[Info-vax] Wireless networking for my home xp900

[Rich Jordan]

On Aug 17, 1:53 pm, John Wallace <johnwalla... at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On Aug 17, 4:35 pm, Jojimbo <jjgessl... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Due to some residential reorganization, my xp900 will be moving
> > further away from the network hub.  This will make having an actual
> > wire very inconvenient for network connectivity.  Is there some device
> > I can use to let the xp900 join my already established wireless net?
> > Any suggestions appreciated.
>
> > Thanks,  Jim
>
> You've already got an existing Access Point (AP) so I'm not sure about
> Ian's suggestion you need another AP.
>
> I've just abandoned powerline networking. The kit I had, some Zyxel or
> other, suffered excessive packet loss between upstairs and downstairs.
> As I understand it, there are very few chipsets which do this
> powerline game, and they just modulate Ethernet packets onto the mains
> wires, with no additional error checking and correction, in particular
> no forward error correction. Thus if the received signal is poor, bits
> are corrupted and therefore packets will be lost, which leads to
> retransmission delays with TCP, and to completely lost data with UDP.
> Web browsing was lumpy, DNS requests would fail (DNS = 3 retries
> only?) and I couldn't make VNC connections stay up very long, for
> example. You may have better luck,  but based on my experience I'm not
> recommending it. Because it's not doing anything IP-oriented it may
> offer the chance to use non-IP stuff such as DECnet, LAT, clusters,
> etc.
>
> The reason I had the little powerline network was to connect the LAN
> switch in the upstairs workroom with the AP/router connecting to the
> outside world. Prior to the powerline I had a Linksys "Wireless
> Ethernet Transceiver" WET11 connecting the upstairs switch to the
> downstairs router. It had ye olde security (WEP not WPA) which is why
> I wanted it replaced.
>
>
> Anyone able to shed more light on stuff for this which does work OK
> with non-IP traffic?

I wonder if you just had wiring problems of some kind, or if your
particular powerline equipment had issues.  I've watched for problems
at home and except for weather events that cause power fluctuations,
and (in one location) when our air conditioner cycles on, I've
recorded no errors.  The overall throughput does vary a bit, for
reasons not making themselves known via monitoring (I get 9-10 Mbps,
not the rated 14).

I have had to unplug and replug my 'central' bridge twice in the last
two years to bring the net up after a power outage and messy recovery,
but thats it; it just runs.

The low-end Netgear units use 56-bit DES encryption, so its not overly
secure, but then the 'area' of vulnerability is also smaller, and
someone has to connect your (or a close neighbor's) power wiring to
intercept.

In my case I replaced a pair of DEC Roamabouts in a bridge
configuration; the original 915MHz Wavelan units that peaked at
2Mbps.  They worked just fine, though slow, but dragging around that
contraption (on a board, with power supply, antenna, etc) wherever I
wanted a netcam got to be a real pain.  And that had no encryption
(though I doubt many wardrivers are equipped to detect or hack 915MHz
signals!)