{"id":682,"date":"2021-09-02T16:31:36","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T16:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/?page_id=682"},"modified":"2022-04-27T15:01:47","modified_gmt":"2022-04-27T15:01:47","slug":"wireless-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wireless-bridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Wireless Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Connecting LANs wirelessly requires the use of&nbsp;<strong>Wireless Bridges.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong>Up until recently (mid 2001), Wireless Bridges have been expensive and intended primarily for &#8220;enterprise&#8221; use.&nbsp; Some of these high-end products from companies such as&nbsp;<b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alvarion.com\/\" target=\"_offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Alvarion (formerly Breezecom)<\/a>&nbsp;<\/b>use proprietary standards and won&#8217;t interoperate with 802.11b equipment.&nbsp; However, as the 802.11b standard has gained popularity, most new products are using that standard.<\/p>\n<p>These products come in different flavors, as manufacturers experiment with different price \/ feature combinations.&nbsp; Here are some of the different modes you&#8217;ll find in Wireless Bridging products:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note: <\/strong>Different manufacturers may use different names to describe these operating modes.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>Point to Point<\/strong>&nbsp;(Master \/ Slave)<br \/>\n&#8211; This mode connects&nbsp;<strong>two LAN segments<\/strong>&nbsp;by using two Bridge units.&nbsp; In some cases, such as the&nbsp;<b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/review.asp?pid=399\">SMC2682W<\/a><\/b>, one unit is set to Master mode, the other to Slave mode.&nbsp; Other products, such as the upgraded&nbsp;<b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/review.asp?pid=400\">Linksys WAP11<\/a><\/b>, allow you to control which of multiple Bridge units to connect to by entering the MAC address of the unit at the other end of the wireless bridge.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>Point to Multi-Point<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; As the name implies, this mode lets you construct a network that has&nbsp;<strong>multiple Bridge units talking to each other wirelessly<\/strong>.&nbsp; Again, there are differences in implementation.&nbsp; The SMC2682W uses a single Master and multiple Slave units.&nbsp; The Linksys WAP11 uses a mode that sets all units in a multi-point network to a &#8220;Point to Multi-Point&#8221; mode.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>Master plus AP<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; This mode may be unique to the SMC2682W.&nbsp; It allows a unit set to Master mode to communicate with Slave units,&nbsp;<strong>as well as wireless clients<\/strong>&nbsp;within its range.&nbsp; NOTE that Slave units don&#8217;t have the same ability, and can&nbsp;<strong>communicate only with the Master unit<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>Repeater<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; This may be the best of all modes!&nbsp; In two of the previous cases,&nbsp;<strong>neither Bridge unit will connect to wireless clients within its range<\/strong>.&nbsp; Each Bridge unit talks only to one or more other Bridge units.&nbsp; &#8220;Enterprise&#8221; level Access Points made by Symbol and OEMd by&nbsp;<b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/review.asp?pid=349\">3Com<\/a><\/b>,&nbsp;<b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/review.asp?pid=371\">Intel (PRO 2011)<\/a><\/b>, and others feature a &#8220;WLAP&#8221; function that supports&nbsp;<strong>simultaneous AP-to-AP bridging and wireless client to AP connection (repeating)<\/strong>.&nbsp; This is the most flexible of all methods, but it&#8217;ll cost you, since these products typically run $500 and up per unit.&nbsp;&nbsp;<b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.intel.com\/support\/network\/wireless\/pro2011\/accesspoint\/wlaaphlp.htm#NetworkTopology\" target=\"_offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">See this page<\/a><\/b>&nbsp;from the on-line Intel Pro\/2011 Access Point Reference Guide for some diagrams and further explanation of what these products will do.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" bgcolor=\"#385CA0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<p align=\"center\"><span class=\"HEADER\" style=\"color: #ffffff;\">Pricing<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>These products are priced 2 to 3 times higher than the $250 or so that you&#8217;ll pay for consumer-grade Access Points that don&#8217;t support bridging, although this may be changing.&nbsp; As mentioned above, Linksys has introduced an upgrade to their&nbsp;<b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/review.asp?pid=400\">WAP 11 Access Point<\/a><\/b>&nbsp;that adds both Point-to-Point and Point-to-Multi-Point bridging capability, while keeping the price at around&nbsp;<strong>$200!<\/strong>&nbsp; Just as Linksys fired the &#8220;shot across the bow&#8221; of other consumer router makers with their original 4 port router, this move may start to bring down prices on 802.11b wireless bridges.<\/p>\n<p>The bottom line is that wireless bridges vendors are focused on &#8220;Enterprise&#8221; business, and are priced accordingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Connecting LANs wirelessly requires the use of&nbsp;Wireless Bridges.&nbsp;&nbsp;Up until recently (mid 2001), Wireless Bridges have been expensive and intended primarily for &#8220;enterprise&#8221; use.&nbsp; Some of these high-end products from companies such as&nbsp;Alvarion (formerly Breezecom)&nbsp;use proprietary standards and won&#8217;t interoperate with 802.11b equipment.&nbsp; However, as the 802.11b standard has gained popularity, most new products are using that standard. These products come in different flavors, as manufacturers experiment with different price \/ feature combinations.&nbsp; Here are some of the different modes you&#8217;ll find in Wireless Bridging products: Note: Different manufacturers may use different names to describe these operating modes. Point to Point&nbsp;(Master <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5601,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions\/5601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}