[NTLUG:Discuss] LAN Planning

[kbrannen@gte.net]

Aaron Goldblatt wrote:
>>I expect wireless is looking better and better now. ;)
> 
> 
> It is, but I have no real knowledge of how it works and what to expect with respect to 
> signal fade through walls.  I'm not going to be going through brick or wanting to hit 
> anything outside, but the houses are on zero lots and any neighbor may be within 
> range.  Not a huge deal if I pay attention (and not a great problem if I don't, I can 
> just burn their houses down if I catch them).  I'm mostly concerned with the signal 
> being able to get through several layers of drywall.  I've heard conflicting reports 
> about whether 802.11a or 802.11b is more appropriate.  For the application, speed 
> is not a serious issue, just distance and drywall.

It probably depends on the equipment, but I have an 802.11b setup in my house. 
  I have it configured to the "small" radius for the full 11Mb/s rate.  I have 
a 2 story house and found I was able to walk anywhere in my house and not 
loose the full rate.  I even walked outside my house to my workshop 25' or so 
and 2 brick walls away.  Connectivity only dropped to about 9'ish.  Of course 
to be fair, one of the gold cards in the receiver has an extended antenna on it.

There's this cool utility that allows you to measure your rate of your PCMCIA 
network card.  Unfortunately, I don't remember it's name, but I most likely 
got it off freshmeat or Slashdot, so a search should find it pretty easily.

As for security, my model (an Orinoco AP1000) has multiple security modes: 
domain name, MAC list, and something (WEP I think, but it definitely has a 3rd 
one).  I use the MAC list, so if the card's MAC isn't in the unit's list, it 
won't connect.  I bought the unit from my old company, and there we used a 
non-sensical domain name plus the MAC list.  I doubt any of your neighbors 
would break into that. ;-)  The down side to this unit is that you must have a 
windows machine someone on the LAN to configure it; and if you bought it new, 
it would probably be pricey, but there are cheaper models out there.

HTH,
Kevin