Will this work? (Wireless network)

[Ausatco]

Third para is me, Towers Play with it until it breaks, then fix it and try to remember the lessons learned in the process. Hint: always print every article you view in the MS Knowledge Base.

Thanks again to Orac and fobotsco for providing direction, links and food for thought when needed.

Cheers

AA

[fobotcso]

Thanks, Ausatco. You said:

Play with it until it breaks, then fix it and try to remember the lessons learned in the process.

Did you ever get that link up to 100mbps?

I guess that's me too. But "playing" is really seeing how much I can get out of the beasts and keep them going. For instance, how well does a Mac cope with a laptop on the move accessing e-mail from a hard-wired or wireless LAN, normal dial-up by wired telepone, or mobile phone using cable, Bluetooth or Infra-red link. Each one of these has its uses; to create a system that is robust enough for an inexpert user to switch from one the another seamlessly is a challenge.

[PPRuNe Towers]

Fobotso,

I'll give you a taste with laptop and lan first.

Arrive at hotel - this is real life not salesmanship so I will be specific. The Mariott, Torrance, Cailifornia. Bring Mac back from sleep mode, connect ethernet cable to room box. Browser automatically fires up with ISP page and I click to accept the 10 bucks per 24 hour charge. That's it - all done.

Wireless Lan is identical but without the need to attach the cable. Often charges to pay as well but I do know pilots who trawl the streets of cities furtively seeking free access............

E-mail works seamlessly but if an ISP is set to block it unless through their server a dialog box allows you to select another server to force it out or put theirs in. Of course, none of this effects inbound mail or using webmail programs.

Obviously main point is zero configuration for lan, wireless etc and all built in before delivery.

Rather than prattle on about all the other methods which are essentially the same, get to an Apple site and search the knowledge bases with the word 'Rendezvous,' this being their trade name for the seamless attachment of the operating system to any other outside source whether wired, wireless, bluetooth or IR.

Just to be absolutely straight with you; although the software and aerials are built into every Mac, should you chose to use, say, the Bluetooth system within you do have to buy an adapter for around the 25 quid mark to transmit and receive the data.

The experience is invisible to the user - I'm switching between cable adsl, copper phone line and wireless and, other than the obvious speed changes with the dial up, my browsers and mail haven't the faintest idea which conduit is sending and receiving the data. I have to open sub programs to see what's happening.

Regards
Rob

[Ausatco]

fobs,

My D-Link gear is good for only 22mbps - I did this on a budget!! It only cost me OZ$220.00 (but a lot of my spare time.)

I reliably get that speed over a reasonable distance, but I haven't tried a range vs speed check yet - maybe tomorrow.

As a test of system performance, I put a DVD in each computer in turn and then played it from the other over the link. That worked ok - each played as if it was being run on a local drive.

Then I played them simultaneously (each from the other computer!) That worked too, but both were a bit choppy with vid jerkiness and sound dropouts.

Some numbers you might be able to offer an opinion on ...

Movie A by itself (Eagles in concert, colour, stereo sound) - upload 10600kbps, download 105kbps, total bandwidth 10700kbps or 10.7mbps

Movie B by itself, played in the other direction on the link - (old B+W relic, mono and mono) - upload 6000kbps, download 65kbps, total bandwidth 6065 kbps, or about 6.1mbps

If one were to play the movies simultaneously, each from the other computer over the link, it would be reasonable to expect a bandwidth requirement equal to the sum of the totals, wouldn't it? ie about 16.8mbps, well within the 22mbps capacity of the equipment.

When I played them that way the up and down channels were the same, as you'd expect, but only about 6mbps each, for a total bandwidth of 12mbps - significantly less than I had expected and well under the link's maximum. Both movies were choppy.

Any ideas why that might be? ie, why the unexpectedly reduced data throughput (which, one assumes, would cause the choppiness)?

(I'm not going to lose too much sleep over this - it's a weird configuration that one wouldn't normally use, but now I'm curious! )

Cheers

AA

[Onan the Clumsy]

Looks like I'll be reading this in more detail later.

I'm trying to do some pretty basic stuff, but not being too successfull yet. Just a desktop with a DSL home portal that all seems to work ok and I'm trying to hook up my laptop through a wireless card.

I think I need to run a mainframe at home. That way I can have a little more success. I just don't know how I'll pay for the staff though.

[Onan the Clumsy]

Woof! Just been on the phone to the Phillipines for an hour, but it works. Not sure why it didn't work after the initial setup though. Ah well.

[Ausatco]

Well done Onan - glad it worked so easily for you.

B L O O D Y H E L L, I have no luck. I just got this wireless network perfect, had it so for all of a day and a half, and then the hard drive on the desktop died. Dead as a dodo, nothing recoverable. Fortunately I had a fairly recent backup and didn't lose much data, and the drive's under warranty, but I really did NOT need the inconvenience.

Anyway, back up and running now after a system rebuild.

Fobs, that bandwidth thing a couple of posts ago ... It's not a bandwidth issue. Apparently the link is only half duplex, so it sends a packet of one movie in one direction, then a packet of the other in the other direction. It can't send in both directions simultaneously. The jerkiness comes from the interruptions in the data streams, not from bandwidth limitations.

Cheers

AA

[fobotcso]

Just a quickie to acknowledge all the info people are passing me but no time to absorb from/reply too as I seem to up to my neck in alligators at the moment.

I'll murder that fridge door and its list of jobs....

[peg20]

I know this doesn't help Ausatco, but I thought it might be useful to others in the future.

I recently got ADSL put on my phone line, and needed to get all "modem"ed up. I use Linux primarily, and Windows doesn't quite work like it should on the hardware I have. So I decided that I would get an ADSL modem/router rather than a USB or other modem. That way, you don't need to worry about drivers and so on for the ADSL modem; you just configure your ethernet card as usual, and then configure the model using a web browser over the direct connection.

The routers usually have all the NAT functionality ("connection sharing") built in, so you can just plug another machine in. Mine has a built-in firewall, DHCP server, DNS proxy, port forwarding etc. Oh, and did I mention it is also a 802.11b wireless access point?

Because it is an entirely separate box with all the functionality internal, I didn't have to worry about getting it to work with strange selection of hardware and operating systems.

I know you are all saying "yeah, yeah, but I didn't want to spend that much", but this is the best bit: It cost me 65pounds all-in from www.ebuyer.com. I know that since then, they have had a different model in for less than this (about 50 iirc). At this price, though, they don't last long, and disappear of their website after a couple of weeks.

HTH someone...

Cheers

p

[Ausatco]

Thanks Peg, I probably should have gone a similar route, but cost was a major consideration for me. I wanted wireless on top of the ADSL modem/router, and that package doesn't come cheap.

Minor inconveniences aside (like the HDD on the desktop self-destructing, a disaster unrelated to my networking efforts), all is now well and my wireless network is A1 perfect for me, though perhaps a bit limited for others.

I learned a lot getting it working, thanks to help from this forum.

AA

[peg20]

The main point of my post was that it DOES include wireless.

I don't actually use the wireless side at the moment, but since the box was so cheap, I got it anyway. I thought I could always sell on my unused bandwidth to my neighbours

[Ausatco]

Ya lucky sod, Peg. Even allowing for currency conversion, you paid about half what we'd pay for a wireless set-up like that out here.

Now I'm trying to get fax to work over the network. So far it doesn't want to play ...

Best

AA