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Wireless networks are rapidly gaining popularity, replacing the need for traditional wired networks in some cases, and extending the reach of Internet services into areas
where telephone and cable infrastructure is not cost-effective. The advent of the IEEE 802.11 standard has brought about a range of interoperating 11 Mbps network
devices including integrated base stations and PC cards for both PCMCIA-enabled laptop and PCI-based desktop computers. Made popular by Apple's low-cost AirPort
base station, home-based wireless LANs are making home networking more simple than ever. At USENIX Association conferences, participants are connected to each
other and to the Internet through wireless access points. And within a five-mile geographic radius, wireless WANs can make high-speed connectivity between company
locations, and even within neighborhoods cost-competitive with traditional telco or cable-based solutions.
With various FRUUG members working with wireless networking technologies, we thought it would be fun to have a meeting on how easy it is to bring up a wireless
network at home or at the office. And fun it was-- with each of our
speakers thinking they only had 10 or 15 minutes of things to say,
we had to ajourn after two hours only because the room was booked
at 6:00.
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Steve Gaede of
Lone Eagle Systems Inc.
took the audience on a quick tour of the
the Web sites that made him curious enough to bring up his own
wireless network, including:
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Apple's AirPort Page:
http://www.apple.com/airport,
which seems to deny that you could do anything with an AirPort base
station but configure a wireless network with your brand-new AirPort-ready
Macintosh computer
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Ali Bahrami's page:
http://www.emvision.com/airport.html,
which talks about how easy it was to "upgrade" the AirPort base station
with 128-bit encryption and get it to interoperate with Microsoft Windows
NT and Linux-- and has links to most of the sites mentioned here.
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More on upgrading to the Wavelan Gold card including pictures:
http://www.marl.com/airport-gold
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More ways to void your AirPort base station warranty at:
http://homepage.mac.com/davidlh/album1.html,
this time by drilling a hole in its case and running a wire to
an external indoor range-extender antenna
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Details on the external antennae that are available:
http://www.macintouch.com/airportantenna.html,
including those which can focus the signal to get up to 5-8 miles
of range, a topic addressed in Barb's talk.
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And finally, how to configure the AirPort base station from a
Windows system... reports later in the meeting that
a Java configurator is available:
http://www.karlnet.com
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John Lilley of
Acme Software, Inc.
gave us a book report on all of his reading on the Radio Frequency
(RF) technology behind wireless networks.
He has made his talk available
on-line (39K PDF)
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Barb Dijker of Netrack
Netrack
discussed wireless Wide-Area networks, and has made
her slides available on-line as
well (HTML)
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Lynda McGinley and Dirk Grunwald
from the University of Colorado
discussed setting up wireless networks at USENIX conferences,
and gave us a show-and-tell of various access points (base stations)
and wireless cards.
One of the challenges "wiring" the engineering building at CU is
that the thick concrete walls impede signals significantly, so that
wireless roaming is a necessity-- and this can be supported by
a set of access points attached to the same (wired) LAN segment.
Another interesting tidbit from Dirk's talk is that many of the
vendors are finding that there is extra value in allowing an
external antenna to be attached-- and new versions of cards from
companies like Cisco Systems no longer have the removable plug
for the external antenna and require more costly solutions--
a problem not shared with the
Lucent/Orinoco/Wavelan cards... buyer beware!
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