Wireless LAN questions
 

There generally seems to be quite a bit of confusion, and in some cases misinformation, out there on wireless LAN networking.

If anyone has any particular questions on this subject, please feel free to ask.


Mr Mephisto

wow, i have one. this is just something i've been thinking about. with wired lans, you could basically connect two computers w/o the use of a hub/switch using a x-over cable and as long as they were both in the same ip range, you could see each other. could you do this with wireless networks? connect 2 computers w/o the use of an access point? i have yet to try this, it should work, however every wireless network i've set up, required that it got a signal from the access point, or so it seemed.

I do believe this works. There is a mode called Ad-hoc which is intended to be direct peer to peer connections. - Please correct me if I am wrong.

I have not played with this much as the only time my laptop is around other computers is while sitting in class... Though I do see other laptops showing up wirelessly once in awhile.

slant eyes, I don't believe that they need to be "in the same IP range." They are connected and it's as simple as that. Of course, if they're using the TCP/IP protocol, they will still need to know their IP addresses, whatever they choose those to be...

Nocuous is absolutely correct.

802.11 wireless LANs can operate in two 'modes'.

Infrastructure mode, where the clients associate with an Access Point. You can think of this as conceptually similiar to a wired hub.

Ad-hoc mode, where two or more "clients" connect to each other directly, without the use of an Access Point.


In ad-hoc mode, all stations must use the same channel and SSID (which is kinda obvious when you think about it). The main disadvantage with ad-hoc mode is that it's a "peer to peer" network; by definition you don't have access to a router or, by implication, the Internet. You could setup one PC with ICS or something similiar, but I've never tried this.


Mr Mephisto

You're right.

What we have here is a confusion between Layer 2 connectivity (MAC layer) with Layer 3 connectivity (Session/Transport - ie IP address "layer").


Mr Mephisto