Hi, I have solved this problem with a little different aproach and much less money. You don't need a wireless accesspoint.
I have 3(xp, xp, linux-mandrake) desktops and 1(linux-debian) server at home and a laptop(w2k/RedHat). Two of the desktops are connected by wire, one is connected with wireless, laptop can be connected with wire/wireless depending on which room I am in. The debian machine has 3 network devices: eth0 (eepro100) -to dsl line, eth1 (tulip) -to 8 port 100Mbps switch, wlan0 (hostap) -USRobotics Wireless card The hostap driver is capable of performing all the AP related functions in software. It works with most PRISM 2/2.5 cards, should work with orinoco. eth1 & wlan0 are then bound into a bridge: /etc/network/interfaces auto br0 iface br0 inet static address 192.168.11.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 192.168.11.0 broadcast 192.168.11.255 bridge_ports eth1 wlan0 I use NAT on br0 to make internet connection available to all my internal network. The server also runs: dhcpd (DHCP server, all the client machines use DHCP to get their internal IP address) DNS server dhcp-dns to update dns entries whenever a new client connects smtp & imap server for mail. By creating a bridge, I was able to keep all my client machines on the same subnet and saved myself from the routing nightmare. -nak =================================================================== From DSL +-------+ |eth0 +---+ D1-xp | +--+--+ +-----+ | +-------+ | +--------+ Hub |-----+ | Srv | eth1 +--+--+ | +-------+ | | | +---+ D2-Mdk| | +--))) | +-------+ +-----+ wlan0 : ^ : | +------+-+ +------+ | Laptop | (((--+ D3-xp| +--------+ +------+ =================================================================== On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 10:05:42PM +0100, Balazs Javor wrote: > Hi, > > Thank you all for your suggestions. > They basically confirm my fears that it isn't going to be > very simple. > I must admit I'm not a networking expert, allthough I thought, > that I have a good understanding of the basics. > Please let me give you some more details on my (probably typical) > setup and some of my goals/assumptions. Maybe you could then > suggest me the best way to proceed: > > I have an ADSL router connected to a network switch along with > 3 PCs connected to the same switch. They all are on the same subnet > and all have the router as the default gateway. So long so fine. > They can all talk to each other, share files and access the Internet. > > Now comes the notebook. I have configured (for now) the built-in NIC > the same way as with the other machines, so it works as well. > Now, I've ordered the Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card along with the RG-1100 > wireless access point. It is my understanding that you can set up the > access point to act purely as a bridge. Where my assumption was that > it will basically act as a "wire to radio signal converter" and if it > were not for the built-in NIC, I could just plug the access point into > the switch, the PCMCIA card into the notebook and configure the card to > be on the same subnet as the other machines, and everything would > work as before. > > And if this is the only easy way, then I would simply not use the > built-in NIC. However, since the built-in NIC is about 10 times > faster, I was kinda hoping that I could somehow make it possible, > that whenever I am at my desk or whenever I need to transfer large > amount of data to the notebook I could just simply "switch" to the > built-in NIC. > Now if I need to configure either of the cards to be on a separate > subnet I would need to route that subnet to the original network > somehow as both the fileserver and the Internet gateway are on that one. > So I would need to set up one of the other machines with another NIC > and set it up to be the router between the two networks. And this I > think is a bit too complicated for what I wanted to use it for... > > However maybe it is possible to have both NICs be configured for the > same IP address and manually switch between them, so that only > one of them is up at a given moment? > > So what do you think is the best approach? > Many thanks again for your help! > regards, > Balazs > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]