[TriLUG] [OT] Setting up a home wireless network

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Sun, 2002-12-15 at 13:06, Andrew Perrin wrote:
> Any recommendatinos on sources for home wireless setup? My situation is
> that I've got an existing, wired network in the study consisting of three
> desktop computers (two debian, one of which acts as the firewall/iptables
> router, and one Win98) and one laptop. I want the laptop to go wireless,
> and it's got a working wireless card which I've successfully used on the
> UNC campus's wireless network.  I bought a WAP (Belkin) to use for the
> home network. The question is... what's the right way to set it up? It
> defaults to an IP address of 192.168.0.254 which is fine by me since the
> other machines on the home network are 192.168.0.[3..14]. But how do I set
> up the laptop and WAP so that packets from the laptop wind their way
> through the WAP, then through the router/firewall machine?  Setting the
> gateway to either 192.168.0.254 (the WAP) or 192.168.0.3 (the router
> machine) doesn't seem to work.

I'm not a wireless expert at all, but I can comment from a network
standpoint.  In your situation you want the WAP to act as a bridge -- to
bridge the wired Ethernet and wireless on a physical level (well,
technically layer 2 of the OSI model).  You need to configure the WAP so
it doesn't concern itself with TCP/IP at all.  The IP address of the WAP
should be of no consequence if you're not using it as a router.  The
laptop would use its same IP address regardless of the position on the
network (wired or wireless), and contact your router/firewall in the
usual manner.   This is how I do wireless at work and it works fine.

Check your WAP's user manual and see if it has instructions on
configuring as a bridge only. 

Also, try the Triangle Wireless Users Group list --
http://www.triwug.org/

--Jeremy