[ILUG] Adding wireless to a Linux home network

[Gavin McCullagh]

On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, Garth Fitzmaurice wrote:

> My current setup is a home lan involving NTL cable internet, Linux server
> acting as router, DHCPD,DNS,SMTP, and firewall (using shorewall) for the
> home lan. 

Mine is almost identical.  Mixture of windows & linux clients.

> Does anyone have a recommendation as to what type of additional hardware
> we should look at buying? Can we simply buy a wireless access point and
> plug it into the LAN or do we need a wireless router? 

Pretty much.  You might need a windows machine to configure the AP
depending on which one it is.  Some have web/telnet interfaces, my one
has it's own windows-only client.  It's a Belkin 802.11b AP.

> Will we need to recompile the kernel on the linux server for wireless
> support, or can it just connect to the wireless accesspoint/router by a
> cat 5 cable plugged into the same switch?

Not for the AP, but possibly for the client cards if any run linux in the
future.  You might be best off picking cards which are well supported.

I've a CNet usb dongle (komplett sell them for about €40) and a few other
belkin USB ones all based on the atmel gear.  If you like adventures with
compiling modules etc. go right ahead, the driver works very well (actually
there are two competing ones for linux) but it's usually nicer to have one
which distros support directly like others have mentioned.  No doubt one or
other driver will get included in linux soon, but not yet.

I personally like USB cards as opposed to PCI.  It's a lot more flexible,
ie if a friend brings his laptop round you can just pull one from another
machine for him.  The antennae are sometimes bigger too which _may_ help
the reception I'm not sure.

Gavin