e.g. OpenVPN).

A working VPN requires extra IP addresses for the tunnel. They can
well be RFC 1918 private addresses.

Pick your poison / dope.

Please avoid USB thingies, they tend to be O/S and version & driver
dependent more than you'd like. It's roughly the same situation as
with the notorious Winmodems and Winprinters. I just have here an
USB ADSL box which refused to work with one computer (IBM Thinkpad A21p)
due to a too old USB, and with another computer (Mac Mini) due to
the O/S too new (OS-X 10.4 Tiger).

HTH 

-- 
Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio (at) iki fi

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