[plug] Setting up a wireless netowrk

[peregrin at iinet.net.au]

Hi List.

I intend to set up a wireless link to a friends house who lives 4.5kms
away and share his ADSL connection. This email is to get my thoughts in
order and to see if my assumptions are correct. Please feel free to
shoot me down in flames.

At the moment I have;
1 x Cisco Aironet 350 AP
1 x Cabletron Roamabout pcmcia in a Lucent card
1 x 3' Galaxy dish
1 x 21" Galaxy dish 
A length of cable with a connector on 1 end. :)

The plan;
To have a Linux box at each end. The box at my friends (henceforth known
as the AP) will be a server handling the ADSL connection, his WinXP
box and the wireless to my house (hereafter known as the client).

What I have tried so far;
The person who gave me the equipment and many well intentioned friends
tell me, that all I need to do is plug the equipment in and it will just
work. Of course it doesn't. 

I put the roamabout card in a Win2k machine and connected the AP to
a WinXP box via ethernet. Both machines are in the same room. I reset
the AP to factory defaults and gave it an IP. I ran netstumbler on the 
Win2k box and got an error, saying no cards were found. So even though
the Win2k box said the drivers were fine, I installed new drivers.
Netstumbler now scans but reports no APs active. 

I used windows boxes here on the assumption that the hardware was
designed to "just work" on windows.

I have trawled the net and have found a few articles saying that Enterasys
based cards (which I believe the roamabout is based on) has troubles
with the Aironet 350s.

Assumptions;
I didn't add any drivers or software to the WinXP box as the AP is just
an ethernet connection. 

My next step is to put the roamabout card in my Debian testing box.
Looking into it, it seems I need to take the following steps;
1. add pcmcia-cs, pcmcia-modules, wireless-tools
2. find and add David Gibson's wvlan_cs driver
3. compile a new kernel
Most of the information I have found seems to be a bit old. The wireless
howto is dated 2002 and talks about 2.2/2.3 kernels. 

Rather than play around with the roamabout card I might be better off
purchasing a AP/Router/ADSL all in one. Then (I assume) it is just a
matter of connecting each AP to the separate boxes and setting up the
routing.

And probably the biggest assumption of all is that I will have clear LOS
to my friends house. I have checked the UBD and the way is mostly over a
river and parkland. Checking on http://www.nodedb.com the elevation looks
good. I danced naked under the last full moon (but I tend to do this
anyway). So, I might be better off to find a professional to do all this
for me, as I don't know what sort of height I am going to need. Anyone
know of anybody?

Thanks for reading. Go get yourself a coffee you deserve one.

Nigel