Wireless networking with WAP11

Author's Rating:

Pros: Easy setup, drivers updated often, build quality, general product quality

Cons: Not well documented change in drivers

The Bottom Line: 
A well built piece of hardware, with easy setup and configuration software

Author's Review
Why have a wireless network?

Well there are a few reasons. Firstly you may have never had any network wiring in your house or business and decide that you want to network a few PCs together. Or you may simply want to have the ability to place your laptop down on any part of the house or business without having to trail network wires to it. Lastly you may just consider that it's cool. Don't laugh, some people enjoy the feeling that comes with successfully installing the latest gadget in the house.

Personally I wanted to put wireless in so that I could move about with the laptop. There's no point having a deck if you cannot enjoy the deck...

And your choices are..

Well 802.11b and 802.11a and the generally accepted standards. 802.11a has a greater throughput, but a reduced range (in terms of distance from the wireless access point). 802.11b has a theoretical maximum of 11Mb, but usually due to environmental factors and plain old distance between the sending and receiving devices the actual speed is much less than the advertised maximum.

In this case I selected 802.11b because i did not need the 802.11a speed.

The Linksys WAP11

I selected the linksys unit because of the build quality, reliability and prior experiences with their equipment. My DSL router has been a prime example of the build quality of their equipment. Their support in terms of driver releases and firmware updates is excellent.

(I also selected the linksys because the footprint was the same as the DSL router and therefore I could stack the units in a cool manner)

Installation

Please note at this point that the WAP11 comes in two flavors. The first version had to be configured by either USB or SNMP. The 2.2 version is web configurable and the device is discovered from computer on the same network running the Linksys software.

Anyways, i plugged the unit into the DSL router, turned on the power and inserted the CD into the desktop computer on the LAN. The setup program asked me a few questions, the most important in my eyes being the one about setting an IP address versus using DHCP for automatic address allocation (MOST people will select DHCP) and stated that I had configured my wireless LAN and that was that! At this point the POWER and LINK lights on the unit were glowing, but there was no activity.

Also worth a mention is the question about the network name. This must be the same on the WAP11 and any cards accessing the WAP11, and the CaSe Is SeNsItIvE so make sure you use the same case on each.

I turned on my Agere equipped Orinoco card and was able to browse the network with no issues at all. The Orinoco card reported the signal strength as being EXCELLENT in the same room as the WAP11.

Wait a minute...

So now my wireless LAN was working. For me and for anyone else who wandered down the street with an 802.11b equipped laptop. Not good. So i returned to the Linksys configuration system and enabled the encryption options (WEP), typed in my passphrase and a key was generated for the cards that would access the machine. I entered the key into the Orinoco card and was able to surf the web oncemore, albeit a bit more securely now. Don't believe the hype though, WEP is not 100% secure.

And finally..the range

Again the caveat being this is in a woodframe house. So off I wandered to surf...

Inside same room: excellent reception
Inside house: generally good, with pockets of poor with increasing distance from the WAP and also with more obstructions (pesky walls)
Outside house: excellent at the end of the house where the WAP11, and good up to 300ft away...after that there was no more yard...

Other points to note

A nice thing about the WAP11 is that it has changeable antenna. So to get more range or to use a directional antenna to boost the range in a particular direction it would be a matter of changing out the supplied antenna.

If you update the drivers to the latest version a password feature has been introduced to make sure that people cannot access your network and then change the wireless settings to something other than the settings you select. This feature caught me and a few others by surprise. Once you login though, ensure that you change the username and password to your own. The default password is well known for linksys hardware!

10/16 Just thought of an additional thing to note regarding the range. Range is a product of the transmitter and the receiver. I use an AGERE Orinoco card which we estimate (compared to the Linksys PC card) to get 10% more range. Bear that into account when thinking about the desired and optimum range. Also bear in mind that antenna orientation makes a huge difference too. If I hold the laptop level then i get lower communication rates than if I hold the laptop so that the card is vertically aligned.