[lug] Dumb Wireless Networking Questions

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Monday 28 April 2003 01:36 pm, Nate Duehr wrote:
> That Wake-on-LAN thing is intriquing... trying to think up ideas for
> that one.  Ntp client rocks too.
>
> The Wake-on-LAN -- can you trigger a WOL from an incoming port... like
> have the internal machine turned OFF until someone tries to access it
> and the router wakes it up?  That's kinda neat if it's a lightly used
> machine that you just access once in a while or a desktop machine that
> you forgot to copy a file off of or something... or is it only a
> manually triggerable event by logging into the router?  It'd be nice not
> to leave the desktop machines on all the time at home "just in case" I
> need into them.

It looks to me that you can configure a single external address to request 
a WOL to a single internal MAC address.  I haven't used it and the 
documentation is somewhat terse on the advanced features, so I won't swear 
to this.  But basically, your senario is correct.  You leave your home 
machine off, but it you need it you can log in from work and turn it on, 
then log in to it.  That is the way I plan to use it.

> This might be the first REAL application of WOL I have ever "needed"!
> (GRIN)  So far to me it always seemed to be a technology looking for an
> application.

Ditto.

> As a side-question to the group (and I'm sorry this isn't really a Linux
> question), I'm wondering how many of the latest crop of Access Points
> have Linksys' feature where you can set one of their AP's to be a full
> "client" of an existing wireless network and it will then serve IP's out
> via the ETHERNET port... allowing you to "wire" a room by adding an AP. 
> And who's AP's interoperate in this mode.

I had to read this twice to see what you are asking for.  That's really 
clever.  I haven't seen this in the USR one I have, but I'll look again.  
What a neat idea.

> I *love* this feature... this is how I get connectivity to my garage...
> Linksys AP out there connects to the existing wireless LAN in the house
> and I end up with a wired Ethernet jack out there that looks like it's
> on the internal LAN.  However this is NOT bridging mode... it's logging
> in on the wireless side like it was a regular CLIENT machine and then
> doing NAT for the machines on the Ethernet port.

It sounds like you can almost get this behavior just by turning off the 
DHCP server in the second router.  It will then act as a hub on the 
internal network treating wired and unwired parts equally.  So a dhcp 
request in the garage would be forwarded to the AP in the house which 
would answer.  The difference between this scenario and yours is that the 
systems in the garage would not be NATed from the rest of the house.

I _think_ that DHCP can be turned off for the USR router.

Michael