wireless 802.11 "relay"

Hello,

I need some advice on being able to access my office network from my
office campus over wireless. Currently, I plug into the wired ethernet,
and my laptop gets it address over it using DHCP. However, I like
working outdoors, so sometimes will like to work outdoors, just
underneath my office. I can potentially take a longer wire and let it
hang from my office, and plug my laptop into it, but that will be a big
mess.

Is it possible to have exactly the same functionality using some kind
of "wireless relay". I can ofcourse potentially setup a small wireless
network in my office, but that will make the network accessible/open to
all etc, and will require another IP address for the switch/hub/router
I may use. I want something much simpler -- just to be able to connect
my laptop wirelessly into my wired network.

Any other kind of device (USB or something) which provides this exact
functionality will work as well.

Thanks a lot!
Arvind

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I need some advice on being able to access my office network from my
> office campus over wireless. Currently, I plug into the wired ethernet,
> and my laptop gets it address over it using DHCP. However, I like
> working outdoors, so sometimes will like to work outdoors, just
> underneath my office. I can potentially take a longer wire and let it
> hang from my office, and plug my laptop into it, but that will be a big
> mess.
>
> Is it possible to have exactly the same functionality using some kind
> of "wireless relay". I can ofcourse potentially setup a small wireless
> network in my office, but that will make the network accessible/open to
> all etc, and will require another IP address for the switch/hub/router
> I may use. I want something much simpler -- just to be able to connect
> my laptop wirelessly into my wired network.
>
> Any other kind of device (USB or something) which provides this exact
> functionality will work as well.


The connection is not much of a problem: an off-the-shelf wireless
access point will bridge your Ethernet to WLAN.

Keeping uninvited guests out is some more of a problem. The common
countermeasures (in increasing order of overhead & difficulty):

- MAC addres filtering at the access point,
- standard WLAN encryption in addition to MAC address filtering,
- encrypted VPN over the WLAN (e.g. OpenVPN).

A working VPN requires extra IP addresses for the tunnel. They can
well be RFC 1918 private addresses.

Pick your poison / dope.

Please avoid USB thingies, they tend to be O/S and version & driver
dependent more than you'd like. It's roughly the same situation as
with the notorious Winmodems and Winprinters. I just have here an
USB ADSL box which refused to work with one computer (IBM Thinkpad A21p)
due to a too old USB, and with another computer (Mac Mini) due to
the O/S too new (OS-X 10.4 Tiger).

HTH

--

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio (at) iki fi

> The connection is not much of a problem: an off-the-shelf wireless
> access point will bridge your Ethernet to WLAN.
>
> Keeping uninvited guests out is some more of a problem. The common
> countermeasures (in increasing order of overhead & difficulty):
>
> - MAC addres filtering at the access point,
> - standard WLAN encryption in addition to MAC address filtering,
> - encrypted VPN over the WLAN (e.g. OpenVPN).

Yes, I understand that -- connection is not an issue. Making it
unavailable to others, actually making it invisible to others, is more
difficult. Invisible to the extent that the device shouldn't even need
its own IP address -- just forward packets on the wireless end to
ethernet and vice-versa.

I looked up some wireless-ethernet bridges, and I can see how they will
work, except I am not clear how I will identify myself to it on 802.11
without making it visible to others?

Arvind

>
> A working VPN requires extra IP addresses for the tunnel. They can
> well be RFC 1918 private addresses.
>
> Pick your poison / dope.
>
> Please avoid USB thingies, they tend to be O/S and version & driver
> dependent more than you'd like. It's roughly the same situation as
> with the notorious Winmodems and Winprinters. I just have here an
> USB ADSL box which refused to work with one computer (IBM Thinkpad A21p)
> due to a too old USB, and with another computer (Mac Mini) due to
> the O/S too new (OS-X 10.4 Tiger).
>
> HTH
>
> --
>
> Tauno Voipio
> tauno voipio (at) iki fi