[TriLUG] Kevin: Airport Config + Long Haul Wireless

[John Warf]

I have actually used the 3rd Party Airport configurer and it worked 
decintly.  I had a problem with it when the program locked up when I 
sent the config to the airport.  It locked up only once so it didn't 
bother me to much.  Be aware it is a third party app and apple does not 
support it.  My apple rep for the school system still doesn't know much 
about it.  The program did work farely well though and you can use it on 
ALL the SNOW airports.  The older gray ones will not work.  You can do 
just about all the features the Mac program will do.

John

William W. Ward wrote:

>Alchemist,
>
>The Mac Airport can be configured using a Windows applet available from
>Apple's website.  I haven't used it myself, so I cannot comment on its
>fitness for doing anything in particular, but someone with an available
>Windows machine can take care of that for you.
>
>On the subject of getting that last 2000 feet:
>
>I don't think a solar setup would be practical for getting wireless from
>your neighbor.  I'll have to go back and look though.  If you have the
>up-front monies to invest in a suitably large solar array and storage cell,
>you may be in good shape.  Keep in mind that solar cells are horribly
>inefficient to begin with, and as the sun's angle changes the power output
>drops off sharply.  I don't know what the current drain is on the average
>Linksys AP, but the 350mw transmitter coupled to a very short bit of cable
>and a low-cost parabolic antenna should traverse 2000 feet both reliably and
>with a robust signal.  7 miles have been achieved with a PC-card transmitter
>at 100mw with line-of-sight between two parabolic antennas (each is about
>$100).  You could probably get away with a couple omnidirectional antennas
>on the cheap.  Anything is better than the rubber-duck dummy loads they put
>on the transmitters.
>
>I'm interested in traversing a 5.3 mile distance, but I have a treeline to
>consider.  The terrain between the two points has a mere 10 foot grade to
>consider, and no hills inbetween.  Its low-priority, but the purpose is to
>get my dial-up bound buddy connected to my lan, and able to work through my
>128K ISDN.
>
>On that subject, I'd definitely be considering how much abuse you want to
>take from Time Warner, the same company that believes it's ethical to sell
>you "unlimited" bandwidth with so many conditions on it's use.  I'll stick
>with ISDN and Intrex.net.  If Intrex gets too snippy about what sort of
>traffic I can use (VPN, for example) then I'll just switch to another
>provider.
>
>Whats the plan for this newbie affair?  I could use some real instruction on
>a few fronts.  Fundamentals like recovering a damaged system, backing up
>data, and sorting out hardware issues would be ideal.  For example, I would
>like to load Debian on my Thinkpad 701C (I've done this in the past) and
>have someone point out what packages I can trim out to save overhead in CPU
>and storage.
>
>Just a thought,
>Bill
>
>Online's Place BBS, 1990-1995.
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