Playing with WAP and WLAN equipment for Wireless Ethernet

[ME]

> On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, ME wrote:
> > Skipping ahead, I found a forum with some linksys developers and they have
> > a beta firmware update for the unit. After installing the beta firmware
> > upgrade, Linux is happy with the WLAN traffic and gets it IP address as it
> > should.

On Fri, 15 Jun 2001, Rob Flickenger wrote:
> Any link for that firmware?  I've returned one of those stoopid things
> already (in favor of a Mac Airport, which incidently works GREAT...)
> If the new firmware makes the Linksys AP work cross-platform, it could
> actually become interesting again...

(BTW, thanks for the talk you and your associate gave on 802.11b wireless
equipment and Linux: lots of good info.)

After 8 hours of accusing everything from Linux to PCMCIA card services to
the cards to the firmware on my own brain, I tried looking for other
users complaints with it and Linux.

(Andru was the one that found the unit (with the old firmware) would send
out ARP requests and though tcpdump would see them return, they were not
processed. When he manually added the ARP entries to the Linux kernel net
info, then tried ping, tcpdump would show the outgoing ping, and the
return from the WAP, but the kernel did not process it. I was *this* close
to running a sniffer to capture the sessions between a Cisco WAP to Linux
and the Linksys WAP to see why one's packets worked and the other's
packets did not.)

It took me an hour or two to find it as it was about two-thirds back in a
list of about 68 links produced from searches at google. Did not find the
beta firmware mentioned on linksys site at all, or in their firmware
upgrades dir for software that is not beta... :-/

Anyway... 
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/equip,16

The page is ugly in a graphical browser, and I would hate to see it in
Lynx. The colors are setup make it look like it was made by someone that
was color blind or a member of a circus, but the colors use is functional
not artistic. (You can probably
find my post, and then my reply to myself
30 minutes later where I read the admin's announcement of the beta
firmware and my test of it being successuf - under nickname Pa55wa11.)

Scroll down to about one-third down, you see lines of multi-colored text
that are links. The fifth line down, on the far right is a link:

 Beta 1.37.9a-BEFW11S4 

The guy nicknamed "HFB1217" with the 'Chessmaster 2000' old-wise-guy
image/icon runs that board, and is a Linksys developer AFAIK.

The firmware is upgraded via tftp, and though I prob could have worked
through the process to use my Linux box tftpd to serve the firmware, and
try to trigger the request, I just used the prescribed method and a
windows box and the tftp software for it because it *was* a firmware
upgrade, and did not want to toast the brand new unit so soon. (yeah,
yeah, I used windows.)

I have now been using it for a few days. It does the gateway/routing thing
with Linux and Cisco and the D-Link cards just fine with no hiccups. I
want to load test it with 20 or 30 active users to see if we have
port/seq# collisions for sessions in/out on its IPMasq/NAT (one to
many) as suggested by other users of that forum.

I have noticed application of web-configured settings causes the unit to
"soft-reboot" limiting access to the web config pages for a second or
two. Also, there have been some times where I have had to close my web
browser and reconnect to the unit for configuration settings under this
beta version of firmware. (Windows or Linux - does not matter, and this
kind of delay did not happen with the non-beta copy AFAIK.)

I can bring it with me on July to the meeting if you (Rob) want to see it
and play with it a bit. I have not tried the WEP thing yet or the roaming
and using it with other units.

So far, ignoring all the work to make it work, I am impressed with what I
have for so little money, and those nifty antenna connectors for allowing
connectivity with other external broadcast antenna.

As a last side note, one user (nickname "mushmouth") posted the following
followup to my resolved problems, but I have not used this equipment he
mentions:

-Mushmouth wrote on dsl forus for linksys:
: I suggest waiting longer to see if Linksys takes care of ALL of the
: problems with this router, and hires more tech support. As I have yet to
: get a response from their tech support even though I have sent more than
: 10 e-mails in 4 weeks. There are other router/Access points that have
: all the features that this one has for the same price or cheaper without
: the headaches involved. See the D-Link 713 and the SMC Wireless
: Barricade.
- end included comment

-ME


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     Systems Department Operating Systems Analyst for the SSU Library