Hello,
I'd like to know if it's possible, and if so, how, to connect up a bunch of computers on a LAN via Wi-fi. I *know* nothing about Wi-fi, I've never been on a Wi-fi network, but AFAIK, it's about *internet* networking , i.e. you can only use it for TCP/IP - is this true?
I'm sorry about asking this question here, but is it possible to connect WINDOZE machines over Wifi? So that you can access one machines hard drive from another? Or even the same thing using Samba on Linux?

Thanks for all your replies.

All this is possible using Samba. Does you computer show any indication of the wireless card/adapter/whatever being recognized? You probably have to change Samba's default workgroup setting. There's not enough info provided to take a decent stab at the question.

I'm not doing this on *my* computer, I want this info for someone who wants to set up an office LAN.

If I was to do this setup (Wifi doing a LAN), I suppose I could do netowrking *without* Samba at all on Linux machines, right? Using NFS?
IS there a GUI way to mount and unmount remote filesystems via NFS?

resetreset- Yes you can set up a LAN over wifi. I have just such a system with my neighbor across the street. He has DSL and Verizon says I cannot get it because I am out of the range so .....

One word of caution - not all wireless cards work with Linux. I am using Ubuntu 9.10 and I have one usb adapter that apparently just will not work. I think the cards are more likely to work than the usb adapters. There are sites that show what ones work with Linux. Here is one:

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers

I set up wi-fi lans on a regular basis. Most wireless routers will treat everything on the network equally whether it is wired or wireless. Some (usually older) wireless routers will treat the wired and wireless as seperate lans however and some dual band routers will by default treat each band as a seperate lan, although this can usually be changed in the settings.

The average wireless router (linksys, d-link, netgear, belkin, etc.) in its default setup is really more of a switch with dhcp server, nat, and a static route to the "internet/wan" port. Although they generally have some more advanced features that can be enabled.

In otherwords, it's just like doing it on a switched lan.

As far as windows goes, it's just a matter of enabling sharing, and then defining the shares. If there are multiple versions of 'doze on the network this can vary a little. Also everyone will have to be in the same "workgroup" or whatever windows calls it. Persistent mounts acroos the network are done in windows via the "map network drive" thing-a-majig.

Could you give me an idea of how much you charge? I'm in India, but still, it should give me some idea of how much to charge. As a newbie who doesn't know much about all this stuff, do you think I SHOULD charge? (I could prolly get my clients network up and runnning, just from the knowledge I already have, and a bit of common sense and experimentation).

Also - what's a switched LAN?

Just a minute... .. .

You are here on LQ asking for free advice, and you are now asking how much you should charge to apply this advice to your friends / customers ?

Do you think this is the right way to treat people, or LQ, or have I misunderstood / misread your posts?

Don't worry tredegar, he's been trolling all day.

there was another guy earlier who had asked a question like "can 64 bit server support 32 bit clients ?" That was yesterday. Today he's announcing he's passed his RHCE and got a job as a sysadmin !
rofl

There are a ton of contributing factors to what I charge which I've discussed in some thread somewhere and having done a lot of wiring and configuring and troubleshooting at work today I have no desire to go into that., but feel free to search my posts. All I'll say regarding money is if you don't know what you are doing, then the fair thing to do is charge by the job and consider it paid training if it takes longer than you expected.

What I meant by "switched lan" (more or less a redundant term) is that you'd be using a basic tcp/ip network, single subnet etc. No routing needing to be defined or anything of that nature. The point I was making is that the only real difference between 802.11x and a regular old cat5 ethernet network is the medium. Of course there is the encryption and network access to consider, but again that's really nothing to do with the network, just a decision to be made and on windows, some boxes to check, and passkeys to type.

The last thing to consider is what type of access point(s) are you going to need, which would be determined by the number of hosts and physical layout in addition to the specs of your choices. For instance the garden variety wireless router people use in small offices and homes advertise they can support X number of wireless hosts, but the way the bandwidth gets divided you can cut that number by a factor of 2 to 10 depending on the needs of the users and the quality of the equipment.

I have provided PLENTY of free advice to various people on LQ, and I don't care if they used that knowledge to make money. So I don't think that wanting a little something from LQ in return, after all this time, is wrong. There was a time when I would just get up and spend all morning going through posts on LQ and replying to them, just for the fun of it.
Can't see why other people shouldn't do that, that's what the GPL always stood for, I thought - FREEDOM of information!