Server setup of wireless LAN over the wired LAN as part of Wireless Workshop at IIITMK

Overview: Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) are implemented as an extension to wired LANs within a building and can provide the final few meters of connectivity between a wired network and the mobile user. WLANs are based on the IEEE 802.11 standard. Most WLANs operate in the 2.4 GHz license-free frequency band and have throughput rates up to 2 Mbps. WLAN configurations vary from simple, independent, peer-to-peer connections between a set of PCs, to more complex, intra-building infrastructure networks

In a typical WLAN infrastructure configuration, there are two basic components:

Access Points - An access point/base station connects to a LAN by means of Ethernet cable.A building may require several access points to provide complete coverage and allow users to roam seamlessly between access points.
Wireless Client Adapter - A wireless adapter connects users via an access point to the rest of the LAN. A wireless adapter can be a PC card in a laptop, an ISA or PCI adapter in a desktop computer, or can be fully integrated within a handheld device.

Server : rbs.iiitmk.ac.in

Configuration : Adding a host with IP and MAC into the DHCP Pool of IP’s so that is is detected automatically by the DHCP when the wireless LAN is up within the network.

Background : IIITMK is having a wired LAN with 2 proxies at two end-points of service - one at Park Center and one at Nila facility.Wireless routers have been purchased for setting up wireless LAN over the wired LAN in the institution.A wireless test machine has also been set up with a wiki suite running on it for further activities in the wireless area.The first event organized associated with it is a ‘Workshop on Wireless Technologies’ with many international participants with it.The event had the wiki site running and to be accessed by every registered participants having notebook PC’s at the end-point.

Step 1 : First the wireless machine is set with the internal static IP addressing scheme.The wiki is running in it and is to be accessible to the wireless LAN.The static IP should be unassigned in any part of the LAN.For this, we have to lookup on the static IP tables assigned on the dhcp.conf file of the server.

Step 2 : Log on to the server rbs.iiitmk with root-level access privileges obtained from sysadmin and add WLAN host to the DHCP

#vi /etc/dhcp.conf

line 121/22 : host DabbaWLANTestServer { hardware Ethernet ;

fixed address ; }