[Cu-wireless] Re: Are we making things too hard on ourselves?

[Ralph E. Johnson]

Suppose we covered an area with wireless base stations.  They would
support PCs using standard 802.11b modems, but otherwise could be
hacked as much as desired.  Is it possible to move data around town
by passing it from station to station?  In other words, can one base
station talk to another base station?  From the little I've read,
it sounds like the usual access points can't do that, but perhaps that
is just because they don't have real routers.

See http://opensource.instant802.com/
This describes how to flash an 802.11 access point with linux.
This will let you provide "full wireless services", including
multipoint to multipoint wireless bridging, while at the same
time distributing fully standard 802.11b connections to end users.
This sounds to me like what we are looking for.  If it is a full
linux, we can run any routing algorithm we like (i.e. we write).

This will work with access points based on the Eumitcom WL 11000SA-N
board.  This includes US Robotics (USR 2450) and SMC 2652.