Has anyone used a wireless bridge?

**frankthedruid** · 01-09-2005, 02:12 PM

From what LYNSIS (i DON'T THINK I spelled it correctly) tells me its an ethernet to wireless adaptor. You can purchas those tingies that let you use your game console over your internet connection

**Gibson99** · 01-09-2005, 02:24 PM

i have a netgear bridge that i use at the house. it will basically turn a regular machine which has a standard 10/100 wired ethernet card into a wireless client. you can also use a bridge to turn a hub into a wireless splitter, so for example, you can have 2-3 machines upstairs connected to a hub, and a bridge connected to that hub. then downstairs you have your wireless base station and broadband connection, or the other half of your lan.

you cannot use a bridge in adhoc mode (that i've seen anyway) and a bridge will NOT act as a base station. kinda sucks that way, but oh well...

i plan to connect my bridge to my carpc's built-in 10/100 so that the car will become a wireless client to my base station (wireless router) in the house. i doubt you could wardrive with a bridge (though it'd be an interesting excersize to try)... though in theory you should be able to connect to anyone else's network with your bridge if you can get their wep keys and whatnot...

**viguera** · 01-10-2005, 11:31 PM

I got 2 Linksys WET11 bridges in the house (one for my Audrey and one for my XBOX) and a WET54G for my HTPC in the basement. It's your only option when you have a device that doesn't let you use USB/PCI wireless internet, and the best option when you don't want to fiddle with opening a PC -- or like in my case, when you just plain run out of PCI slots...

It's better than USB because of the speed... it's IMO better than PCI because chances are you already have a PCI network card in the machine, and with a bridge you don't have to crack open the case and mount the card, and since it's external you can position it higher to get better reception -- instead of the BS antenna that PCI cards come with, buried in the back of the case.

For the purpose of a Car PC, I suppose it beats PCMCIA on a laptop if you have onboard ethernet, since it frees up the PCMCIA slot for other things. Same thing with USB. If you have a full-sized PC in the car then I suppose it doesn't really matter, but if you have a mini-itx box or something similar, using a bridge instead of "wasting" the PCI slot on a network card is a plus.

The 802.11b bridges are relatively cheap nowadays. The WET54G is like $120 depending on where you shop. The WET54GS5 (same bridge but with an additional 4 ports IIRC) is well under $200 as well. Depending on what your needs are, these things can't really be beat to provide wireless connectivity to a box with limited expansion.

**Gibson99** · 01-16-2005, 06:14 PM

Originally Posted by viguera

For the purpose of a Car PC, I suppose it beats PCMCIA on a laptop if you have onboard ethernet, since it frees up the PCMCIA slot for other things. ~snip~ using a bridge instead of "wasting" the PCI slot on a network card is a plus.

Depending on what your needs are, these things can't really be beat to provide wireless connectivity to a box with limited expansion.

well put. that's exactly why i'm doing this in mine - only one pci slot, only one usb port (will be taken by the lili's touch cable, and yes i know about hubs...) and the pci slot's gonna be used by a tv/fm card. since i'm using a biscuit (ebx/pc104) board, i do have a pc104 connector, and actually have a pcmcia adapter for the pc104... thing is, i haven't found a pcmcia wifi nic which supports an external antenna for a reasonable price. i spoze some day i'll find an orinoco or something fairly cheap, but i won't be putting a big ole cantenna up or anything... just something small to make it from the car to the ap in the house, and if i want to use adhoc to dump stuff to/from a laptop or wifi pc i may be near, or do remote admin or something. though it's an interesting idea, i don't really have much interest in wardriving.

**wattstar** · 01-17-2005, 02:47 AM

I have a dlink dwl-g810 for my xbox in the loungeroom for xbox live, they work great, it's combined with a di624 wireless router. Have had connected to another computer to test speed, but get no where near the listed speeds, but it's plenty for just gaming considering speed of broadband

**Bailey** · 01-19-2005, 11:31 PM

A wireless bridge must be powered by an external power supply like the square kind that plugs into your houses socket. For example the Linksys WET45G uses 5V DC. It may be able to be powered by a carputer's psu, but I'm not sure. I hope someone can answer this because it's a shame wasting a good ethernet port

**wattstar** · 01-20-2005, 05:38 AM

my device runs on 5.2v dc,which means you could use a simple power regulator, cranking shouldn't be much problem, as it doesn't need to be on till the computer comes on. They draw a fare bit of current 2.5amp.