Two Building Network

[jwagner18]

My company recently built a second building about 500 feet from our current facility and we had fiber optic cable run with media converters at each end to convert it back to CAT5e cable. We have a Linksys WRT54G in the first building which handles the DHCP distribution of IP addresses. The company purchased a CISCO 1811 wireless router and the president would like to have it setup in the new building to give us wireless connectivity in that building. My problem is that I am not sure how to configure it to work with our current network structure and not cause issues with IP routing. Any assistance would be appreciated. Need to know what to connect to and how to configure the router.

[paolo bevilacqua]

Hi, have you considered hiring a professional for the job ?

That would give you a sure solution and no possible mistakes.

[Leo Laohoo]

In recent times, bean counters and number crunchers, who have no clue whatsoever, have come to a unanimous conclusion that getting-things-cheap-and-wrong-and-hire-someone-to-fix-it is significantly cheaper than get-things-done-RIGHT. I've dealt with private and government organizations and the first clue I always get that the m0r0ns have stuffed it up is when they call up the service desk and report that the fr1ggin network is not working for their cr@ppy piece of junk they call a "server". I am a big supporter of Paolo's recommendation: Get it done professionally because your opening statement already shows that someone in your organization has no idea what is required and what they want. (I'm criticizing your skills and your talent.)

Wireless isn't just getting A access point and viola, you've got wireless for the entire real estate. There are two mode of Cisco wireless solutions, namely: Autonomous and Light Weight (simply known as controller-based). With autonomous, you need to configure each and every access point deployed. If you have about a handful, this is ok, but if you've got more than 12 or more, then this is a handful. The controller-based solution revolves around a Wireless LAN Controller. In this solution/scenario, you configure the WLC and you just deploy your AP. You change the configuration on the WLC and the config will be distributed to all the APs deployed. Next is how you place your AP. If you want to take pride in your WLANs employment and deployment, I'd recommend that you get a site survey done. A site survey allows client, that's you, to know how many APs to deploy, where to deploy your APs and what particular model of APs to use. In your situation, I'd recommend the 1130 (if you want 802.11a/b/g) or the 1140 (if you want to deploy 802.11a/b/g/n Draft 2.0). For future proofing, I'd recommend getting a 1140. And because the 1140, for the time being, won't support autonomous mode, you'll need to get a WLC. If you are not yet confused or want some more assistance, let us know.

I'm tempted to give you the portable product sheet of the WLC and the APs but someone hasn't been updating the file so I'll give you the link to the wireless portfolio instead.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/index.html

Hope this helps.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

In theory, it might be as simple as connecting your 1811 to the Ethernet port you've connected between buildings. This assumes the 1811 would (or could be configured to) bridge the wireless side into your existing network and that wireless clients would pull DHCP and join your network.

Beyond such simple assumptions, the 1811 is more than just a wireless AP, so I wonder why it was selected. The Linksys WRT54G is more oriented as a consumer or SMB device for simple/small networks. (Perhaps an issue is all the features supported by the 1811 make it appear complex, expecially compared to the WRT54G?) Since you also mention a concern about "IP routing", I also wonder about the rest of your network (which you didn't describe).

Beyond the possible difficulty of using the 1811, wireless can easily open up your network to outsiders, and there are issues to having it work well (some touched upon by Leo).

In this case, you might be well served by taking Paolo's advise and obtain some network consultation. If the business is growing, even a network review could be of benefit because networks use different approaches to grow.