Wireless Access

I belong to a small non-profit youth sports organization. A local company that is upgrading their wireless infrastructure has donated some of their old equipment to us. So we are looking to expand our internet access to more than one building and these buildings are too far away to use ethernet cables. The old equipment we have been given are ProCurve MSM310 APs (MAP-320), M110 APs (WAP-200), outdoor enclosures for them, directional antennas and POEs.

Each of the buildings have an existing WLAN using consumer-grade wireless routers (e.g. Linksys, D-Link, etc.) but only one has an internet connection via an AT&T ADSL modem/wireless router (NetGear). See the attached picture of the park layout. There is no need to access computers or printers in the other buildings - we only need to share the internet connection that the main building has.

I have some experience setting up basic wireless networks and also wired networks, but I am no expert nor have I worked with these more enterprise-oriented hardware. I was able to find documentation for these units. I see that the WAP-200s can be used in bridge mode, which appears to be what I would need in buildings 2 - 4. The MAP-320s appear to not support bridge mode. It looks like they both can be used without a controller or server (which would be a big overkill for our application). In my simplistic (and possibly/likely wrong) understanding, I would install a MAP-320 in building 1 and building 2 (used to communicate with building 4).

In playing with the units, when I set the WAP-200 in bridge mode, I had to also set the security. If I select WEP, I must enter a 128-bit key. But when I was working with the MAP-300, I saw no such setting (perhaps I simply did not find it though).

So, what would be the best approach to use to achieve the wireless bridging I need in order to share the internet connection utilizing the hardware that we have been given? The simplier the better as we don't really need many of the advanced capabilities that these units have. Other than the DSL modem and the wireless routers, the other equipment (computers, printers, etc.) are powered off when we leave.

Thank you in advance - Al

MAP and MSM APs do support bridging - it's called Wireless Mesh. You configure one of the devices to be the Master AP of the Mesh, the others are slaves. I'd choose the one in the Internet side to act as Master.

Bridging only works between similar devices, so you need either a MAP or WAP on each end of the link. Trying to mix and match is likely to fail.

Instructions on creating a wireless mesh between the APs is described in the configuration guides, which are freely available from the device support pages. However you need to pick the manual that corresponds to your FW version.

Armlo,

Sorry for the late reply... I got sidetracked and forgot to come back to respond.

Thank you for your insight. I was able to get the bridge working using two WAP-200's. I do have an issue with internet access via the bridge, but I will open another thread for that since it is a different topic.

Thank you,

  Al