setting a base station as relay?

myahmacmyahmac
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Well me and a friend might end up getting some very cheap base staions for repair. around 15 a piece. we are hoping to fix 2 of them at least and sell the other 2. I was wondering, about somehting though. On my university network you have to get your MAC address registered b4 you can use the wirless setup. But my room is too far away to use the network. I was thinking about putting a basestation in a room that is closer, and using a direction antenea to that base station acting as a relay. I think i read that you can put a base station into a mode where it just relays signals instead of acting as a hub or something like that. My question is does the base staion have to get the MAC address registered too? I dont think my school would like knowing that.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    Most base stations on the market will allow you to "clone" the MAC address from the computer you administer them from, so this should not be a problem... but...



    Only a very few base stations allow you to bridge between locations. This is one of the features of high priced W-LAN equipment. In fact the first round of AirPort basestations were rumored to be part of an agreement whereas this feature would be expressly excluded.



    However, the newest Airports do allow bridging between two base-stations. I am guessing that these are not the items you are getting for $15.



    My best recommendation would be to setup a base-station with a directional antenna pointed at your location, and get an external USB adapter that can take a good external antenna and get a second directional antenna for that. Or setup a *nix box with the same, and then setup a second network with that one... in any case this will cost you... You are probably better off getting DSL/Cable.
  • Reply 2 of 4
    myahmacmyahmac Posts: 222member
    the base stations are the Airport extremes. And i wouldnt have the abilty to really run another compuetr in someonelses dorm. But, u did make a good point about the directional antean from the basestation. Do you know if that can be used for a recieve and the omni used for sending. Also can the extrems recive on one band and transmit onto another? i.e. taking a 802.11b signal and retransmitiing that on the g standard.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    wait, do you have a wired connection in your dorm?

    why dont you just use the base station normally like it is supposed to be used?
  • Reply 4 of 4
    myahmacmyahmac Posts: 222member
    there are no connections in the dorm rooms on campus, sux huh? They made it seem like there were. Oh yeah, the jacks are there, and the wires allrun to a little server closet that is hooked up to nothing. neway...



    the situation is the computer science builing is about 200 yards away from my builing, but my friends building is about 125 or so. She faces the side to S.R. Collins, and my room is on the wrong side of the building. I know that the range drop of from her room to my room will really suck, even with some modified boosters. But I was hoping that an airport extrem base station would be able to take the 2.4 ghz signal and retransmit on 5ghz, since there would be less interference going between the dorms between us. i.e. microwaves, and phones.



    I hate having to use dial up in my dorm room, esp now since it is acting funny. I can hardly stay on long enough to send an email sometimes, and it just randomly dies. which really sux when you are playing WC3 online.
Sign In or Register to comment.