WiFi

[Dionysian]

Forgive me if this has been discussed before...i have looked through the Wiki but as a N00B not all of it rings bells.

I have a an ASDL modem that has WiFi

...and i have just installed a hybrid LMCE that is connected to it via an ethernet cable.

I have a WiFi card connected to the core. is there any way i can configure the core to connect to the internet via the ASDL modem through the ethernet port and use the WiFi card in the core for the internal network?

Or would i have to buy a switch or another WiFi router or both?


Thanks

[fibres]

Hi

While it might be techincally possible to do this you will lose all network boot for md's and a lot of the feature of linuxmce.
As discussed in the forum previously in many posts wireless just does not have the data throughput to stream video consistantly  over it.
You may get away with one md recieveing a Standard def stream but HIDef will certainly not work.

I would install a second network card in the linuxmce box and link it t another switch/wireless access point and use this.

The best solution to this is either use existing wireless router with the wireless turned off connected to one card on the linuxmce machine or replace it with a simple wired router and then have a switch with wireless access point on the other network card connected to your internal network.

This is the recommended way to install the system. It is possible to have machines on the outside of linuxmce but they will not easilly be able to link into the system.

Regards

[Dionysian]

What sort of throughput would i need to gain full functionallity.

I don't have a cat5 install in my home

How about 80211n with 74Mbit/s?

or wireless over you homes electrical ring? I think that can get to 200Mb/s

[fibres]

Well including throuput the other issue is network boot.

I am assuming your planning on having media directors round the house. Media directors network boot from the core and this is not possible over wifi.
Technically if you had a wireless gateway on 802.11n which gave you a cat5 socket at each machine this would solve the netboot problem. This would get quite costly though. Also there is a lot of debate if this will work prperly especially with a few mds working at same time.
Homeplug I believe gives you cat5 at each machine and would therefore support the network boot but again the speed can be a problem. The speeds reported by these technologies is maxcimum theoretical , things like interference and distance can drematically reduce this in real life.

The bext advice especially if there is no restrictions on your running some cables an your not planning on moving house any time soon is to spend a lot less money and a small amount of effort running cat5 now to save a lot of time/hassle and frustration later.
Over cat5 you can easily do Gigabit ethernet which is 1000mb/sec and the parts for this are very cheap now.

This is the soltuion I and I believe most others here would recommend.

Regards

[Vagabond]

Hi there

Good that Dionysian asked this question, I'm now thinking about to implement something similar to that.

I have almost the same config - dedicated LMCE core installed on the machine wired to DSL 4-port modem which also has wireless (DHCP on modem is turned off). I've got MD connected to the DSL modem with cat5. It boots over the net and works ok getting MCE IPs from the core. So second network card in the core is not needed.

My other computers in the local net also get non-MCE IPs from the core's DHCP.
But also when I start a Windows notebook with internal wi-fi it is able to connect to internal network (and go outside to the internet) through the core's DHCP. It also gets correct IP from core's non-MCE range. So seems like there is no routing issues there..

May I assume that if I make this notebook an MD it will work ok wirelessly with this network config? Please advise how to set this up. I do not need high throughput here - this one will be used like a radio in garage for instance, no HD video required.

My second question is - is it possible to use CF card to boot from for MD? Any links to instructions on this will be much appreciated.

To summarize: My ultimate purpose is to have small wireless diskless (means no HDD, not booting from the net) MD able to play music from the server and probably surf the Internet.

Waiting for your thoughts

[fibres]

Well as stated in my prevoius post it is not possible to network boot a md over a wireless network.

The network design you have stated is possible. I assume you had to setup linuxmce to point to your modem/router as the gateway?

It is technically possible to have a md boot off the local hard drive or even a cf card however I am not aware of this configuration being supported at present.
If I am wrong then someone correct me here.

Regards

[tschak909]

The only way you can get a device to boot wirelessly over a network, is to use a Wireless Bridge, and attach it to an ethernet port on the system you wish to boot.... You then configure the wireless bridge to the SSID of the wireless network.

-Thom

[Vagabond]

Interesting part here is that I didn't need to set anything related to network manually After I did 0710 DVD installation everything worked automatically (I just went to admin site, looked at the network config and said to myself "hmm, everything is ok").
I even had DHCP turned ON on both core and modem and my core and non-mce computers worked just fine with the internet.
I later had to turn it off on the modem because my MD worked only right after the image rebuild, but after reboot MD could not start. Turning modem's DHCP off cured this issue.

As for the second question... I think rafik24 did something like that:
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3246.0

But this seems to be running Kubuntu+LMCE (what is the total size?) on the MD, not booting from local boot image and then working like diskless MD...

[Vagabond]

The only way you can get a device to boot wirelessly over a network, is to use a Wireless Bridge, and attach it to an ethernet port on the system you wish to boot.... You then configure the wireless bridge to the SSID of the wireless network.

-Thom

Thanks Thom!

But is "wireless boot" the only way wireless MD can work? Can it have it's own "boot image", start with it and then act the same way diskless MDs do?
Another alternative is to have full package (Kubuntu+LMCE) installed on the MD..

[tschak909]

no, but you can install the CD installer, and it will detect the core, and do an MD only installation.

-THom

[Vagabond]

ARRGH..

Cannot bring the pieces together. By themselves they seem to work, but not combined

What I have now:
- dedicated core (wired to wi-fi DSL modem). *works ok*
- diskless laptop booting form the network - *works as MD ok*
- another diskless laptop with CF in USB:
-- Kubuntu installed on CF *works ok*
-- wireless card set up - I can surf internet through core's DHCP and ssh the core. on the wifi I get correct MCE IP (192.168.80.3) *works ok*

But I cannot get second laptop to work as MD
- tried to install Kubuntu/MCE from DVD - *fail* it just cannot set up on CF i guess
- tried to install MCE only from CDs - *fail*. Installation goes down to completion and advises to reboot, but after reboot MCE doent start.. I see normal Kubuntu desktop..
sometimes I got "Waiting for /usr/pluto/var... FAIL" after reboot.

 Is there any way to set up "non-diskless" MD? Generally: Can I setup LinuxMCE on the full-fledged computer and connect it to the core as the MD (without PXE boot)? Please advise on the steps..