[Techtalk] wireless home network without router

Kevin Lamonte kevin.lamonte at gmail.com
Sun Aug 15 12:56:20 UTC 2010


On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 03:56:10PM +1000, Miriam English wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Is it possible to set up a home wireless LAN without a router? That
> is, using wireless network cards in a couple of computers, connect
> them as a small mesh network, similar to how you can connect a
> couple of computers together using an ethernet cable.

Depending on your goals, your easiest solution sounds like either an
Ad-Hoc wireless network OR a router/access point that you use static
IPs on.

Ad-Hoc sounds like what you want: one wireless computer on the veranda
and one wireless+wired computer inside.  Simply set both machines'
wireless cards to Ad-Hoc mode, choose a network name (SSID), and set
up IP forwarding on the wired computer.  There is a rather nice
tutorial for Windows users here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/expert/bowman_02april08.mspx

Linux users have the same option but may be labeled differently
depending on their distribution.  The wired computer needs to act as a
router for the wireless computer.  Sometimes that is called IP
forwarding or IP masquerading (technically those are different things,
but forwarding is necessary for masquerading to work so you'll see
them listed together).

There is one catch to Ad-Hoc though: some cards don't do Ad-Hoc all
that well.  It's used much less frequently than Managed mode and I've
seen some network flakiness that went away as soon I put an AP in the
mix.

The other convenient option is to get a router+AP, but don't actually
use the "router" part.  Walmart sells "basic" units for about $30, you
can find them slightly cheaper used on eBay.  Plug it in, configure
its SSID to what you want, then have both computers connect to the
wireless network but use static IP addresses.  Set up IP forwarding on
the wired computer and have the wireless computer use the wired
computer's IP as its router.

-- 
Kevin Lamonte <kevin.lamonte at gmail.com>


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