Do I need a new wireless router

Currently have a Linksys router WRK54G that I bought 3 yrs ago. I have
created a home network, consisting of 2 different wireless laptops and a
wireless printer. I have an internet cable modem connected to the router
and the network works just fine.

In the future, my large community will have wireless internet connectivity,
so I will no longer need the internet cable service, which I will cancel.
The company that manages the community wireless internet connnectivity will
get each computers MAC address so each can access their network to get on
the internet.

My objective is to have each computer able to print to the wireless printer,
as well on get on the internet. I have been told I will need to purchase a
wireless router, to take the place of my current router. Is this true? If
so, why is that necessary?

On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:50:06 -0400, "Les"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Currently have a Linksys router WRK54G that I bought 3 yrs ago. I have
>created a home network, consisting of 2 different wireless laptops and a
>wireless printer. I have an internet cable modem connected to the router
>and the network works just fine.
>
>In the future, my large community will have wireless internet connectivity,
>so I will no longer need the internet cable service, which I will cancel.
>The company that manages the community wireless internet connnectivity will
>get each computers MAC address so each can access their network to get on
>the internet.
>
>My objective is to have each computer able to print to the wireless printer,
>as well on get on the internet. I have been told I will need to purchase a
>wireless router, to take the place of my current router. Is this true? If
>so, why is that necessary?

Why would you want to abandon your cable modem internet for a wireless
equivalent? Has the pitch line included any alleged benefits? I
assure you that speed and reliability of wireless will be much less.

If you're going for the wireless solution, you have two choices. You
can buy a new wired router, since the WAN port of your unspecified
model cable router is probably inaccessible and therefore cannot be
used. In addition to the new router, you also might need a new
"wireless client ethernet bridge" which may or may not be supplied by
the wireless ISP.

The other option is to connect directly to the wireless network using
the two laptops and wireless printer. If the ISP has client isolation
enabled (highly likely), you will NOT be able to transfer files
between laptops and printers.

Methinks you had better talk to the wireless ISP to see what they
recommend.

--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:50:06 -0400, "Les"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Currently have a Linksys router WRK54G that I bought 3 yrs ago. I have
>created a home network, consisting of 2 different wireless laptops and a
>wireless printer. I have an internet cable modem connected to the router
>and the network works just fine.
>
>In the future, my large community will have wireless internet connectivity,
>so I will no longer need the internet cable service, which I will cancel.
>The company that manages the community wireless internet connnectivity will
>get each computers MAC address so each can access their network to get on
>the internet.
>
>My objective is to have each computer able to print to the wireless printer,
>as well on get on the internet. I have been told I will need to purchase a
>wireless router, to take the place of my current router. Is this true? If
>so, why is that necessary?
>

Hi

I tend to agree with Jeff's sentiments on wired vs. wireless. If you
choose to go the wireless route - I had to set something up similar as
a fix while being on-site for a client in LA. The place I was staying
only had wireless access points but I had multiple systems and VOIP to
get functioning. My hack was to use cheap Buffalo router (WHR-G125)
and upgrade the firmware to that of DD-WRT. Using it you can setup
the router to act as both a router and a bridge so it will receive
signals from the AP but also act as a router for all your devices.
Take a look at http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge

My main hitch was that I had to relogon the on-site AP every day b/c
their DHCP leases renews at 2AM every AM and I could not get DD-WRT to
renew automatically (it has some provisions for it). It was not great
but it functioned and I ran VOIP, Cisco VPN's through it without
issues.

Hope this helps

Jerry Henzel
Precipice Development Intl
precipice.development can be contacted at gmail.com
http://www.precipicedevelopment.com

Stick with cable and forget the new system. You already have a
superior setup.

There are some ASUS G routers for a good price that have USB ports for
printers. The Apple Airports also have USB printer ports. The older
ones should be getting cheaper as N comes out.

cable internet costs $43 per month. The new service for our community will
be $15 per month. It should be at the same speed.


"seaweedsl" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:08ce23f0-89b0-43d7-9363-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Stick with cable and forget the new system. You already have a
> superior setup.
>
> There are some ASUS G routers for a good price that have USB ports for
> printers. The Apple Airports also have USB printer ports. The older
> ones should be getting cheaper as N comes out.
>

On Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:48:23 -0400, "Les"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>cable internet costs $43 per month. The new service for our community will
>be $15 per month. It should be at the same speed.

Suggestion: Don't disconnect your cable service until after you've
checked your unspecified WISP service speeds. I don't have a clue as
to what technology you're using but the claims cable modem performance
is rather suspicious. If it's Wi-Max based, you have a chance.

Wanna disclose the service and equipment vendors? It might help to do
a sanity check before you jump.

It would also be interesting to ask the speed of the backhaul to the
internet. That's a shared pipe where everyone in the community gets
to fight over. Figure on 10:1 max overloading. So if you're
expecting 5Mbits/sec speeds, and you have 100 customers, you'll need:
5Mbit/sec * 100 customers / 10 = 50Mbits/sec
backhaul speed. That's an OC-3 at about $10,000 to 30,000/month from
most telcos.

Incidentally, there are various companies selling ethernet over CATV
coax solutions. If you have coax, and the community owns the coax,
you don't need wireless.



--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558 (E-Mail Removed)
# http://802.11junk.com (E-Mail Removed)
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

The company we have contracted with is EPIC Wireless, out of West PAlm
Beach, FL. Their home office is in New Jersey. They indicate a speed of 6
Mbps at our 15/mo cost and can also go to 12 Mbps at a higher cost. We have
seen the network in action at a nearby community and it is much faster than
the speed I currently get with Comcast cable. If we are not satisfied, we
can just cancel and revert back to cable or DSL, so there seems to be no
risk. There is no moneys up front. I have no idea on what technology they
will be using.

"Jeff Liebermann" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:48:23 -0400, "Les"
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>cable internet costs $43 per month. The new service for our community
>>will
>>be $15 per month. It should be at the same speed.
>
> Suggestion: Don't disconnect your cable service until after you've
> checked your unspecified WISP service speeds. I don't have a clue as
> to what technology you're using but the claims cable modem performance
> is rather suspicious. If it's Wi-Max based, you have a chance.
>
> Wanna disclose the service and equipment vendors? It might help to do
> a sanity check before you jump.
>
> It would also be interesting to ask the speed of the backhaul to the
> internet. That's a shared pipe where everyone in the community gets
> to fight over. Figure on 10:1 max overloading. So if you're
> expecting 5Mbits/sec speeds, and you have 100 customers, you'll need:
> 5Mbit/sec * 100 customers / 10 = 50Mbits/sec
> backhaul speed. That's an OC-3 at about $10,000 to 30,000/month from
> most telcos.
>
> Incidentally, there are various companies selling ethernet over CATV
> coax solutions. If you have coax, and the community owns the coax,
> you don't need wireless.
>
>
>
> --
> # Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
> # 831-336-2558 (E-Mail Removed)
> # http://802.11junk.com (E-Mail Removed)
> # http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

On Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:53:09 -0400, "Les"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>The company we have contracted with is EPIC Wireless, out of West PAlm
>Beach, FL. Their home office is in New Jersey.

<http://epicwireless.com/hiw>
The first thing that caught my eye was their use of WEP encryption.
That means they're using Wi-Fi and possibly older hardware that only
supports WEP. WEP has been cracked in literally seconds, is generally
deemed insecure, and has been replaced by WPA and WPA2. Something is
fishy here. Hopefully, it's just an out of date web site.

I can only find a few numbers from which I can make a determination if
their promises are realistic. However, I can make a bad guess. If
they're using 5.7GHz (802.11a), then to get a thruput of 6Mbits/sec,
they will need to maintain at least a 12Mbit/sec connection. If there
are (for example) 10 active users in the same airspace, each
interfering with each other, you will need about
10 * 12Mbits/sec = 120Mbits/sec
connection speed, which is impossible with 802.11a hardware. If the
mesh network is going through more than one hop to get to a wired
node, the maximum thruput will suffer. Therefore, to get 6Mbits/sec
thruput through 3 hops, you need at least an 18Mbits/sec wireless
connection. That's possible with strong signals.

The system apparently uses a mesh network.
<http://epicwireless.com/wwd/>
So there's no misunderstanding, I consider most single channel mesh
networks to be an abomination and an engineering nightmare. See:
<http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/roofnet/doku.php>
and especially:
<http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/roofnet/doku.php?id=interesting>
Note that the packet loss was 50% or more and that average thruput was
about 0.5Mbits/sec. Admittedly, this is with older hardware and there
has been some progress, but 802.11 and its problems haven't changed.
Details on request.

>They indicate a speed of 6
>Mbps at our 15/mo cost and can also go to 12 Mbps at a higher cost.

They have other systems installed. Has anyone bothered to call any of
their existing customers to confirm these claims? I would be really
interested and impressed if they can do it. Most municipal mesh
networks promise perhaps 0.5Mbits/sec. The few I've played with
barely can do that.

Looking at:
<http://epicwireless.com/live/>
They currently show "220 users downloaded 6.41 GB in the last day".
Doing the math, that's
6.4Gbytes * 8 bits/byte / 220 users = 232 Mbits per user per day
232 Mbits per user per day / 86400 seconds/day = 2.7Kbits/sec avg.
Seems kinda low for that number of users. It's unfortunately a
distorted calculation as there's really not enough numbers on the web
page to show performance.

You might want to ask if the graph is in kbits/sec or kBytes/sec.

>We have
>seen the network in action at a nearby community and it is much faster than
>the speed I currently get with Comcast cable.

Ok, there's hope. I would really like to be proven wrong about my
opinion of mesh networks. Did you actually see it demonstrated with a
paying user, or with a demo computer? It's easy enough to tweak the
system to give priority to a specific MAC address and thus produce
spectacular performance results.

>If we are not satisfied, we
>can just cancel and revert back to cable or DSL, so there seems to be no
>risk. There is no moneys up front.

Sounds good to me. I had a customer try that with the local cable
operator (Comcast). Not only was he reconnected without penalty, but
they gave him some promotional rate for a month or two for coming
back.

>I have no idea on what technology they
>will be using.

I can guess a few things from the web pile, but if it's a mesh system,
it's no better than any of the municipal networks proposed by various
politicians. However, if you have a working system nearby, with a
collection of satisfied customers, and no risk of losing your cable
connection, by all means, try it and see what happens.

Incidentally, reading the FAQ, it implies that you are expected to
connect directly to the system from your two laptops. That will be a
problem if you want to transfer files between laptops or talk to the
wireless printer. It can be handled with a wired router and wireless
client bridge adapter, but you'll probably need to discuss this with
Epic Wireless before purchasing anything new. The FAQ recommends a
"wireless router" which is kinda odd since most such devices do NOT
have a client mode. One thing for sure, your cable modem will be
useless because of lack of access to the connection between the modem
and router sections.

Good luck and let us know how it works for you.
--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Thanks for all your insights. See comments below:


"Jeff Liebermann" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:53:09 -0400, "Les"
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>The company we have contracted with is EPIC Wireless, out of West Palm
>>Beach, FL. Their home office is in New Jersey.
>
> <http://epicwireless.com/hiw>
> The first thing that caught my eye was their use of WEP encryption.
> That means they're using Wi-Fi and possibly older hardware that only
> supports WEP. WEP has been cracked in literally seconds, is generally
> deemed insecure, and has been replaced by WPA and WPA2. Something is
> fishy here. Hopefully, it's just an out of date web site.


Glad you took time to look up their web site. Since they suggested we look
at it, I don't think it is out of date. They also check for MAC address of
the computer. We will have to ask them why they use WEP, and not WPA


>
> I can only find a few numbers from which I can make a determination if
> their promises are realistic. However, I can make a bad guess. If
> they're using 5.7GHz (802.11a), then to get a thruput of 6Mbits/sec,
> they will need to maintain at least a 12Mbit/sec connection. If there
> are (for example) 10 active users in the same airspace, each
> interfering with each other, you will need about
> 10 * 12Mbits/sec = 120Mbits/sec
> connection speed, which is impossible with 802.11a hardware. If the
> mesh network is going through more than one hop to get to a wired
> node, the maximum thruput will suffer. Therefore, to get 6Mbits/sec
> thruput through 3 hops, you need at least an 18Mbits/sec wireless
> connection. That's possible with strong signals.
>
> The system apparently uses a mesh network.
> <http://epicwireless.com/wwd/>
> So there's no misunderstanding, I consider most single channel mesh
> networks to be an abomination and an engineering nightmare. See:
> <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/roofnet/doku.php>
> and especially:
> <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/roofnet/doku.php?id=interesting>
> Note that the packet loss was 50% or more and that average thruput was
> about 0.5Mbits/sec. Admittedly, this is with older hardware and there
> has been some progress, but 802.11 and its problems haven't changed.
> Details on request.
>
>>They indicate a speed of 6
>>Mbps at our 15/mo cost and can also go to 12 Mbps at a higher cost.
>
> They have other systems installed. Has anyone bothered to call any of
> their existing customers to confirm these claims? I would be really
> interested and impressed if they can do it. Most municipal mesh
> networks promise perhaps 0.5Mbits/sec. The few I've played with
> barely can do that.

We checked out another community where their network was operational by
going to the community and talking to a few residents, especially the
President of the Board and the resident who led the committee's effort.
They were were happy with the service. I took my laptop there and logged
into the network at the clubhouse. I was able to connect immediately, and
was able to get faster internet response than I can get using my current
internet provider, Comcast.


>
> Looking at:
> <http://epicwireless.com/live/>
> They currently show "220 users downloaded 6.41 GB in the last day".
> Doing the math, that's
> 6.4Gbytes * 8 bits/byte / 220 users = 232 Mbits per user per day
> 232 Mbits per user per day / 86400 seconds/day = 2.7Kbits/sec avg.
> Seems kinda low for that number of users. It's unfortunately a
> distorted calculation as there's really not enough numbers on the web
> page to show performance.
>
> You might want to ask if the graph is in kbits/sec or kBytes/sec.
>
>>We have
>>seen the network in action at a nearby community and it is much faster
>>than
>>the speed I currently get with Comcast cable.
>
> Ok, there's hope. I would really like to be proven wrong about my
> opinion of mesh networks. Did you actually see it demonstrated with a
> paying user, or with a demo computer? It's easy enough to tweak the
> system to give priority to a specific MAC address and thus produce
> spectacular performance results.
>
>>If we are not satisfied, we
>>can just cancel and revert back to cable or DSL, so there seems to be no
>>risk. There is no moneys up front.
>
> Sounds good to me. I had a customer try that with the local cable
> operator (Comcast). Not only was he reconnected without penalty, but
> they gave him some promotional rate for a month or two for coming
> back.
>
>>I have no idea on what technology they
>>will be using.
>
> I can guess a few things from the web pile, but if it's a mesh system,
> it's no better than any of the municipal networks proposed by various
> politicians. However, if you have a working system nearby, with a
> collection of satisfied customers, and no risk of losing your cable
> connection, by all means, try it and see what happens.

That is exactly what we will do. There are several communities with
600-1000 homes and it seems like WIFI in communities is a thing of the
future. The advantage is cost, not the fact that it is WIFI. Again, since
if the new system does not perform and / or is not maintained as promised,
we have the option of cancelling and either getting a new company or going
back to a cable or DSL company.


>
> Incidentally, reading the FAQ, it implies that you are expected to
> connect directly to the system from your two laptops. That will be a
> problem if you want to transfer files between laptops or talk to the
> wireless printer. It can be handled with a wired router and wireless
> client bridge adapter, but you'll probably need to discuss this with
> Epic Wireless before purchasing anything new. The FAQ recommends a
> "wireless router" which is kinda odd since most such devices do NOT
> have a client mode.

We were told that if we want to continue to have more than 1 computer
networked, along with a network printer, we will need a special wireless
router, which would cost about $50. At this time, I don't know about what
kind of router that is, but my existent Linksys router model WRK54G will not
be useable.

>One thing for sure, your cable modem will be
> useless because of lack of access to the connection between the modem
> and router sections.
>
> Good luck and let us know how it works for you.

I will do that. Thanks for all your advice.


> --
> Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
> 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
> Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
> Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558