Re: WRT54G (v4) Client mode

Bill sent me this directly; I hadn't realized he'd sent it here as
well....

Hi, Bill, and thanks for the note.

Comments/followup inline:

I think the point is if you want to have more than one computer *on the
boat* using the wireless link you'd do well to consider a 'dual device'
setup.

As you probably have seen from John Navas' and my conversations, that's
what
I started out with. The two devices were the highly touted (note that I

never have seen a user report - just touts) Senao 2611CB3 Deluxe units.
The
ones I was sent were the ones with no housings - shown as "OD", mostly,

apparently, for use in a NEMA enclosure.

However, I can't get either of the units to work as a wired bridge, and
- at
least based on last night's efforts - they also don't want to do much
else,
either. The one which finally saw all the available clients eventually

stopped responding to my attempts to interrogate it. While I didn't do
a
power down/restore (which I could do, and in fact, since I'm a sailboat
and
won't have them up all the time due to load issues [though in a windy
and
sunny location, I could leave them up during the day, as I have ample
solar
and wind generation]), I can say for sure that until I have something
successfully breadboarded a considerable amount of time, I'm not going
to
put it on top of the mast, where access will be only catastrophic, not
a
"push the button to reboot"!

Then, to add insult to injury, when I try to connect the two together,
IP
conflicts abound. It doesn't matter if they're 6' apart (the supplied
cable) or 5" (my made-up crossover pigtail), it does the same thing.
It
also doesn't matter if there's a router in between, as one
correspondent
went to some considerable detail to suggest would cure the problem.
That's
so whether I use a really offbeat IP and subnet set (such as 15.15.15.1
and
255.0.0.0) which can tell my NIC to use and interrogate and set them up
in
whatever fashion I want. There's no way all the crazy IP sets I used
can
all be causing conflicts with my laptop(s - regardless of which I try
it
in). Yet the vendor is trying to tell me - and Discovercard! - I have
to
engage a MSCertified NAnalyst to resolve the IP conflicts in my
machine...


One with antennae aimed toward picking up the signal from shore. To this
you'd connect *another* device with wired ethernet. It's this second
device
that would provide the wireless signals to the other devices on the the
boat. This is what I'm in the process of doing for our boat.

Yah, I'd hoped to provide all the cruisers in the harbor with another
AP in
effect, but this time local to the top of my mast. I was going to have
the
stick up top, and the duck below, the NEMA. Vendor assured me that
would
work just fine. Of course, I have since come to regard anything from
him as
both uninformed and dangerous. Many hours on the phone (in the first
few
weeks - he's since refused to talk to me) doing exactly what he said to
do
would not cure the problem(s) - but he refuses to take it back.


I'm hoping to let my wife fire up the laptop and use the boat's SSID, not
have to hunt up one from shore. Realizing, of course, that a visit to the
web configuration page for the shore-connecting device might be required
to
join up with the shore SSID. But the laptops on the boat won't have to
have
any part of their configuration changed. I fully expect, at some point,
to
have an on-boat computer doing the babysitting of the shore link. Since
the
boat has GPS it should be within the realm of possibilities to have it
automagically tracking what SSIDs are 'appropriate' for use based on
physical locations. As in, remember what access points I've told it to
use,
at which locations, and attempt to reconnect without intervention.

Cool idea. My cruisng grounds are unlikely to be as repetitive - we'll

either be in one place for a long time, or not back in the short term
(like
perhaps more than a year, in which case there likely will be new ones,
and
better ones, anyway). However, I'm not enthusiastic about causing
another
set of wiring and other challenges as would be required with a
full-time
computer aboard, and as above, so - while I'd far rather use the
equivalent
of the WZC, manually entering the SSID is manageable, so long as I can
get
to the bridge to configure it.

So far, if I have the bridge in dhcp, it's invisible for configuration,
and
nothing will change it other than a hard reboot; power cycling doesn't
change it, we have to go back to factory default to get it out of dhcp.

That clearly won't work up the mast. Not up the mast makes for no
signal if
I were to try to use coax...



What I've done, thus far, is use a pair of WRT54G (both version 2 devices)
and loaded the latest DD-WRT (2.3sp1?) onto them. The one making the
shore
connection is running in Client mode. The one providing Wifi to the boat
devices is running as an access point. The on-boat device is connected
one
of the four switch ports on the shore-link device. There's nothing
connected into either device's WAN port.

So far it seems to be working, at least within the limits of getting the
shore-link established trying various different antennae.

Cool. However, finding the early versions, I gather, will be very
challenging, and from what I read, the current versions don't perform
at all
like what we need them to do. I *would* like more power, on the
premise
that reaching the shore would need it (the higher gain antenna
supposedly
takes care of the hearing part).


Note the careful avoidance of terms like router, gateway and the like.
These can be somewhat loaded terms when trying to figure out this sort of
stuff. While the various terms DO end up being appropriate for the tasks
being performed, it can be confusing if they're used in the wrong
contexts.
As in, yes, the on-boat device is a "router", in the strictest hardware
sense as it's default linksys firmware provides. The default factory mode
is as a "gateway", but that term also applies at the PC-level as past of
the
IP configuration. But I'm using it for neither of those purposes, instead
as a Access Point. Same deal goes for the shore-link device being used as
a
'Client'. Thus it can get confusing for someone new to the stuff to get
their head around it all.

Heh. I don't know if I'm being confused, or merely stymied by inop
gear...


If you try to do it with just a single device, with a single radio (two
antenna don't mean two radios) then you're really never going to see
effective performance. That sort of 'repeater' mode basically wastes
half
the bandwidth. That and trying to get WDS working is a pain in the ass.
Yes, it "ought" to be able to work, but in practice it just doesn't
(yet?).

I don't mind two pieces of gear - though I would, certainly, prefer to
do it
all in one box. However, if I have to run power up the mast and stick
the
boat unit (vs the shore unit) someplace belowdecks, so long as I make
them
both happen off the same switch, it's of little consequence. I've got
an
instrument panel I've built to hide all the wires for everything at the
nav;
my 802 brain is behind the fixed part, and I could easily put the extra
unit
under the nav shelf behind my seat or in that part of the panel which
drops
down but currently is unoccupied (about half the space, leaving room
for
more instruments later).

So, I can live with that. Less (very little! - the circuit board and
duck
of the second unit doesn't weigh much!) weight aloft would be better,
along
with resolving any RFI issues of the two of them being proximate, too.
The
easiest way for me to reduce weight aloft would be to not use the cast
aluminum case he sent, instead some UV impervious plastic with a real
seal
rather than the pitiful gasket under the flat plate cover of the
aluminum
one.


Now, combine all the above with trying to use other devices besides the
WRT54g and, well, yeah it's going to be a challenge. It's all getting
'less
worse' but it's still a far cry from being easy.

Meaning, the WRT54G is the only device which will work? I certainly
see an
awful lot of discussion about those units, so there's no question
there's an
awful lot of them out there...

Thanks for your input, and any further ideas you may have about solving
my
particular challenges. My time is running out, and getting the boat
floated
and seatrialed is higher on the list than this, but if I think it can
work,
I need to do it while I have the electrical and mast stuff opened up (I
have
to replace a fair amount of gear, and install other new stuff, up the
mast
once Lydia gets here at the end of July).

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
http://tinyurl.com/p7rb4 - NOTE:new URL! The vessel as Tehamana, as we
bought her

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