How do I connect 2 wifi lans together?

[roguecoolman]

Hi there,

I'm new to the wireless game so I hope you guys can bare with me.

What i'm doing is I want to share internet connection between 2 houses that are side by side to each other.

One DSL line will come in one house and go to a wifi router,

now my question is what do I need on the "other" house to recieve the wifi signal? I'll be sharing more than 1 pc in the "other" house so a simple solution of 1 pc with 1 wifi pci card just won't do.

I had thought about using 2 wifi routers, but i'm confused in the sense that how will i tell my 2nd wifi router what signal to take from the 1st wifi router? Assuming that multiple wifi lans exist in my area.

do I need a 2nd wifi router? or is there a better hardware solution?


thank you for your time,

roguecoolman@hotmail.com

[M/Q]

Welcome to the forum. There are several methods that you could use to make the link. First some questions. You mentioned that you were considering a router, have you made any purchases yet? Reason I ask, as there is an option that I prefer and it will allow better coverage in your house as well as probably allowing for a stronger link to the next house. If you are trying to get wireless coverage throughout the house, the first thing to consider is where would the best place for the AP to be located to achieve that. In most cases that is not where the DSL connection is. Second now you also want to consider where would the best location be, to have good coverage in my house and then still be able to have enough signal strength to jump over to the other house as well. If that is possible, then the approach would be to buy a wired router to connect to the DSL modem. Run an Ethernet CAT6 cable from the AP to the router and then your house is set. At the other house, I need to know if they intend on having wireless throughout their house as well. I will assume so, then you will again locate the best place in the house for their AP. Then you need to locate where in that house would be the best place to receive the signal from your house. At that location you need to have what is called a bridge. You would then run a Ethernet CAT6 cable from the AP to the bridge. Just some configuration and the houses would be linked.

I am not necessarily recommending these products, but it will give you an idea of what devices I am talking about. Go to the LinkSys site and check out the LinkSys wired router BEFSR41W, then check out the wireless AP's like the WAP11 or WAP54, depending on what speed/bandwidth you want. Then checkout the WET11 or WET54 bridge. Those three devices should allow you to accomplish what you want.

One last thought, remember when I said to try and get the AP in your house to give you good coverage throughout the house and then try to see if it will be able to have enough strength to link to the other house? If that is not possible, then you just locate the AP where it is the best for your house and then add another bridge like the WET11 or WET54 on your side that will allow a good link to the other WET11/54 in the other house. The bridges basically just replace a hardwire connection. I would personally use two bridges, as it allows you to locate the devices in the most effective positions.

If you use one of these methods, let me know as there are some details that need to be talked about, but no sense doing that now.

There are less costly methods like having devices do more than one thing, but in almost all cases the performance will suffer and you will not be satisfied.

[roguecoolman]

Thanks for the reply :)

I should've provided more info.

Basically I was planning on this:

house 1 (where the dsl line is coming in) - house 2 ( no dsl line exists or internet connection)


house 1 dsl line will connect to a wired router ( i have an old 10/100 smc router), then I was going to get either a wifi router or wifi AP and connect that to the wired router. I'll try to place that AP/router as close to the wall that is next to the house as possible.

then on house 2, I was hoping to recieve the wifi signal from house 1 and then feed that signal through a wired switch.


that was my initial plan.

I had a though process going:

House1 outside house2
wired router ---> wifi AP ///////// wifi AP -----> switch

Will this method work?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You mentioned the use of bridges especially the wet54 bridge. I've never used bridges before, how would the topology work?

I am assuming:
house 1 house2
wired router ---> wifi AP ---> bridge ////// bridge ----> switch

[M/Q]

The system will work, I just would like to have you consider a few things. Especially on your side. Your first topology will work, one AP will act as an AP and the one in the other house will act as an AP client. An AP client is just another name for a bridge. I would be concerned that if you locate the AP to enhance the signal between the houses, that it will affect the coverage inside your house. I know that you may not care now, but after awhile you find out how convenient it is. That is why I suggested the additional bridges or AP's acting as bridges. Your second topology is close, both the bridge and AP would plug into the wired router. If you use that approach, then you must have the bridge link (house to house) on lets say channel 11, and the AP in your house on channel 1. that way they will not interfere with each other.

[roguecoolman]

Thanks for your reply :)

so i take it the reasoning for 2 aps and 2 bridges, so 1 bridge + 1 ap plugged into the wired router in [ house 1 ]and 1 bridge + 1 ap plugged into a switch on [ house 2 ], is so that we can boost signal strength?

Would this scenario also work if we had 4 aps(using 2 channels) instead of 2 bridges? Or is it because of Cost that its cheaper to go with 2 aps and 2 bridges?



just another side question: hypothetically if I were to use 4 ap's. could I use 1 channel? Is there a rule of thumb when using channels? Is it that for every pair of device its 1 channel?

[M/Q]

Oops, it is a little confused yet, unless you want the other house to have wireless also. The big reason is to have good coverage in your house. You will be surprised what will affect the signal. You are at a disadvantage already, when you said that you were going to put the AP on the wall nearest to the othr house. It should be centrally located. Wireless works differently, if the signal strength goes down so does your data throughput bandwidth. You will notice a huge difference between wired and wireless throughput anyway. Wired is an honest 100mbs, where as 11b is 5.5mb and 11g is 27mb actual throughput. If the signal drops so does that figure.

AP's are a good device , they have the ability to have different configurations. If you use 4 then the AP's acting as the bridge link would have to have the same channel like I said 11 for example. Then if you are going to have client AP in each house, they should be on channel 1 so as not to interfere with each other. the interference will again have an affect on the throughput bandwidth as well as if it is strong enough it will cause random drops. By the way, do you have any 2.4gHz cordless phones or BlueTooth devices, they will affect the wireless setup as well.

[roguecoolman]

oh man, 2.4ghz phones will interfere? Will I have to move the base station far away?

So to kind of summarize what you were saying.

If I use 4 ap's using 1 channel, its like having one huge source for signal then.

using 4 ap's on 2 different channels, diversifies my signal in that I can effectively have 2 seperate signals from the same source to better split up my network?

[M/Q]

As for the phones, it might be an issue wherever you have the base as it involves the phone as well. It may not be a problem, but in most cases it is.

Now, we got to get this right this time, you cannot have more than one AP in the same coverage area using the same channel without getting a degradation in signal strength and bandwidth. The only way to co-locate AP's is to have them on non-interfering channels like channels 1 and 11. The reason I tell you to do this is to prevent any possibility of interference. Also you are not understanding that once the AP's are in bridge mode, they will no longer function as AP's they will only be working to run the between houses link. When they are in the bridge link you have to configure in the other bridge/AP's MAC address so that it knows it is supposed to look only for the information coming from that node. As I mentioned in a previous post there are other possible ways to do this, but it will introduce problems and degraded performance. Trust me on this, I have been around enough to know this.

[roguecoolman]

ahh thanks for clearing things up : )